When Lumo Founder Devon Wright walked onto the AgSharks® pitch stage at the 99th Western Growers Annual Meeting, he never would have guessed he was moments away from winning the 2025 Audience Choice Award. He certainly didn’t feel like a winner. In fact, he actually felt terrible.

“I was sick that day,” Wright said with a laugh. “I woke up late. I took a bunch of medicine and thought everyone could tell. I was just ready to get out of there.”

He even voted for another contestant. But Lumo resonated with growers, and that resonance traces back to how the company began: not with venture capital decks or theoretical tech solutions, but with a small patch of land in Northern California and one frustrated grower—Wright himself—trying to keep everything afloat with proper irrigation.

One Small Farm, One Big Problem

Lumo’s story starts in 2017, when Canadian-born Wright bought less than an acre of land in Northern California and planted his first orchard of apples, pears, peaches, berries and citrus, all organized in several distinct irrigation zones.

“Even on that tiny piece of land, I realized just how hard irrigation really is,” Wright said.

Each crop needed dramatically different amounts of water. Citrus would fail if irrigated like apples. Apples would suffer if watered like citrus. A single misstep, like the day he unknowingly ran over a line with his tractor, could drain tanks, flood soil or jeopardize crop health.

Manually irrigating took hours. Automating with existing controllers meant losing visibility and accountability. When disaster struck, he often wouldn’t know until it was too late.

“If it was this hard for me on one acre, what must it be like for other large-scale farms? Those aren’t hobby plots. Those are their livelihoods. It is what we all depend on for food,” Wright said.

That moment of realization changed everything.

Listening First, Acting Second

Wright’s early instinct was that better technology must already exist, so he got a job as an irrigator and started visiting growers across the county. What he found surprised him.

“Every single one of them said the same thing: We have almost no visibility into what’s happening in the field,” he said. “On ranches that were using automation products, they had people on ATVs driving around looking for leaks because the technology just couldn’t be trusted.”

Wright repeatedly saw irrigation controllers unplugged, shelved or abandoned.

They told me, half-jokingly, ‘Look, if you can make every valve as smart as one of my irrigators, with the brain, the visibility, the accountability—I’ll buy it. But it’s impossible.’”

Solving for that problem became the very blueprint for Lumo.

“Right there, I thought: That’s the product,” Wright said. “A smart valve with the brain of an irrigator. If we can do that, farmers will actually use it.”

Within three seasons, Lumo had nearly 200 farms on board.

A major reason for Lumo’s success is something Wright learned from his earlier startup career: don’t try to build everything
for everyone.

“Growers irrigate differently depending on the crop,” he said. “Wine grapes deficit irrigate. They take in gallons per vine. Apples take in inches per acre. Berry cooling runs almost all day with completely different flow rates.”

If a startup tries to build a generic tool to serve everyone at once, “you either run out of money or build a mediocre product for five different customers instead of a great one for one,” Wright said.

Instead, Lumo did the opposite. It went deep with growers, not wide. That choice, Wright explained, is the difference between agtech companies that succeed and those that burn out.

Under the Hood

For those looking to better understand the company, Wright explains Lumo’s elevator pitch with this simple analogy: “We’re the world’s first smart irrigation valve. Think Nest, but for irrigation.”

Lumo patented a technology where the brain of the system is built directly into every irrigation valve. Each valve measures flow, volume and performance in real time, and the valves communicate instantly with pumps and back-end systems.

That means pumps become reactive—ramping up or down to maintain proper pressure, preventing failures and adapting automatically to conditions detected in the field.

“It’s total accountability and visibility. Farmers know exactly what’s happening at every valve. No more guesswork. No more surprises,” Wright said.

But despite the excitement around the technology, adoption isn’t always automatic, as is the case facing so many agtech innovations today.

“Budgets are the number one barrier,” he said. “Farmers are in one of the hardest periods they’ve ever faced.”

Wine growers have told Wright they’re seeing the worst market since Prohibition. Some apple growers are earning lower prices today than in the 1980s—before inflation. And even well-performing crops, such as berries and citrus, are battling the high costs of labor, inputs, logistics and uncertainty in global markets.

“In that environment, even great ROI doesn’t always matter. Change is just hard,” Wright said.

A Mission that Grew with the Growers

Lumo launched in 2022, during what was widely reported as California’s worst drought in 1,200 years, Wright explained. The company’s original mission was centered on improving freshwater security. After working closely with growers, that mission evolved.

“I realized our real mission is improving both freshwater and food security,” Wright said. “Farmers are the best conservationists we have. They don’t want to waste water. They don’t want to harm their soil. These farms are generational.”

He didn’t want the company to sound like it was wagging a finger at farmers about water, either.

“Farmers don’t need lectures—they need tools. If you give them data and visibility, they will always make the right decisions,” Wright said.

Barely three years since the company’s inception, Lumo has momentum as well as a growing reputation among Western Growers members for doing something surprisingly rare in agtech: listening.

As Wright puts it: “I want farmers to want us because they’re already great at what they do. We just give them visibility so their irrigation plan always happens the way they intended.”

As momentum builds, Lumo is now preparing to expand beyond its core markets, moving into new regions across the
U.S. where growers are asking for more reliable, automated irrigation systems.

“We’re excited to support growers in new areas. Every region has unique challenges, and we’re ready to build the local tools they need. We want growers to know we’re coming,” Wright said.

He explained that Lumo is being deliberate about its expansion, focusing on regions where crop types and grower needs align well with the company’s current strengths while building toward a broader footprint.

From a small orchard in Northern California to nearly 200 farms, Lumo is proving that innovation in agriculture doesn’t start with technology; it starts with the grower. For the AgSharks® audience this year, that authenticity—and the story behind it—was impossible to ignore.