Last year’s FIRA USA event in Fresno was a great first effort. Next month, we are going to have three different demo areas in the Salinas Sports Complex, and the automation solutions will be available for demos all three days of the show. Take a look at the aerial layout that includes an orchard demonstration area along with a drone pavilion (yellow pentagon in the top left), a vineyard demo area (purple circle in the top right) and the vegetable demo area (green triangle in the bottom right).

All three of these areas will include multiple startups, and there will be multiple demo sessions over the course of the three-day event from September 19-21. Thank you to the startups for providing some great feedback as we work through this much larger and longer demo area than last year.

The vegetable demo area will be done in 40″ and 80″ rows. The vineyard demo will be a comparable setup to a vineyard for demonstrations (but will leverage some metal pipe and camouflage netting thanks to Clint Cowden and the Hartnell College team for doing the assembly and installation work). The orchard demonstration will be a series of potted trees in a similar configuration to a live orchard.

All of this is being done to put together the best three-day automation show possible and to get as many conversations between growers and automation providers started as possible. Past experience tells us creating these conversations in a live “in the dirt” location with the machine demoing live is the best way to discuss AgTech for both growers and startups. We look forward to starting a lot of them in a couple of weeks. Hope to see a lot of you in Salinas.

Visit Fira-USA.com for more information.