Technology is Transforming Efficiency and Sustainability in the Fresh Produce Industry

What Does the Future Hold for Labor in an Ag Tech World?

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 21:59:26 GMT

Editor’s note: This is the latest story in a series exploring the current state of labor in the fresh produce industry. This is the second of two pieces exploring the role of technology and its relationship to ag labor.

Technology’s role in farming is nothing new.

From the advent of plowing to autonomous equipment, it’s easy to think of ag tech as human versus machine. But some in the fresh produce industry say the relationship between technology and labor is more nuanced.

“There is a well-established and well-founded focus on agricultural technology as labor-replacing,” says Peter O’Driscoll, executive director of the Equitable Food Initiative. “As workers were trying to improve their wages and conditions, they saw mechanization as a direct threat as a labor replacement.”

Now the circumstances are different; it’s easy to think automation is a threat to ag workers today, but that’s not the case, he says. There’s an ag labor shortage due to an aging workforce not being replaced by the next generation, and there’s more dependency on the H-2A guest worker program.

“Many growers are thinking, ‘If I get robots, I won’t have to hire workers,’” O’Driscoll says. “But when you get into the details, it’s never that simple.”

Instead, he sees the future of ag tech as more supporting of labor versus being an outright labor replacement.

“It’s inevitable, it’s obvious in a labor shortage, why the industry can and should be focusing on introducing new agricultural technologies,” he says. “But how often is that question asked around the difference between investing in labor-replacing versus labor-enhancing?”

And ag labor will play a very different role in the future of these new technologies, says Gabriel Youtsey, chief innovation officer for University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources.

“The question is, as new tech comes, who is going to pick the food?” he says. “It’ll be different than what it’s been, and what is the nature of the workers’ relationship to technology going to be on the farm?”

Different workforce

Tim Bucher, CEO and co-founder of agricultural technology company Agtonomy, says that while the future might look bleak for growers with a dwindling labor pool, there will be a significant shift in how the work will be done in the future and who will do the work.

Bucher says in lieu of advertising for tractor drivers, some of his customers who struggle to fill roles advertise for ag tech operators with video game experience.

“What automation is doing is bringing a new labor force into the picture that the technology now excites them,” he says. “It’s Farmville for real.”

And that’s exactly what Steve Mantle, founder and CEO of innov8.ag, an agricultural technology company providing data-driven solutions for growers, sees too. Mantle says he and innov8.ag have been working with a Ph.D. candidate from MIT on some really interesting predictive modeling for labor. But what’s interesting is this student didn’t grow up on a farm and is still interested in tackling the challenges facing agriculture. He says there’s a bright future in agriculture for a different type of workforce.

“I feel like there is so much of an opportunity to take your gaming type kids and your kids that came out of the womb with an iPad,” he says. “It comes back to how they think in data, even though they don’t necessarily think about it in these games and tactics and how many points do I have, and so on. How do we help them?”

Training

Tyler Niday, CEO and co-founder of Bonsai Robotics, says as more and more automation becomes available and accessible, so too does the question of the labor needed to run this equipment.

“A lot of growers actually say: ‘Hey, who do I need to hire to run these machines? Do I need a foreman with a college degree who knows a little more, who’s a little more tech savvy?’” Niday says.

And, O’Driscoll says, even if agriculture moves more toward labor replacement, there’s still going to be a strong need for human labor.

“Who’s going to train that robot? Who’s going to manage that robot?” O’Driscoll says. “So, the reality is, we’ve got a shrinking domestic workforce, we’ve got increasing demand for the product and so whatever we do in the form of automation, even if it’s labor replacing automation, you’re still going to need a workforce that has the skills to interface with this new technology.”

Youtsey says this is one of the goals of the newly formed California AgTech Alliance: to establish training and curriculum to educate the next generation of ag laborers with more of an emphasis on technology. He says it’s taking the form of drone training and general ag tech classes at different colleges in the state with the goal to offer certifications for different aspects of ag tech.

“As new skills like drone flying and robotic weeding and handling start to come online, and that gets added into the stackable certificate program, along with very basic things like English, mechanics, diesel mechanic, basic math proficiency, which are actually the three top things cited by ag employers as the things that they need from their workers,” he says. “They’ll be able to demonstrate higher-order skills that will translate into technology.”

Youtsey says, however, there’s a bit of an art to predicting the next emerging solutions and the skills needed to operate that technology.

“We’re sort of trying to skate to where the puck is going to be while we’re also supporting the now needs, which are English, basic math and mechanics,” he says.

And, Youtsey says, there’s also a focus on artificial intelligence and, therefore a greater need for AI-proficient workers.

“We’ll start to see the replacement of different kinds of workers with AI-based solutions, so we also actually need an AI-enabled workforce that knows how to use AI tools,” Youtsey explains. “We will have to learn how to harness those tools to be super producers. And if done right, they’ll create outsized productivity for one person.”

An AgSocio equipment operator is shown with a Farmwise Vulcan intrarow weeding machine.

(Photo courtesy of Equitable Food Initiative)

Easy Tasks

Mantle says a lot of what he sees in the immediate future with labor is the ability to streamline efficiencies throughout the farm with different types of automation. It’s not necessarily going to be the addition of a large piece of equipment, but more the ripple effect of smaller changes.

“A lot of the work that we’ve been doing, it’s useful and it’s not super sticky, is what are growers truly tossing and turning about at night, and it’s their finances,” Mantle says. “And what’s the biggest part of their finances? It’s their labor. There’s all this noise around tech and how it can help save the world for them. So, in a grower’s mind, what’s the role of human labor? How do we evolve it on the farm, given all this technology?”

He likens this to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He says it’s a little different for growers with bankers and payroll as the most basic need, working up to fertility and automation, but he says many growers can’t get to those higher needs because of the extreme cost of labor.

“I can think back to sitting down with some of these CFOs, where they literally have all these spreadsheets and looking at all these different data points and trying to connect the dots,” he says. “And they’re just trying to figure out how do I unlock efficiencies in this, and how do I use labor, including even their own labor, planning to improve or basically better manage their costs.”

And so, Mantle says innov8.ag has focused on bridging the skills gap in the C-suite as well as in the skills future workers will need.

“It comes back to the gains, the lower hanging fruit, meeting the growers where they are in that Maslow’s hierarchy, bringing that data into the actionable results, where they have the intrinsic pain points that are actually adoptable and then along the way it unlocks where they can start rising back up this pyramid,” he says. “What can I implement now for better labor management on things like labor planning for next year?”

O’Driscoll says labor management goes back to the ultimate question of labor assist versus labor replacement, with labor-supporting technology helping make the existing workforce more productive and efficient, which he says will be more beneficial in the short-to-medium term.

“Some of the really impressive new technologies are labor-supporting,” O’Driscoll says. “For example, in strawberries, having these mobile platforms means workers don’t have to run up and down the rows with their boxes. The robots will carry their boxes to the end of the row. They can be more productive, especially if they’re piece rate and there’s less risk of slip and fall injuries or time lost in running to the end of the row or anything else. So those kinds of efficiencies are good for everybody, right? They’re good for workers, and they’re good for the employer, and they’re much less sort of pie in the sky than when will we actually get the robot hand to learn to twist the berry before they pull it.”

With ag labor being such a tough job, investing in technologies that can reduce repetitive motion injuries benefits the whole of agriculture.

“That’s the perspective we bring based on innumerable conversations with workers who actually want to stay in the industry, but for whom it’s not going to be sustainable absent some sort of an investment,” he says. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be investing in technological innovation in strawberries, but if it makes the folks who are doing the work now want to stay and makes their work easier and more productive, that’s better for the grower and better for the work, and that’s the win-win.

Involving Employees

Any addition of a new piece of technology is an interruption of existing work processes, O’Driscoll says.

“So, however efficient or effective this technology is, it’s still going to have to be integrated,” he says. “It’s going to create change in the work processes and systems change produces unintended consequences up and down the line. So, the simple introduction of technology that doesn’t account for the changes, that doesn’t integrate the workforce in the introduction of that in the design and introduction of the technology is probably destined to fail, even if it’s a really effective robot.”

O’Driscoll points to Semillero de Ideas, an organization that trains farmworkers as consultants to help in the creation and introduction of automation.

“Workers actually advise technologists and employers on the design of the technology,” he says.

O’Driscoll says involving the workforce in the design and introduction of technology maximizes the likelihood of success.

“Our experience in general is that people tend not to destroy things they helped to build,” he says. “Is this the 1960s battle between workers and mechanization, or is this a collaborative opportunity to integrate technologies that actually improve the productivity and the lives of workers, that introduce opportunities for skill development to workers that they feel actually helped to design?”

He says he sees this as the latter, where this will help create new opportunities for workers and offer better quality jobs. Workers, too, feel respected as a part of the process and are more likely to stay at that operation.

“The introduction of new technologies creates all kinds of new opportunities for better quality jobs,” O’Driscoll says. “This ought to be a win-win opportunity, but it’s all going to depend on whether the willingness is there to formally recognize, not just say, ‘Workers are skilled.’ But let’s go beyond saying it’s skilled labor to actually documenting the different kinds of skills that are involved and giving workers a chance to demonstrate those skills and to progress professionally. And then let’s figure out how we formally integrate their perspective and their skill into the design and integration of these new technologies.”

As for the future, Youtsey says it’s going to take creativity and patience. He says a bright side to the ag labor crisis is the investment in ag tech being made by California and others to really seek solutions. And that’s exactly what will be needed in the future.

“It’s going to take a lot of actors with a lot of creative solutioning, working together to move these solutions forward,” he says. “[Venture capital] is not going to solve it. Startups alone aren’t going to solve it. We’ve got to work in a holistic, collaborative networked way to move it forward.”

And, he says, much like what Mantle says with small introductions, the future of technology and labor will likely be a combination of a lot of different ideas.

“We’re going to have to stack some of these solutions,” he says. “It’s just going to take time. It’s going to take continuous runs at it. It’s going to take the turn of innovation to solve these things. And it’s not going to be fast.”

Your next read in this series:

New Telemetry Platform Helps Farmers Unlock Efficiency Insights

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 17:49:02 GMT

Bonsai Robotics recently launched Teletrace, a connected farming platform to support the company’s autonomous solutions as well as what Bonsai co-founder and CEO Tyler Niday calls a “rainbow fleet” of mixed equipment.

Niday says the telemetry platform helps those growers with a mixed fleet to better understand fuel consumption, spray volumes, etc., on their operation in one central location.

“What we saw was the growers were loving it for autonomy,” he says. “Not only do you have this autonomous operation, but you can track the chemical consumption for an air blast spray job. It’s really the first step to not only run autonomous operations but to trace all your data back to one central hub.”

Teletrace is powered by the Topcon CL-55, a compact telemetry device that plugs directly into the existing CAN bus. The Topcon CL-55 transmits data to Topcon’s CloudLink service, which then integrates into Bonsai’s cloud platform so growers can monitor and manage every piece of equipment through the Teletrace program.

“This is a really low-cost solution with the hardware we selected through our partnership with Topcon,” he says. “They’re a tried-and-true player in this space. And with this hardware, we really can make this rainbow fleet come through without additional sensors.”

Niday says the Teletrace platform can show every meter of a tractor in use, gallons per acre of crop protection sprayed, fuel consumption, maintenance issues, engine data and harvest data — all to help growers better understand their operation.

“You get a lot more insights outside of just the basics, but the basics offer insight for the grower to improve efficiency,” Niday says. “And if you get 10% savings, that’s huge just from data.”

Niday says this is just the beginning for growers.

“The ultimate goal is to be able to track the almond or the strawberry or the grape from the grocery store back to the field and have all the Intel and information,” he says. “With our autonomous applications and the ability to not only run through the field but look at every tree and being able to in the future trace what’s happening from a visual perspective, back and out of the field as well, I think, is the next big step where things can get really, really interesting.”

L&Aser Developer Opens Tech to Independent Growers

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 20:33:54 GMT

Laudando & Associates, ag tech developers of the patent-pending L&Aser herbicide-replacement technology and the AgCeption brand of AI tools for growers, said in a news release that it opened its laser weeding technology, L&Aser, to independent growers.

L&Aser is available under a dual licensing mode and more details can be found on the company’s GitHub repository .

Laudando & Associates says this predates a default judgment rendered against the company in a patent infringement case.

“Litigation costs were expected to balloon to $2 to 3 million USD subsequent to the court granting a preliminary injunction against L&A,” says Chris Laudando, founder and president of Laudando & Associates.

The company says this order will impact three separate L&Aser sales in the U.S. and Australia.

The company says a Brazilian and Saudi venture capital firm has expressed interest in investment and expansion into international markets, and it says it has also identified a prospective buyer for its AgCeption AI brand. The company is also seeking to relocate the company to Australia under a National Innovation Visa Grant for ag tech companies.

“Our best efforts to help the American farmer weren’t good enough,” Laudando says in the release. “Herbicide resistance and labor costs disproportionately harm small and medium-sized farmers, but our hands are tied. The best we can do now is seek innovation asylum in a country that has prioritized ag tech.”

Carbon Robotics adds autonomous tractor solution

Mon, 31 Mar 2025 19:26:15 GMT

In a move to help growers maximize equipment and address labor shortages, Carbon Robotics launched its Carbon AutoTractor, an autonomous solution installed on existing tractors.

Carbon Robotics’ founder and CEO Paul Mikesell says its Carbon AI will power remotely monitored tractors to help specialty crop growers deploy laser weeders for almost around-the-clock production.

“With LaserWeeder, farmers want to run them as much as they possibly can, but it’s hard to find labor,” he told The Packer. “It’s really hard to find labor to do the tractor driving. It’s hard to find labor to do these late midnight shifts. It’s hard to find people to do all the different tasks you want to do with the tractors.”

The Carbon AutoTractor features two core components: the Carbon Autonomy Kit and the Remote Operations Control Center. Mikesell said operators in ROCC handle any obstructions through monitored autonomy and take over the autonomy system, so production continues. He said growers, then, don’t have to worry whether an autonomous task gets completed.

“They’re trained in using Carbon Auto Tractor,” he said. “They know how to do the functions that the farmer wants to do in the field. And then, whenever there’s something that comes up, they can literally change drive the tractor remotely, and get through whatever obstacle it is, and then keep moving.”

Mikesell said the Carbon Auto Tractor will currently work for LaserWeeder tasks, ground prep such as mulching, mowing, discing and more, but there are plans to expand its capabilities in the future.

The Carbon Autonomy Kit is initially compatible with John Deere 6R and 8R Series tractors, requiring no permanent modifications and installation completed in less than 24 hours. Once installed, tractors can toggle between autonomous and manual operation as needed.

“It bolts on and then that you plug into the harness in the inside on the inside cab, and there’s a box that mounts on the window that you can turn it on and off,” Mikesell said.

The Carbon AutoTractor system includes RTK-accurate GPS, 360-degree cameras and radar-based safety sensors, as well asphysical, remote and mobile e-stops connected via a high-speed, low-latency satellite link.

“We have better visibility from the cameras on the roof than you do from the inside the cabin,” Mikesell said.

And for those growers who might be reluctant to go to an autonomous tractor, Mikesell said the Carbon AutoTractor is designed to help growers better deploy farm labor where it’s needed most.

“You want somebody there to inspect or notice problems with your irrigation or things of that nature. You’ll still want to have those people around, but the point is that they don’t have to spend all that time driving up and down the rows to do the simple task,” he said. “They can then spend their time focusing on figuring out where or if there’s issues and how to address other problems and it relieves the constant need to be driving the tractor all the time.”

Mikesell said this solution also offers growers the option to deploy tractors at night for weeding or when the nighttime temperatures are cooler. This also helps growers maximize return on investment by being able to run the autonomous solution all the time, he said.

“We found that lot of people want to run their LaserWeeder 24/7 because they get a really good ROI or more crops they can put it under, but they just can’t find the operators to run it 24/7,” he told The Packer. “If you can run it, 24/7, you can double the hours in a typical season and you can get that tool doing everything you need it to.”

Carbon Robotics said the autonomous solution works seamlessly with its LaserWeeder, automatically adjusting speed to optimize weeding performance based on weed type, size and density, which can boost coverage by up to 20% compared to manually operated systems.

Brandon Munn, farm manager with Columbia Basin Onion, has worked with the Carbon Robotics team on this autonomous solution.

“With many of our tractors and LaserWeeders running autonomously with Carbon AutoTractor, we’re able to operate more hours, address labor challenges and make night shifts safer and more reliable,” Munn said in a news release. “This isn’t just automation; it’s a practical solution that’s fundamentally changing how we farm.”

Additional Details Come In On AutoTractor
Farm Journal talked with CEO Paul Mikesell to see what else we could learn about the system and what makes it different from other tractor autonomy kits on the market. Here’s a handful of bullet points breaking down what we uncovered:

Don’t Call It A Retrofit - Because the AutoTractor kit doesn’t effectively alter or change anything mechanically on the tractor itself, Mikesell says he prefers to refer to it as a “augmentation kit.”
Satellite Connectivity Changed The Game - When Mikesell and his team started this project back in 2023, connectivity was a limiting factor in enabling a tractor to safely operate with complete autonomy. That is no longer a limiting factor as developments in the stratosphere like SpaceX’s StarLink and Intellsat’s low earth orbit constellations have provided the necessary latency and bandwidth to make driver-less operation safe and viable.
Pricing Is Still TBD - Pressed on how much the system will cost from an up-front investment standpoint, Mikesell told us that “we’re still fine tuning that price.”
Expect An Hourly Fee - Mikesell did confirm that the technology will carry a per-hour fee. He says that fee will track closely with what the user would pay a local machine operator to run the tractor. That could mean a per-hour fee anywhere from $15 in the Midwest to upwards of $25 per hour in high-wage markets like California and Washington. “We’re trying to save you money by not having to worry about travel time out to the fields. There’s no lunch break. You don’t have to worry about paying overtime. This machine will do as many double shifts as you want, and we’re still employing people to do all the monitoring. So we have a very skilled and qualified group of people that are doing all the monitoring. So that’s kind of the model: we charge you per hour to run this machine for you and we’ll work with you on what jobs you want done and how you want it done and make sure that everything is handled appropriately.”
Remote Operators With Tractor Experience - Mikesell says his remote operators that task and oversee the driverless tractors for farmers get a crash course in how tractors are used on your typical farm. “Just being out there in the field long enough to understand the size of things that are around you and just kind of what a field looks like and how things are laid out, makes a huge difference when you’re trying to drive remotely,” says Mikesell. “Even though you have a better view driving remotely, because you have a nice 360 degree view off the roof, having some concept and understanding about the size of things and kind of what everything looks like helps quite a bit.”

Your Next Read: Using tech to target food safety threats

AI-powered FarmWise prepares for next chapter in ag robotics

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 13:37:00 GMT

FarmWise, an artificial intelligence and computer vision weeding technology company in the robotic precision weeding technology space is restructuring its business, CEO Tjarko Leifer told The Packer on March 14. The Salinas, Calif.-based company, which employs a staff of 50, is best known for its Vulcan next-generation, intra-row weeder and precision cultivator that launched in 2023.

“The need for solutions like Vulcan has grown as growers face mounting pressure from labor shortages, rising input costs and operational complexities, said Leifer. “The technology has proven its ability to deliver meaningful efficiency gains and cost savings in the field. But even with growing demand and a product that works, achieving sustainable, profitable growth remains a significant challenge in today’s market.”

Vulcan is really a three-in-one implement that does precision weeding, cultivation and thinning, says Leifer.

On the specialty crop side, the company’s Vulcan technology is employed primarily by growers of lettuce and brassicas in the coastal California and Arizona vegetable crop markets. More recently, FarmWise entered the processing tomato market in California’s Central Valley, a new segment that Leifer says is nearly as big as the leafy green and brassicas market on an acreage basis.

Leifer points to one customer — a 10,000-acre vegetable grower with farms in Yuma, Ariz. and Salinas — who saw significant savings and a reduction in labor costs.

“Implementing the FarmWise Vulcan has transformed how we approach weeding on our operation,” the vegetable grower said. “Over just one season, we reduced weeding costs by nearly $550,000 and eliminated the need for cultivator passes on 64% of the acres covered. The AI-powered technology has allowed us to scale operations more efficiently, reduce labor costs, and improve precision in ways that traditional methods couldn’t match. This technology has set the foundation for even greater growth and profitability in the future.”

The grower also reported its per-acre weeding costs dropped 38% in romaine and 15% in broccoli. Additionally, 64% of its acreage no longer needed cultivator passes, cutting fuel use and field wear. And machines achieved up to 100 acres weeded per week, with 1-3 acres per hour efficiency and no compromise on weed removal quality.
With such notable results, why was FarmWise unable to scale?

“The short version is that we haven’t — with the resources that we’ve been able to raise — been able to reach profitability,” said Leifer. “And that’s such a critical threshold to get to for any business.

FarmWise CEO Tjarko Leifer is hopeful about the next chapter for the agtech company.

(Photo courtesy of FarmWise)

“We’ve had some great milestones we’ve achieved in terms of a product that really works for farmers, that drives a return on investment, that has a payback period of less than two years, and that’s deployed commercially and reliable day-in and day-out,” he continued.

But the company has also faced challenges.

FarmWise says the time horizons have been challenging for the company, because while it sees demand for the technology, it needs a longer runway to prove itself and drive adoption.

Leifer says broader macroeconomic headwinds have also impacted ag equipment investment overall — from rising interest rates and policy uncertainty to challenges around labor and immigration.

“Agriculture is a business that rightfully values caution and real-world proof,” Leifer said. “Growers want to see new technology work on the ground before fully adopting it — and we respect that approach.” Next-gen tech isn’t alone in feeling these headwinds.

The CEO also said these headwinds aren’t unique to startups. Large equipment manufacturers have seen sales drop 30% to 50%, making it a particularly tough moment for capital-intensive innovations, he said.

“If you’re a 120-year-old company, it’s a cyclical downturn,” he said. “If you’re a startup, it’s a much steeper hill to climb with limited resources.”

Agtech is in need of fellow visionaries to succeed, and Leifer sees this as a moment for the industry to rally around innovation, while recognizing the path from early adoption to scale is never linear.

“Building a great product is only half the challenge,” he said. “The next chapter is building the distribution and support infrastructure to bring it to scale. That’s where partnerships become critical.”

FarmWise’s core product is the AI-powered Vulcan, which weeds, cultivates and thins vegetable crops like lettuces and brassicas.

(Photo courtesy of FarmWise)

Labor considerations

While agriculture, like many industries, is in a labor crisis, in some cases it’s been slow to adopt technology that would alleviate that challenge.

“Labor cost inflation, especially coming out of COVID, and also changes in laws around how ag overtime is treated in California, are pressing issues, but with the new administration’s approach to labor and immigration, people really don’t know if labor will become plentiful or if it’s going to be much harder to hire people,” said Leifer. “So, there’s a lot of things changing right now, and a bit of a wait-and-see attitude.

“It’s an existential question for many segments of farming, in particular vegetable farming segments where there’s a lot of labor costs per acre,” Leifer continued. “Those costs are going up. It’s getting harder to find people, and farmers are very interested in technology and solutions that help them address that.”

Leifer says even if growers aren’t looking to reduce labor, they’re still looking for solutions that allow them to farm on a larger scale with the skilled labor they already have.

“How can you upskill the needs you have so you can do more with the good people you have? It’s how do we keep agriculture profitable and healthy in the United States and competitive? We need to find ways to be more productive,” said Leifer.

With AI and computer vision robotics, there are efficiencies that can be delivered today that couldn’t before, he said.

Robotics addresses inputs

In addition to the labor side of the story, there’s also the chemical side.

“There’s a lot of talk about some of the herbicides that are used in broccoli being removed from the market,” said Leifer. “And as you broaden out to row crops, there’s the whole herbicide-resistance story in a lot of those cropping systems, which ultimately mean farmers are going to need new technologies. We’ve always thought that AI and robotics can play a really important role there.”

Robotic machinery allows growers to see and understand the crop in the field, differentiate between the crop and weeds, and then control in real time how the machine is behaving as it goes through the field. As such, robotics also offers the potential to reduce the use of chemistry, drive crop fertility and automate tasks that are still done manually, says Leifer.

“There’s natural herbicide resistance that’s gaining and farmers are going to need new solutions in a broad range of cropping systems,” he said. “The market is working on providing innovations for them and we believe one of those — a big one — has to do with robotics and agriculture.”

The road to adoption

FarmWise says its flagship three-bed, 80-inch unit had an MSRP of $645,000. The annual service and support package is an additional $45,000. Leifer says the savings driven by the unit pays for itself in under two years.

“It’s a very attractive proposition,” said Leifer. “If the machine works and it saves people money, people should be ripping this out of your hands and off the lot to put into their fields.”

But employing AI-driven tech is not as simple as flipping a switch or screwing in a light bulb.

“It takes someone who believes in it and sees their success in the organization tied to the success of making the program work,” he said. “It takes an ownership group that wants to empower somebody like that. So, there ends up being a lot of nuances to how an organization can successfully adopt technology.”

What’s next for FarmWise?

While the current FarmWise team is preparing to wind down operations by April 1, the company says it is actively pursuing strategic opportunities — including acquisition, partnership and technology transfer — to ensure the Vulcan platform continues to thrive.

“We’re proud to have proven that advanced robotics can deliver real value in one of the most complex environments — agriculture,” Leifer said. “This is just the start of what’s possible with this kind of technology.

“We’re in active discussions with potential partners and investors,” he added. “There’s a path forward here, and I’m hopeful the technology we’ve built will continue to scale and serve more growers in the future.”

FarmWise says it remains committed to supporting its current customers and ensuring continuity during the transition period — including access to service and spare parts.

“We know growers depend on this technology, and we’re doing everything we can to provide stability and a strong handoff,” Leifer said.

Robot Bees? Check Out This New Pollination Innovation

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:09:12 GMT

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed advanced robotic insects that could aid farming through artificial pollination. They could prove especially useful in the controlled indoor environments of high-tech ‘vertical farms’.

“These type of robots will open up a very new type of use case,” co-lead author Suhan Kim, from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), told Reuters.

“For instance, we can think of artificial pollination. So since our robot looks like an insect, and it’s real lightweight and small, if you can really precisely control the robot we might be able to do something on top of flowers or leaves, which really requires very delicate interactions.”

The robots, each lighter than a paperclip, can hover for approximately 1,000 seconds, over 100 times longer than previous models. They are also capable of performing high-speed acrobatic maneuvers, including double aerial flips.

The new design halves the size of the team’s earlier model, with increased stability while also freeing up space for electronics.

“We want the robot to be able to have a [circuit] board, battery and the sensors on board. So to do that, we need much higher payload than now. So what we’re currently pushing very hard right now is to optimize the robot design to be able to lift more and more so that we can afford these potential payloads,” said Kim.

Long term, the team hope this will enable autonomous flight outside the lab. This technology could significantly boost crop yields in multi-level warehouses by providing a more efficient method for artificial pollination.

Vertical farming, the name given to the production of crops in a series of stacked levels, often in a controlled environment, is a fast-growing industry with billions of dollars being pumped into projects across the globe.

It is seen as part of the solution to the food security challenge posed by population expansion at a time when climate change and geopolitics threaten supply.

“This doesn’t really mean that we want to entirely replace honeybees in nature, but what we sometimes hear from the people in the relevant field is that there are really good cases where we can’t rely on honeybees anymore, such as like indoor farming, where we can’t really have honeybee homes in it because of safety issues or some environmental issues. So in that case, we can start thinking of using our robot, if it works well, for tools like indoor farming,” added Kim.

Despite the team’s improvements, the robotic insects still cannot match the capabilities of natural pollinators. However, the researchers aim to improve the robots’ flight time and precision to enable them to land and take off from the center of a flower.

The research was published in the journal Science Robotics.

Vertical farmer Kalera files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 17:26:18 GMT

Kalera, a vertical farming company based in Orlando, Fla., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy April 4 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas.

The public limited company is known on the Nasdaq stock exchange as “KAL,” according to a news release.

Kalera will continue to operate its business as “debtor-in-possession” under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court and according to the bankruptcy code. The company is requesting customary relief for transitioning into Chapter 11 so that ordinary daily operations won’t be disrupted.

Jim Leighton’s employment as Kalera’s president and CEO has ended, effective March 29. Leighton also resigned from the company’s board of directors.

Related news: The Packer’s Q&A with Kalera’s CEO

The rest of the company’s executive management team will remain with Kalera, including: Chief Operating Officer Austin Martin, Chief Financial Officer Fernando Cornejo, founder and Chief Science Officer Cristian Toma and Senior Vice President of Human Resources Leon Lachance. These members will remain on the board: Chairman Curtis Williams, Robert Arnall, Brent de Jong, Sonny Perdue and Cristian Toma.

Kalera has a global network of hydroponic vertical farms growing greens and culinary herbs, harvested on demand year-round. Farms in Orlando, Houston, Atlanta and Denver are in operation. Farms in Seattle, Columbus, Honolulu and St. Paul, Minn., are under construction, according to Kalera’s website .

Kalera also operates farms in Munich and Kuwait and had a mega-farm opening in Singapore in 2022 .

Kalera PLC, Kalera S.A. and other subsidiaries — including Vindara Inc. and Iveron Materials Inc. — are not part of the Chapter 11 filing. Kalera intends to use the court-supervised process to evaluate strategic alternatives for Kalera, including a potential sale of Kalera or its assets.

To help with process, Kalera PLC has appointed Mark Shapiro, senior managing director at B. Riley Advisory Services, as chief restructuring officer. Shapiro will oversee the business and its restructuring process to further the Kalera’s business strategy and sell it for the maximum value.

“The Chapter 11 process will allow Kalera to continue operations and serve its existing customer base while it evaluates strategic alternatives for its business and assets,” Shapiro said in the release.

To enable Kalera to continue operations during the reorganization process, Kalera’s existing lender has agreed to provide Kalera with $5.1 million of debtor-in-possession financing, as long as Kalera meets some customary conditions, including the approval of the bankruptcy court, which has not been obtained by press time.

Kalera hired the Baker & Hostetler law firm to be its legal adviser and B. Riley Advisory Services to be its financial adviser to assist in the Chapter 11 case filing, its restructuring and review of all available strategic alternatives.

Related: Kalera opens vertical farming facility in Denver

Because of this ongoing review, the company was not able to file its annual report for the preceding year ending Dec. 31, 2022, by March 31, 2022. It’s not clear when that report will be made.

On April 14, 2022, according to the release, Kalera took a loan from Farm Credit of Central Florida, in which Farm Credit agreed to make:

Revolving loans in an aggregate principal amount of up to $10 million.
One or more term loans in an aggregate principal amount up to $20 million.

On March 21, 2023, Farm Credit informed Kalera that as of the close of business on March 17, 2023, Farm Credit had sold its interest under the loan agreement to Sandton Credit Solutions Master Fund V.

Starting this Chapter 11 bankruptcy case constitutes a default on the loan, which accelerates Kalera’s obligations under the loan. The loan agreement provides that, upon a Chapter 11 case filing, the unpaid principal and interest due under the loan agreement are automatically due and payable.

But Chapter 11 bankruptcy protects Kalera from this: Any efforts to enforce these loan payment obligations are automatically stayed as a result of the Chapter 11 case filing, according to the release, and the creditors’ rights of enforcement are subject to the bankruptcy code.

Kalera has more than 200 creditors, according to the petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy .

Some of the creditors with the largest unsecured claims that aren’t insiders include: Orlando-based House of Plastics Unlimited Inc. for $352,053; Orlando-based accountant Grant Thornton for $345,622; Grand Rapids, Mich.-based public relations firm Lambert for $323,822.63; Columbus, Ohio-based freight brokerage firm BBI Logistics for $197,991; and Tavares, Fla.-based Aaron’s Electrical Services for $116,632.35.

More information about the case is available here .

Related news, via the “Tip of the Iceberg Podcast": Where vertical farms (like Bowery) are headed

Technology Supports Sustainable Agriculture in the Desert

Sun, 02 Apr 2023 12:00:00 GMT

By Aaron Moore: Dubai, United Arab Emirates

I grow leafy green vegetables in the desert.

Here in the United Arab Emirates, we live not far from the birthplace of agriculture, but despite this find ourselves surrounded by sand with the challenge of access to arable land. The UAE is so hot that summertime temperatures can soar to 50 degrees Celsius (120 degrees Fahrenheit). Fresh water is in short supply, and it evaporates quickly.

Agriculture in the region previously has been limited, with most cultivated land dedicated to date palms, but recently major investment has been made in sustainable agriculture ventures.

This nation of more than 9 million people needs fresh water and healthy food. Much of the water comes from desalination plants. As for food, the UAE imports a lot of it, including as much as 90 percent of the produce consumed by Emiratis and others in the country.

My opportunity as a farmer is to improve this situation. For the last year and a half, I’ve devoted myself to building and operating an amazingly efficient and sustainable farm that allows the people of the UAE to do something they rarely have had the chance to do in the past: Eat fresh produce grown near where they live all year round.

I’m originally from Australia, where farmers always have struggled with a dry climate and face the constant threat of drought. Anybody who has spent time around Australian agriculture knows that water is a precious and scarce resource. It’s etched in your mind from a young age.

Australia’s harsh reality has encouraged me to think about how technology can create new ways to raise crops. This led to my interest in hydroponics, a method that involves growing plants without soil and permits the radical conservation of water.

My first significant professional opportunity in hydroponics came in Vietnam, where I helped develop an agricultural company committed to the sustainable production of local, fresh, and healthy produce. We had a large greenhouse and orchards. We also had several shipping-container farms that featured hydroponics, with crops whose roots don’t touch soil but instead dangle into nutrient-rich water.

Vietnam has an abundance of water, but much of its quality is poor, due to pollution, plastic waste, and heavy metals leaking from old pipes. We were also facing salt water intrusion in the Mekong River, a source of water many farmers have relied on for generations. Hydroponics offer a way to meet this challenge.

In time, I ventured out with my own company, which allowed me to help restaurants and schools develop hydroponic systems that fit their operations and meet their needs. I also worked to educate people on the value and potential of hydroponics and this sustainable food production practice.

This is what drew me to the UAE—and the construction of the world’s largest indoor vertical farm .

From the outside, it looks like a warehouse. Inside, we’ve pioneered a new approach to food production. Whereas a traditional farm spreads across acres of fields horizontally, our hydroponic farm scales upward vertically, in a series of levels like a tower. We grow leafy green vegetables and microgreens without soil or additives, providing high-quality produce throughout the year rather than seasonally. We can pack it and ship it quickly. Within a day of harvest—and sometimes on the very same day—consumers can enjoy our lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, and parsley.

That’s when food tastes best. Our vegetables are both healthy and delicious.

In the parched environment of the UAE, the key to our success is the conservation of water through hydroponics. We use 95 percent less water than traditional methods of farming. We give the crops exactly what they need to grow, and we recycle what they don’t use.

We even capture water from the air. Because our crops perspire, generating humidity, the very atmosphere of our vertical farm is a resource. Our advanced HVAC system converts this moisture into condensate water and delivers it to our reverse-osmosis plant, which treats the water and allows us to put it back into our agricultural mission.

At our hydroponic farm, every drop of water goes directly into food production. As we do more with less, the UAE becomes more self-sufficient and food secure.

With hydroponic technology applied as an agricultural practice to improve both water sustainability and water quality, we are showcasing another example of sustainable farming at work that is improving food security.

Aaron Moore produces leafy green crops (lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, parsley) in the worlds largest indoor vertical farm in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. With hydroponic technology as the heart of this farming operation, Aaron is able to focus on both water sustainability and water quality. Aaron is a member of the Global Farmer Network. This column originates at www.globalfarmernetwork.org

Nominate a Farmer to Join the GFN

The Global Farmer Network (GFN) is looking for farmers to join the next cohort. If you are, or you know of an exceptional farmer who is passionate about agriculture, please complete a nomination form. Those accepted will join the next Roundtable and Communication Training program to be held September 10-16, 2023 in Washington, DC.

Nominate a great farmer that you know:

CTRL+S Your Farm Computer: 3 Tips To Lower Your Farm’s Cyberattack Risks

Mon, 24 Oct 2022 14:28:18 GMT

They’re often tucked in the corner of the shop, sitting stoically in a paper-filled office. Or they are left open, charging — always charging – on the kitchen table. These are the computers that run America’s farms.

A REAL THREAT

Through my decades of reporting, farm visits and family dinners, I’ve seen many of these machines. Some feature coffee stains or grease-smudged keyboards, while others are dressed in a facade that harkens back to the mid-90’s and the beginning of the cyber thriller movie genre.

Indeed, farmers hold these “high-tech” machines in esteemed regard. These machines are vital to our business, but for many non-digital natives, understanding the inner workings, including security threats, can be hard lessons to learn.

Globally, more than 5 billion people are online. If you consider devices, or the Internet of Things, there are another 14.4 billion active connections. A wide web of criminals can capture billions of dollars from unsuspecting and untrained users.

Protect Your Farm: Don’t Let Cyberattacks Hold Your Data for Ransom

A FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE

North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum says last year, his state networks saw 4.5 billion cyber-attacks. While leaders have spent the time and money to handle those intrusions, they recognized the importance of ongoing education. Today the state requires every student be taught computer and cyberscience.

“If a fourth grader is doing a project online with a teacher, both the teacher and the student know what they need to know to be safe online,” Burgum says. “This is all the way up through Ph.D. programs protecting research data from foreign actors.”

Shawn Riley, North Dakota’s chief information officer, helped implement the curriculum. He says it’s not just a big city issue any longer.
“We taught 2,500 teachers, we deployed it to 181 school districts and 11 universities, and we did it in under a year,” Riley says.

Can you sense the urgency?

LEARNING NEVER STOPS

Personal computers have been part of our lives for 40 years, and almost all of us walk around with a “supercomputer” in our pocket. Technology has created a wonderfully connected and informative world.

Soon, those farm business monuments grinding away in the corner of a shop will give way to new management technology. I am sure, as I age, I’ll need my children or grandchildren to come over and explain it.

3 TIPS TO LOWER YOUR FARM’S CYBERATTACK RISKS

Have an incident response plan and backup your computer’s hard drives often.
Report cyberattacks to www.ic3.gov. Only 10% of cyberattacks are ever reported.
Consider cybersecurity insurance to cover financial losses and assist in remediation.

Clinton Griffiths is a TV newsman, turned magazine editor, with a passion for good stories. He believes the best life lessons can be found down a dirt road.

Does California Have Enough Energy to Ban Gas Cars?

Wed, 05 Oct 2022 18:44:12 GMT

California announced last week that it will ban the sale of internal combustion engine passenger cars by 2035.

The 31st state leads the country’s vehicle market, and more than a dozen states copy its emissions standards.

Theoretically, the grid should be able to handle EV’s, according to a Quartz article .

Electricity supply and demand work in a reinforcing feedback loop: As demand grows, it creates an incentive for utilities and power companies to invest in new generation and transmission infrastructure. And EVs may be easier to accommodate since they don’t need to be charged at times of peak demand.

The bigger bottleneck could be the rollout of charging stations and the development of new bureaucratic systems to manage the flow of electrons between so many new distributed sources of supply (solar) and demand (EVs).

Charging Concerns With Heightened Demand

However, a method under research to charge electric cars in 10 minutes could be available in five years.

In a report released this week, government researchers said they have found a way to charge electric car batteries up to 90% in just 10 minutes. The method is likely five years away from making its way into the market, scientists said, but would mark a fundamental shift.

Big Push For EV’s, Diesel and Gas Coming Up Short

California’s decision comes on the heels of diesel shortages on the East Coast.

U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm in a letter called on major U.S. oil refiners to build up capacity and reduce exports of refined products ahead of the winter. Granholm noted the reduced availability of diesel inventories along the East Coast, which are nearly 50% below the five-year average. Refined product exports are at a record high.

“Given the historic level of U.S. refined product exports, I again urge you to focus in the near term on building inventories in the United States, rather than selling down current stocks and further increasing exports,” Granholm wrote, saying that such a buildup would be an alternative to emergency measures such as releases from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve.

The letter was reported first by the Wall Street Journal, which accused Granholm in an editorial of attempting to strong-arm the energy industry and abandoning European nations weaning themselves off Russian imports.

More on EV’s:
California Approves Plan to ‘Move State Away From Oil’ by 2035
Is the U.S. Prepared to Support Electric Vehicles?

John Phipps: The Supply Chain Made Me Do It

Mon, 31 Jan 2022 20:41:21 GMT

I’m always on the lookout for new excuses. After all, you never know when a hare-brained scheme or half-baked idea might go south. You may suspect, but you don’t truly know until the adjuster has verified the damage. In my arsenal of reasons why things aren’t my fault, recent events have given me a cruise-missile-strength weapon: the supply chain.

Eyes will not roll, nor lips turn up with scorn when we pull out this new responsibility force-field. After all, according to Fountain of Economic Knowledge, Facebook, the supply chain has already forced the mighty Federal Reserve to pay interest, maybe as much as 0.25%. I’m not making this up. Ordinary citizens might even get tiny payments on their savings every year. If the supply chain has that kind of power, no kryptonite can save us.

There can be problems, however, which strain the supply chain defense. For example, this article is about two-weeks late, so connecting that failure with the old supply chain was initially a challenge.

Taking a page from the captains of industry, and a few corporals, the most popular way to ease a supply chain problem is to raise the price. While wasn’t sure that would work with my editors, I resorted to the trusty old backup tool: copy something from the internet.

Try It Yourself

Google “supply chain jokes.” After scanning a few pages for several hours, I noticed there were only about three mildly funny ones. At least, the first time you read them. The rest were simply retreads of old jokes about with “supply chain” inserted for “bartender.”

To my horror I realized that supply chain humor has its own supply chain problem, since 63% of our jokes are imported, mostly from Pucklechurch, England. [Ha, ha, made you google!] Of course, deploying this justification raises the awkward admission that my work may contain quasi-original ingredients.

However, the supply chain turmoil has some secretly thrilled. In any customer retail situation, you can pretend to computer search diligently for several minutes, typing frantically like an airline agent asked for the time, or you can peck lethargically and sadly moan, “Sorry, supply chain.” Conditioned to this response, even the touchiest consumer admits defeat and slumps away. It could even be true. Keeping accurate inventories of nothing is a timesaver too.

Clear the Clutter

Problematically, the rule of thumb if it’s out of stock it must be a good product has been rendered moot by the supply chain. Empty spaces on shelves could be simply waiting for cruddy merchandise to arrive. They don’t pack cargo ships according to Amazon stars. It is also an opportunity to clear ancient merchandise from storeroom shelves.

We are adopting the patterns of purchasing seen during WWII rationing: if it’s there, buy it. You can always swap for other things later. Anybody need 2 cases of iPhone 4’s?

What do you get when you cross the intellect of an engineer, the heart of a farmer and the charm of a TV commentator? The ever-witty John Phipps.