Global Fruit Picker Market Size

Fruit Picker Market Analysis

The Global Fruit Picker Market size is estimated at USD 1.75 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 3.80 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 16.80% during the forecast period (2024-2029).

• Fruit rotting on trees or the ground costs farmers USD 30 billion in sales annually, and fruit picked two weeks later loses 80 percent of its value. A major reason for wasted produce, sometimes in fruit rotting on trees, is a global shortage of fruit pickers, estimated to grow to five million missing workers by 2050. Every year, over 800 million tons of fruits are produced on 70 million hectares worldwide, representing an annual market value of USD 1 trillion. Farmers spend annually USD 100 billion on fruit picking and recruit over 10 million temporary workers for a short period to pick their fruit. Even today, more than 10% of all fruit worldwide cannot be harvested, equivalent to the total annual consumption of fruit in the entire European Union.
• Israeli startup Tevel Aerobotics Technologies developed flying autonomous robots that take off from a base station, pick only the ripe fruit off the tree and gently lower it for collection, and can work 24/7 during the harvest period. Kubota invested USD 20 million in Tevel, an industry leader in the flying autonomous fruit-picking robot harvesting segment. Together with Tevel, Kubota will reinforce the company's development of labor-saving and automation technology for fruit picking and enable the launch of a business using these technologies that will contribute to labor-saving and efficiency improvement in farming. Automated fruit pickers are expected to be the market's future, and this technology's workability is expected to show major growth in the coming years.
• According to Tropical Fruit Network, about 1,200 South Pacific fruit pickers have arrived in South Australia to help fill critical shortages of seasonal agriculture workers to encourage unemployed locals to take up fruit picking jobs. The government jointly funded USD 7 million to develop the industry for this. Other factors driving the market are increasing farm mechanization rates, especially in developing countries, increasing farm labor costs, and shorter replacement cycles of tractors attributed to the growth of the global innovative fruit pickers market and expected to grow huge during the forecast period.