Katie Rodriguez here. Yesterday, Aug. 27 I attended an event hosted by The Reservoir, an ag tech “innovation hub” for specialty crops. It was a ribbon cutting celebration of sorts; Danny Bernstein, CEO of The Reservoir, announced a list of their latest partners at the Tanimura & Antle farm in Salinas, where they’re leasing 40 acres of land for ag tech companies to come and test.
First, let’s start with what “ag tech innovation hub” even means. In short, what The Reservoir hopes to do is modernize farming by bringing in startups in ag tech to do research here in Monterey County, and develop technology specifically useful to growers and crops here.
Think: technology that helps farmers weed more efficiently, or the use of robotics to help pick certain crops.
At a macro-level, The Reservoir is here to help cut costs and improve efficiency. Margins are razor thin, and farmers want help that they know works and will help them survive.
Production and regulatory costs are high, much of which is linked to labor. This fact, exemplified by a recent Cal Poly report, reverberated throughout the event as various speakers took the podium, including Norm Groot, executive director of the Monterey County Farm Bureau and Salinas Mayor Dennis Donohue.
This is a business story, a labor story and a story about food security. And the farming industry is struggling with all of the above. Academia partners were there yesterday to say there will be a pathway for our local talent and innovators to get into the ag tech R&D space, and hopefully get paid more for it.
But I can’t help but think that later on, this will inevitably be a climate story. The technologies transforming the agricultural labor force will also carry an environmental footprint. How they impact (or conversely, help protect) the very ecosystems that sustain our food is something to keep tabs on in the future.
For now, The Reservoir aims to create what they are calling the “Olympic Village of ag tech,” where startups will come together, immerse themselves in our local agricultural landscapes and innovate faster, without recreating the wheel. Bernstein explains there is power in these companies being in one place, and in a place they need to be: Salinas.
“There aren’t dense ag tech hubs,” said Bernstein to a crowd of about 200, which included personnel from the offices of U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, and State Sen. John Laird, representatives from USDA and CDFA, Supervisor Glenn Church, farmers, and local nonprofits such as Mujeres en Acción. “There are over 7,000 startup incubators globally, but none of them combine two things: a working specialty crop farm and a space for the development of ag tech.”
Twelve of the 40 acres leased from Tanimura & Antle farmland are currently being farmed, and Naturipe is providing five acres of strawberries for startups to plug into. Some startups, Bernstein says, only need access to the ground. The Reservoir is helping facilitate this, currently with their first six companies that have signed on.
As for their R&D facility, “My guess is we’ll be able to walk you through the first aspects of it before the end of the year.” When might it be open? He says, “It’ll feel really open by the spring planting season.”