Last week, I had the privilege of attending the 102nd annual Agricultural Outlook Forum in Washington, D.C., marking not only my first experience at this long-standing national event but also my very first visit to our nation’s capital. The Forum brought together agriculture leaders, policymakers, innovators, and growers from across the country—yet even amid its impressive scale, it offered valuable reminders of where specialty crops stand today and where they must go next.

One of my immediate observations was how specialty crops remain significantly underrepresented in national level discussions. While the Forum covered a wide range of topics, the dominant focus consistently returned to corn, soybeans, and protein production. These sectors are undeniably critical to U.S. agriculture, but the imbalance highlights an ongoing challenge: specialty crops continue to be treated as an afterthought rather than a cornerstone of American food and farm policy. As labor challenges grow and production realities evolve, it is increasingly important that specialty crops receive the attention and resources they deserve.

Despite this gap, several sessions offered meaningful insights. I was particularly glad to attend the panel discussion titled “Improving Nutrition for a Healthier America.” USDA leaders emphasized the importance of encouraging Americans to eat whole, healthy foods—a message closely aligned with the role our growers play in providing the fruits, nuts, and vegetables that support healthier diets. The conversation spanned nutrition security, equitable food access, and the need to integrate more fresh produce into federal nutrition programs. Hearing national leaders champion whole food nutrition reinforced how essential our industry is to public health outcomes.

On the second day of the conference, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins delivered a forward-looking assessment of the farm economy, emphasizing the agency’s commitment to strengthening producer support and expanding U.S. agricultural exports. Rollins highlighted USDA’s continued focus on bolstering trade performance and underscored key priorities within the emerging farm bill framework. She stressed that supporting farmers through volatile markets remains central to USDA policy, noting the importance of improved data accuracy, enhanced safety net programs, and strategic updates to farm support mechanisms. Rollins’ remarks set the tone for the Forum’s broader discussions on commodity outlooks, market conditions, and the path ahead for U.S. agriculture.

Another highlight came when Walt Duflock, Danny Bernstein, and I were invited to participate in the panel, “From Silicon Valley to the Farm—Driving Innovation Through Agriculture Technology.” This session brought together voices from across the innovation ecosystem to explore how technology is reshaping modern agriculture. It was an honor to represent our growers and share how Western Growers members are leading the way in practical, field ready innovation.

During my portion of the discussion, I focused on the real-world innovations specialty crop growers are already deploying—particularly solutions designed to combat labor scarcity, input resistance, and rising input costs. From advanced automation and robotics to precision tools and emerging biological inputs, specialty crop producers are not waiting for the future to arrive; they are actively building it. I highlighted how these solutions deliver value today, while also positioning growers for long term resilience in a rapidly changing regulatory and economic environment.

What stood out throughout the Forum was a growing national interest in agricultural innovation—yet also a clear opportunity to bring specialty crops more fully into the center of that conversation. Our growers operate some of the most labor intensive, technologically challenging, and economically significant production systems in the country. Their stories, needs, and innovations deserve a stronger platform at future federal and national gatherings.

Overall, the Agricultural Outlook Forum was a valuable and memorable experience. It offered fresh perspective, important connections, and a chance to spotlight the incredible work being done across our specialty crop community. As I left Washington, I felt both grateful for the opportunity to participate and motivated to ensure that specialty crops play a larger, more visible role at next year’s Forum.

I’m already looking forward to returning—and to continuing the work of bringing specialty crop challenges, innovations, and opportunities front and center in national agriculture conversations.

Last week was a great week for specialty crop automation in Washington, DC. Big thanks to Chris Purdy, the Chief Innovation Officer at USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) for setting up a panel on specialty crop labor challenges and automation and innovation opportunities for me, Western Growers Senior Director of Automation and Commercialization Ben Palone, and Reservoir Farms Founder and CEO Danny Bernstein. The key message was around the economic development opportunity that combines agriculture and AgTech opportunities.

I opened with the usual problem statement around labor: the lack of domestic availability has pushed H-2A usage up by three times in five years, and H-2A now represents 10% of California’s farm work force and that is out of a total $16.3B spend in 2024. The H-2A labor fully loaded costs growers $28-30/hour because of housing, transportation, and food costs. Meanwhile, regulatory costs (Cal Poly data) have risen from $109/acre/year (2005 leafy greens research) to $1,600/acre/year (2024 data­—same grower, same farm, same crop). Because of the cost challenges, California is forecast to lose 32% of farming acreage and 51% of California growers over 55 years (1997 – 2052). Washington state is forecast to lose as well, but by less (25% of acreage; 33% of farms).

Regions like Peru are making very different policy decisions than California around labor, water, infrastructure, and economic development. In addition, Peru has set explicit targets publicly of $40 billion in ag exports for 2040 and 1 million new hectares (2.47 million acres) by 2040. This is after Peru grew ag exports from $465M in 2000 to $12.7B in 2024 (1,869%) while California grew 129% to $22.4B over roughly the same period.

From an automation perspective, two thirds of hours are spent on harvest and one third of hours are spent on non-harvest. We are making progress on non-harvest automation, which looks like it grew from $250M to $310M (24% YoY) from 2024 to 2025. At that revenue level, automation is helping to reduce labor required by 3-5%. If you straight line the growth rate for the segment at 24% and push it out through 2030, specialty crop AgTech automation becomes a $900M category in North America. We are confident that with the international players included, the category goes over $1 billion in revenue in 2030. At $1B in revenue, most technology segments create complementary opportunities in systems and operations integration (25-30%) and data and analytics tools (20-25%). In short, a $1B automation category likely supports another $500M in related revenue.

On harvest, the picture is not as positive. Venture capital has dropped from $53B in 2021 to $10B in 2025 (85%). The short version is the entire venture capital work shrunk by 50% ($354B to $171B from 2021 to 2023) but got rescued (as often happens in tech investing) by the AI segment, which pushed venture back over $200B by itself even though IPOs dropped 85% from 2021 to 2023 (1,046 to 153). The lack of liquidity outcomes from IPOs has not dampened anyone’s interest in AI investments or valuations that appear to be many to be a bit bubbly (we’ll see on that one).

This lack of venture capital means fundraising for AgTech startups is as challenging as it has been in a long time. AgTech did not get an AI bump (in fact, you can argue it takes an AI hit in some ways because the cost of engineering talent is being driven up massively the last couple of years from the AI arms race in the form of engineering recruitment and retention) and 42% of the $53B in 2021 was from two categories (vertical farming and alternative proteins) that I have not been kind to and will remain critical of because they took billions of dollars and basically lit them on fire for multiple years with virtually no good outcomes. As a result, the capital available and margin for error for AgTech startups is very small at the moment – the team, the product, the strategy, and the revenue metrics must all line up and the pitch needs to be stellar.

Given the lack of outcomes in harvest automation to date, we are concerned about the ability of harvest to secure venture capital and are engaging in alternative capital strategies. One of them is to learn from the Strawberry Commission, which looked around over ten years ago and realized that every activity that needs automation in strawberries is too small for venture capital investments (the market size is too small) except harvest. So they prioritized the other activities (hole punching, strawberry de-topping, etc.) and used industry capital to fund professional engineers and house them at the Cal Poly Strawberry Center where they work with student teams on R&D for solutions to each of these problems. The program is working well, with three projects getting past R&D and to commercialization with an open source strategy where the drawings and equipment specifications are made available to growers who can give them to whichever Central Coast OEM they want to use.

We are leveraging a similar approach but moving forward with a Product Requirements Document (PRD) and Request for Proposal (RFP) process for existing OEMs instead of student teams because of the complexity involved with harvest (with a particular focus on the end effector and software to do the picking/harvesting and placement in a bin or product holder). The PRD for the initial project is being developed right now for iceberg lettuce harvest automation. Rhishi Pethe is helping by taking on the PRD effort for us. Grower feedback and field visits have given Rhishi much of what he needs to complete the PRD, and we anticipate completion in the next 5-7 weeks. After that, part 2 is to take the PRD and turn it into an RFP that OEMs can respond to which we will launch within 3-4 weeks of PRD completion. By May, we should have the RFP process live and OEMs will have 60 days to respond. That means we hope to have all responses in by July and we can select the most likely winner candidates and work in a group to debate strategy and approach before coming up with one final RFP winner. As with Strawberry Commission, this process will require no venture capital and will use industry capital and grower feedback to maximize the chances for success.

There are multiple approaches in play. For non-harvest, we believe the category can become $1 billion by 2030 (particularly once we open the global lens up) with venture capital investments. This would mean we would have automated somewhere between 15-20% of non-harvest activity. For harvest, we believe a grower collaborative capital model and PRD/RFP can open up alternative capital sources and help us get from the current 0-1% that is automated to something closer to 3-5%. All of that supports innovation funding from many of the traditional sources, including USDA, CDFA, and SBA. Everything up until now in this article has been a long preamble summarizing the work of Ben Palone and I the past few quarters.

But here’s where things get really interesting (I know, a thousand words in – sorry, I think the above is needed to set the stage for what follows). I took a look at a couple of items involved with the venture investing funnel and instead of focusing on startup revenue results and commercialization, I focused on the capital needed to keep the innovation funnel healthy and (more importantly) took a look at the economic impact as measured by jobs created and job years delivered. My thesis was that we should reposition AgTech investments from both venture capital and grant funding around an economic development thesis with jobs as the key metric. That thesis appears to be correct as I gather more data.

To start the process, I estimated the amount of venture capital that AgriFoodTech is likely to get in the next five years (2026-2030). Based on the drop from $53B to $10B and current under-performing trends for exits overall, most of my investor friends and I believe that AgriFoodTech is likely to stay in the $8-$12B/year range for a few years until exits start to become more common. That is unlikely to come via IPO because AgTech does not grow revenue fast enough and large enough to support the metrics needed for an S-1 filing. Therefore, the most likely exit path to see some growth on is M&A and that is not likely to continue until the OEMs (John Deere, Case New Holland, et al) are in a financial position to support more acquisitions. Based on all of that, I am forecasting the 2026-2030 AgriFoodTech venture capital at $50B ($10B a year – the midpoint of the estimate above – straight lined for five years). I believe $50B is a conservative estimate that is more likely to have upside over the next five years.

Part two of the exercise is to estimate how much of the $50B will be invested in automation. For this, I looked at the last couple of years. The short version is that 4-7% looks to be the recent trend, and with the CEA/alt-protein money going away, it is trending towards 7% and likely to go higher. Unlike CEA and alt-protein, automation is solving a real problem – maybe the biggest problem facing California growers – labor challenges. For this forecasting exercise I chose to straight line 6% per year for the entire five years. I believe this is another conservative estimate that has upside more likely than downside the next five years. If $50B is our forecast for VC and 6% is out automation percentage, we have a total forecast for automation investment of $3B.

With the $3B established, the next part of the exercise was to figure out how much job creation AgTech is likely to establish on the back of the $3B investment. After some analysis comparing AgTech to other tech segments, the prediction is that $3B in AgTech automation investment over five years can create 6,000 – 7,000 total jobs. That breaks down into two groups. First, 4,500 direct jobs are created, including engineering, manufacturing, deployment, and field service jobs at the startups that received funding. Second, 2,000 – 2,500 indirect jobs are created in supporting industries that are not on the startup’s payroll but support it.

Next, I took a look at the mix of VC funding across investment levels from seed rounds through A rounds through B rounds and above. The main reason for this is different rounds create different headcount expectations. That is even more true when manufacturing is involved. Early on, you can pay more for engineering headcount for R&D, but as product gets to commercialization the amount needed for manufacturing goes up and people cost has to decrease. So each round has different profiles of hiring. Here’s another interesting point. Because of the complete drop off in VC, the amount invested in seed and A rounds compared to B rounds and later has completely flipped in 10 years. It was 78% seed and A rounds in 2015 and 22% B rounds and later. In 2025, that flipped to 22% seed and A round and 78% B round and later. This makes sense because as capital dries up many VCs follow their instincts and strive for portfolio protection – i.e. let’s continue making investments in companies we already know and have invested in and avoid making new bets.

The problem with that is that there is an established ratio between early stage rounds and later rounds to maintain a healthy innovation funnel. In short, you have to plant a lot of acorns over years (seed and A rounds) to get a lot of trees that can use and need larger amounts of capital years later. That is not what is going on with portfolio protection. In fact, if left in its current state, the funnel would start to be in poor health fairly soon.

So what is the ratio for AgTech? Well, you need to factor in the extensive hardware development cycles that often include multiple prototype cycles, the fact that field validation often takes multiple seasons, and the reality that exit pathways (the aforementioned IPOs and M&A) are slower and fewer than software sectors. When you account for all of those, AgTech requires .75-1x early capital per $1 of B round and later investments. In short, for every B round dollar you need 75 cents to a dollar in seed and A round to keep the innovation funnel healthy. If 78% is invested in B rounds and later and $3B is the total automation investment, B+ rounds represent $2.3B and seed/A rounds represent $660M ($.66B). But the early capital needed for funnel health is somewhere between $1.8B and $2.3B, so the existing 22% we can expect ($.66B) leaves a capital shortfall of between $1.1B and $1.7B.

Where can we make up the shortfall left by a venture capital total for the category that is shrinking and over-weighted toward B round and later startups? Well, we could look at grants, and both federal and California grants are in play. If we look at the economic development grants, the federal side is where most of the action is. If you combine the fiscal year (FY) 2024 funding across multiple categories, you get to $4.7B – $5.2B. First, Economic Development Administration (EDA) provided $1.14B. Second, Economic Development Initiative (Community Project Funding) provided $3.29B. Other federal economic development grants from DOT (Department of Transportation), DOE (Department of Energy), USDA (US Department of Agriculture), and RD (Rural Development) provided money. Depending on how startups are classified, there can potentially be access to all four of these categories.

By comparison, California provided $120M for GO-Biz and California Competes grants (using state dollars across multiple sectors), $17.5M for GO-Biz (additional grants) and Jobs First, and $23.3M for CDFA Specialty Crop Block Grants (which deserves an asterisk, this is the administration of USDA funds at the state level). Finally, the US provides USDA Specialty Crop Block Grants ($72.9M and Multi-State Grants ($9.4M) for a total of $82M). You quickly see that the majority of the grant dollars are in Federal Economic Development from EDA, EDI (CPF), and the four horsemen of DOT/DOE/USDA/RD at $4.7B – $5.2B.

If we take a look at the five-year estimate for this federal grant total, it’s a little challenging because there are things that could lower it (i.e. DOGE, budget allocations) or raise it (budget allocations, revised strategic priorities – i.e. MAHA). If we just go with a straight-line estimate at the mid-point, you come up with a five-year estimated total of $25B ($5B x 5 years). Of course, this is for multiple industries and multiple departments, so it is very competitive. For now, we’ll use $25B as the five-year federal funding target estimate.

We know that for $50B of AgriFoodTech VC, we can expect $3B (6%) in automation funding. That will create 6,000 – 7,000 jobs. It will also lead to a shortfall of $1.1B – $1.7B required for a healthy innovation funnel because portfolio protection means 78% of the $3B ends up in B round and later investments. If we then source an additional $1B from federal grant funding (roughly 4% of the total available funding expected over five years) and look at the expected job count, I am estimating that an additional 2,000 – 3,000 jobs can be created if the $1B were focused on mid-stage innovation (licensing, IP, technology transfer, commercialization) instead of early stage and primary R&D. This has the benefit of both preserving the health of the automation funnel while providing a significant count of incremental jobs. The combined totals with the $1B in grant funding are that $4B split 75%-25% between VC and federal grant funding over 5 years can create 8,000 – 10,000 jobs over 5 years and a total of 40,000 – 50,000 Jobs-Years. This is a significant amount of rural economic development in agriculture communities everywhere specialty crops are grown.

From here, I plan to do a few things to advance the research. First, I am going to look at other economic development funding to see what kind of metrics there are for other grants in terms of job creation to see how competitive this overall proposal is relative to other similar grants. In short, are we capital-efficient job creation relative to our peers? Second, I want to look at the breakdown of federal funding to see how much and how best to deliver grants that can land the right amount of funding to help with the shortfall. Third, I want to measure ag GDP as a percentage of overall US GDP to see what kind of pro rata investment spend we would expect if every industry received the same % of funds as their % of GDP represented.

For now, I am confident that this economic development strategy provides availability of far more funding than innovation grants and food security provides. I am increasingly growing confident that the economic development metrics around rural jobs that this proposal provides will put AgTech in a competitive position with other grant applicants. I’ll share more of what I’m finding as I dig into the issues above.

The Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology (WGCIT) in Salinas is experiencing an exceptionally active week as industry, government and regional partners converge for key conversations on agricultural technology, policy and innovation.

With the AgSafe Conference taking place in Monterey, the WGCIT will host a visit from the U.S. Department of Labor, including Deputy Assistant Secretary Wood Laihow. The center has convened a group of growers to participate in a roundtable discussion with the visiting delegation. Given this week’s rain across Central California, field demonstrations will be postponed. Instead, Secretary Wood Laihow’s team will receive an in-depth overview of current agricultural technology advancements housed within the WGCIT. A follow-up visit will be scheduled to allow the delegation to see these technologies deployed in the field under normal conditions. Walt Duflock, Western Growers’ Senior Vice President of Innovation, will open the meeting and introduce the grower participants, setting the stage for a productive dialogue between producers and federal leadership.

WGCIT will additionally host Emilio Contreras, Representative Zoe Lofgren’s newly appointed agricultural staffer, for two important meetings. Contreras will first meet with Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue to discuss the region’s unique agricultural landscape and the role of the WGCIT in shaping the future of agtech. Later in the day, he will meet with Walt Duflock to learn more about Western Growers’ innovation priorities, including emerging work in automation and biologicals. Contreras also has several meetings planned with grower–shipper–processor organizations throughout the region to gain a comprehensive understanding of local needs and opportunities.

On Tuesday evening, AgTech Alchemy will host a networking event at the AgSafe Conference in Monterey. The gathering is designed to connect directly with the broad range of industry professionals the conference attracts, fostering collaboration across the safety, compliance and innovation communities.

While activities continue on the Central Coast, Western Growers will also be represented in Washington, D.C. this week. Walt Duflock and Ben Palone will participate in a series of USDA meetings on behalf of the organization, ensuring growers’ innovation needs and policy priorities are clearly communicated at the federal level.

Well friends, it is Homecoming Week here in Tulare as much of the agriculture and AgTech community gathers for World Ag Expo to show off products, talk shop, catch up with old friends and make some new ones. Here were my thoughts from a WG Innovation Newsletter article written before heading to Tulare.

And now that I have been at the show all day on Tuesday and Wednesday, I’ve got a few thoughts (and a few more that are worthy of separate posts later).

1. In terms of launches, I will take a detailed look at the annual “Top 10 New Products and Exhibit Highlights” winners list in a future post. The two automation solutions that jumped out to me were (1) Amiga Max – a compact autonomous robot that can spray, tow, haul and lift in multiple specialty crops (already in the space, Amiga Max and Burro Grande / XL will likely compete against each other in the marketplace, and I believe there is room for at least two players in this segment; (2) Carbon ATK from Carbon Robotics – an after-market autonomy solution that brings a new entrant into this space along with many of the OEMs (including John Deere, who offers an integrated autonomy option for many of their tractors) and startups. I like it because anything that can help growers get more benefit out of their existing equipment and help solve the driver shortage is a win for all.
2. Who are the new exhibitors? Well, in this case, the answer was clearly “Back to the Future!” Compared to 2021 (when of course we had $53B in AgriFoodTech VC), there were a lot fewer startups than just five years ago and even many fewer compared to two to three years ago. In their place there were a lot of old school equipment exhibitors, but there were some notable swaths of open exhibit space that was either never paid for or paid for and then companies could not exhibit at the last minute. Exhibits by old school components and supply manufacturers or distributors had the feel of a World Ag Expo from 10-15 years ago from before AgTech became a big thing and then became AgriFoodTech and became a bigger thing. Meet the old exhibitors, same as the new exhibitors (to loosely paraphrase Roger Daltry and The Who­—lyrics are from Won’t Get Fooled Again”—you kids can Google it and then build a playlist with tunes from The Who, Roger Daltrey, and Pete Townshend. You won’t be disappointed!)
3. How is the show doing? I am a keen observer of trade shows, probably attending 40 a year for the past 10 years. Tulare is one of the larger and more influential ones. It recovered after a few shutdown years, but this year was a little funky and the folks I talked to do not want to put all of that on weather because it actually did not rain either of the first two days but the crowd after 2:30 on Tuesday was dismal. The Wednesday crowd was noticeably better but for both days once the 10:00 – 2:30 window was done the crowds just got smaller. I am concerned that that 4.5 hour window is not enough to support the costs required (time and $s) for startups (or other exhibitors candidly) to make the show investment ROI-positive. And if you’re just there to meet with folks, you can do that while walking instead of paying for and parking in an exhibit booth.
4. I’ll have more to say about fundraising – I had some conversations that will remain non-public for now while some startups figure a few things out. Suffice to say there will be some startups that need to raise capital this year and the space is likely to have somewhere between $8-12B in 2026 so capital will be tough and pitch decks and narratives will need to be completely buttoned down to successfully pull in capital this year. Ben Palone and I plan on having a lot of conversations with startups, investors and our friends in the AgTech ecosystem to help where we can.

One final macro thought on what I saw the last two days. It appears entirely possible that a couple of things are happening at the same time and the interplay impact is yet to be determined. First, as above, venture capital is down 80% in five years, so a lot of startups no longer have capital (and time) to spend with over a week in setup, exhibit and take down at Tulare.

Second, if startups are not taking booth space they used to, the World Ag Expo sales team will have to dust off the Rolodexes and find a few folks that are no longer exhibiting, displaced by the cool new AgTech kids with money the last several years. But what if the folks who used to take booths no longer need them? Then the World Ag Expo sales team will be in a bit of scramble mode because somebody has to fill some of those slots or the show economics get rough. And what if the folks who used to take the booths are now using things like online advertising, email advertising, social media advertising and content marketing to attract leads and customers in new ways. Ironically, AI is making social media and search marketing more effective even as AI added 48 billion (with a B folks!) hours on mobile devices last year (up 10x in two years – yes, two years – I know, it’s crazy!) And here is a fun fact: that 48B hours is less than 1% of global time spent on mobile devices last year, so yes they’re using AI a lot but folks are using their phones an awful lot too!

Both Facebook (Meta) and Google (Alphabet) have used AI to deliver better and more relevant ads which get clicked on more often and generate more revenue per click. It is entirely possible that when the old-school exhibitors got run out of town by new-fangled startups with their fancy Silicon Valley money, they used some of that other new-fangled tech to help them not need their former exhibit spot. We will see. It’s also worth noting that if you’re using the new kids platforms to successfully advertise, you might not be wild about telling everyone you’re doing it and inducing competition, so I’m not outing anyone and I’m not saying all these platforms are working. I am saying that there have to be some good reasons for the empty booth space and lighter crowd this year. At the very least, everyone running events on the west coast that are not World Ag Expo should realize that even the granddaddy of west coast shows can struggle, and if that’s true, it should send shivers up every other event organizer’s spine.

More thoughts from Tulare later. The other realization from this week is that World Agri-Tech is about four weeks away and it will be the next epicenter for figuring out who’s raising, who’s investing and how it’s going, along with how the four weeks played out for some of the key players. That’s why you have to go to the shows to keep up, folks – you can get highlights from some of the media and some of the posts from folks who write up the visits (like me!), but you only get all the stories when you make the trip! See you in SF in a few weeks!

Early in my technical career, I learned one lesson faster than almost anything else: agricultural equipment doesn’t get days off. There is no “pause” button in farming. Tools must be fixed, repaired and returned to the field immediately, often within hours, because the entire operational system depends on continuity. Break the chain, and you risk breaking the season.

Since the arrival of modern agtech, this reality has created a nagging concern among growers: Can sophisticated, sensor‑laden, software‑heavy equipment really hold up in a world where downtime isn’t an option? Farmers are not just evaluating performance—they are evaluating whether a piece of technology fits seamlessly into the nonstop rhythm of agriculture.

A trip to Yuma, Arizona last month gave me one of the clearest signals yet that at least one category of agtech—broadcast input‑application drones—has officially crossed the line into full commercialization.

During a visit with Nick Copass at the Keithly Williams Fabrication shop, I walked into a scene that would horrify any drone manufacturer but is a clear signal for anyone watching for signs of real‑world adoption. Near the back of the shop sat a pile of drones—a mangled heap of shattered carbon fiber, broken rotors, and twisted bits if metal. These weren’t museum pieces. They were fresh off the farm, looking like they had bounced off telephone poles, fallen from 20 feet, or run over by a 5-series tractor.

When I asked Nick what happened, he just laughed.
“Growers drop them off whenever they crash or get knocked over,” he said. “Sometimes I don’t even know who dropped which one off. We come in in the morning and there’s a mangled drone by the door. It’s cheaper to rebuild them than replace them—so we fix them up, send them back, and send the bill.”

That was the moment I knew drones for broadcast applications had “made it.”

This is what commercialization looks like.

Agtech is truly adopted when farmers stop treating equipment as fragile technology and start treating it as a tool—one that gets beaten up, pushed hard and expected to perform day after day. The fact that growers are using drones aggressively enough to break them, drop them, flip them, and still bring them back for repair is real‑world proof that these machines have earned their place in the agricultural system.

Of course, getting here was never guaranteed. Commercializing agtech is notoriously difficult, in part because these smart machines must overcome:

• Seasonality, which limits testing windows and stretches development timelines
• The need for a quantifiable ROI, often within razor‑thin margins
• Utility in less‑than‑ideal conditions, not just perfect demo plots
• Sufficient ground‑coverage capability to match agricultural scale
• Operation across multiple geographies and growing configurations
• Compatibility with tight timing constraints and multi‑input workflows
• Serviceability and maintenance, often far from factory support

Each of these hurdles has stalled and, in some cases, stopped more than a few promising startups—and continues to shape the pace of innovation today.

But the scene in that Yuma shop offered something rare in agtech: a clear, unambiguous signal that a technology category has made it past the theoretical stage and into the messy, demanding, day‑to‑day world of commercial agriculture.

And the unsung heroes of that progress are trusted dealers and industry partners like Keithly Williams Fabrication. They are the ones “putting Humpty Dumpty back together again”—quietly absorbing the maintenance burden that makes adoption possible. Their repair benches, not pitch decks or prototypes, are where true commercialization becomes visible.

If piles of broken drones sound like bad news, think again. They’re a sign of heavy use. A sign of repeat value. A sign that growers trust technology enough to rely on it, abuse it and bring it back for more.

And in agriculture, that’s as commercial as it gets.