How do robots become a vital part of the $222 billion farming business? Practice, practice, practice.
It is always nice when a journalist from a general business (i.e. non-AgTech) magazine comes by Reservoir Farms to see what is going on with the world’s first on-farm robotics incubator. It is even better when they stay for a few hours, talk to a few growers, talk to a few startups, ask a lot of questions, and then come out with the great article in this link. When you get journalists who aren’t AgTech focused, you get a chance to slow things down and walk through all of the key elements that make Reservoir what it is – the best option for startups to get shared workspace, shared John Deere tractors, shared acreage commercially grown by WG members, and a real AgTech community rolling around the shop and acreage daily.
In this case, full marks to Lisa Bonos, who spent the time at Reservoir, asked the great questions, and put together a great article with a great title that summarizes the key elements so well. First, it is about the entrepreneurs – they are doing the heavy lifting of the R&D, the fund raising, the sales, the team recruiting and building, the field trials, and the live field demonstrations. All of that is ideally a prelude to a conversation with growers, but then the real work begins – all of the above is just table stakes to get growers interested enough to have a conversation. Well done Pascal and Eric to get SAMI Robotics this far down the path towards automating broccoli harvesting, which is a lot harder than many entrepreneurs think. Second, yes on the “practice practice practice” which is one of the things Reservoir is so good at providing. Startups do not have to drive their machine for miles or hours to test it – they can work on R&D in the Reservoir shop and then move it literally feet away to professionally grown acreage. Cheaper and faster to get to their first product – that’s a value proposition AgTech startups should (and do) like. Added bonus – you can follow growers to the desert and move from Salinas to Yuma for another full season of working in fields down there.
I continue to believe that specialty crop robotics will out-perform a lot of AgTech segments the next 10 years because they are solving the top problem for many growers – the increasing costs created by the ever-growing number of H-2A farm workers California growers need (up to 10% of CA farm workers last year). The percentage of venture capital coming into automation is up from just over 1% to over 5% in the past 5 years and I expect that to continue or even increase further. That does not mean that all robotics startups will get an exit (which would likely be M&A, not IPO). It does mean robotics startups that solve problems and do it in a way that matches grower economics will be able to engage growers in quality conversations and ideally field trials and a sales motion if it works as advertised. Reservoir does not guarantee outcomes for startups, but it increases the odds of creating more of those conversations with growers by giving startups real world testing and feedback from growers.
Link to article