Voices of the Valley

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Space AG and the Secret to Producing More Food with Less Effort Jun 14, 2022

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Fresh off being accepted into the elite THRIVE agtech accelerator and winning the Innovation Award at THRIVE Demo Day 2022, Space AG Co-Founder and CEO Guillermo de Vivanco joins Voices of the Valley to discuss the evolution of his company in the digital agriculture arena. Space AG is a software platform that increases efficiencies through digitization and data collection - but always by keeping an eye on the human impact. "Once we started thinking about not only providing a solution that increases your yield, but also providing a solution that helps your people on the farm be more productive and enjoy more of their work and get back home sooner because they don't need to prepare reports at the end of the day ... that's when we really strengthened our value proposition," he said.

Farmer's Business Network and the Power of a Big Idea for Small Farmers May 24, 2022

Show notes

In the digital age, information is power - but data in a silo can't reach its full potential to create prosperity. Enter Farmer's Business Network, a farmer-driven information source that provides agronomic precision data to all its members. "We wanted to level the playing field for farmers," says Amol Deshpande, FBN's CEO and Co-Founder. With a goal of providing competitive opportunities for small farmers, the platform offers everything from data analytics to on-farm biological trialing programs. In this episode of Voices of the Valley, Dennis Donohue, the Executive Director of the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology, and Candace Wilson, Regional Director at FBN, speak with Deshpande about the power of aggregated data.

Verdant Robotics Pt. 2: Turning Fieldworkers Into Data Workers May 17, 2022

Show notes

Verdant Robotics Co-Founders CEO Gabe Sibley and COO Curtis Garner return to Voices of the Valley to continue their discussion on how they make sure their company focuses on creating agricultural solutions - instead of just showing off shiny robots. The duo envision a future where farmers and technologists work in tandem to turn fieldworkers into data workers, bridging the perpetual gap in the labor force by mechanization and teaching valuable skillsets to current employees. "The jobs that are on the farm are going to change," Curtis says. "There's going to be new jobs created to create new value on the farm."

Verdant Robotics and the Secret to Making Farmers Superhuman, Pt. 1 May 10, 2022

Show notes

Verdant Robotics Co-Founders CEO Gabe Sibley and COO Curtis Garner join Voices of the Valley to discuss the power that digitized precision farming gives to the industry. Verdant Robotics wasn't "a solution looking for a problem," Gabe says; instead, the multi-action robot that provides both data analytics and crop applications is the result of a six-month road trip that was spent talking to farmers and refining the technology that is now used on everything from carrots to onions to garlic. "It's MBA business school 101," he says in this first part of a two-part episode. "Do what the client or the customer wants."

Don Cameron on How Innovation and Automation Can Boost California Agriculture May 03, 2022

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Don Cameron, Vice President and General Manager of Terranova Ranch, joins the Voices of the Valley to share his experiences with agtech start-ups looking to gain traction in California agriculture. "The ones that tend to come early and listen and hear what we're saying are the ones that tend to be successful," he says. Currently Terranova is using cutting-edge technology for automated irrigation, laser weeding and nitrogen capture, and Don says that the perpetual difficulties the industry faces with water, labor and regulation create an urgency to technology adoption in the state. "This is one of the answers for the future - alternatives that work well and are economical," he says.

Agtech's Role in Combating Climate Change Apr 26, 2022

Show notes

Sarah Nolet, Co-Founder and General Partner at Sydney, Australia-based VC firm Tenacious Ventures, focuses on investing in early-stage agtech startups with an eye towards how they will help provide innovations to assist with the ramifications of climate change. "Ag can actually be a solution for a lot of the challenges we're facing," Nolet says in this episode of Voices of the Valley, noting that growers are in a unique position where they can simultaneously work to reduce emissions and be proactive to prevent additional climate disruption. While advocating for biodiversity, water quality improvement and carbon capture technologies, Nolet says it is important to not let perfection be the enemy of progress - and to also acknowledge that there is no silver bullet because "nature will be ahead of us no matter what."

Farming's Secret Weapon: California Community Colleges Apr 19, 2022

Show notes

Dr. Jerry Buckley, the President of Reedley College, joins Voices of the Valley to talk about the vital need to expand the relationship between agriculture and community colleges in California. "Across the country, community colleges are the best-kept secret that we have," he says, noting that with its 2.1 million students in attendance every year, California community colleges represent the largest system of education in the U.S. For instance, the AgTechX Ed workforce development program spearheaded by Western Growers and California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross to train community college students is a perfect example of the way to pass along knowledge about on-farm skills and technology. "I can teach theory all day long," Buckley says, "but it doesn't make sense until they put it to use."

Cybersecurity and the Virtual Threats to Farming Apr 12, 2022

Show notes

Do you use computers in your office? Guess what, you're a tech company. "We're not in a paper world anymore," says Greg Gatzke, President and CEO of ZAG Technical Services, countering the common misconception that there is a dividing line between the Salinas Valley and Silicon Valley. "The more reliant you are on technology, the bigger you are, the more processing systems you have, the more vulnerable you are to attack," he says. In this episode of Voices of the Valley, Gatzke talks about cybersecurity and virtual threats to the farming, and how his company bolsters safety in the online realm.

Working at the Digital Farm of the Future Apr 05, 2022

Show notes

Mark DeSantis, CEO of Bloomfield Robotics, makes a return visit to the podcast to discuss how agtech can improve work conditions for those employed at a farm. It's not about making humans irrelevant to the field, he says, but instead it's about creating new job categories in the labor market. "It's not that people are replaced," he says. "The world evolves and creates new opportunities." Listen in to hear about a future world with digital agronomists, horticulturalists and botanists.

AI on the Farm: Sensing What Humans Can't Mar 29, 2022

Show notes

Larry Taylor, Co-Founder of The Yield Lab Asia Pacific, and Mark DeSantis, CEO at Bloomfield Robotics, bust the myth that artificial intelligence isn't as adaptable as human intelligence when it comes to managing the health of specialty crops. With the right kind of technology, AI can mimic the boots-on-the-ground approach favored by humans - but it adds the capacity to learn from each individual plant to find patterns that can improve the output of the whole harvest. Listen as the duo delve into the specifics of how AI works in the field, citing real-world successes Bloomfield has had with vineyards in Bordeaux.

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