Attendees at the VINE Connect field day, held at the Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Camarillo, watch a demonstration of a robotic harvester under development by L5. The harvester has camera-enable software that collects field data and recognizes when strawberries are ripe. (Photo: Hanif Houston, UC Agriculture and Natural Resources)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A drone that offers multiple uses on the farm; a self-driving strawberry harvester; smart valves that manage irrigation; a software-powered system for irrigating and weeding; and a machine that weeds, thins and fertilizes.
Those are the latest innovations that five agricultural technology companies demonstrated at a University of California field day in Ventura County this month.
The event allowed the startups to showcase potential solutions to on-farm challenges, including labor shortages, water conservation and operational efficiency.
The disconnect between tech vendors and agricultural customers has slowed the adoption of automation and labor-saving ideas for managing farms, said Gabe Youtsey, University of California, Agriculture and Natural Resources chief innovation officer. That communication gap led to the VINE Connect field day, which drew growers, researchers, investors and others.
“We’re trying to pair up growers, startup companies and our academics to trial and validate technologies that will hopefully improve them, get them to stick and the growers to adopt them,” Youtsey said.
Tech firms with promising ideas and designs have gone bankrupt before they could figure out how to generate enough inventory and sales to become financially sustainable, Youtsey said. UC plans to award grants to the best exhibitors to keep their work going, he said.
Santa Rosa-based Lumo leverages cloud computing to offer farms new tools for managing water and fertigation. It tested its smart-irrigation valve technology in Northern California vineyards and orchards before expanding into coastal growing areas, including in Oxnard and Camarillo. In testing efficiency without its valve, the company found that irrigation was off by 50% in one of 10 systems it checked, said company CEO and co-founder Devon Wright.
Also offering smart irrigation solutions is the Canadian firm Verdi. Its valves, pumps and drip lines automate irrigation, and the system automatically tracks and records water use.
Other features include remote sensors and weekly access to satellite imagery for crop monitoring. The system collects and relays data about irrigation performance, soil moisture and other metrics, which are displayed on a dashboard.
L5 Automation, based in La Canada Flintridge near Pasadena, debuted its robotic strawberry harvester prototype. The self-operating berry picker can locate and select ripe strawberries, even ones growing in hard-to-see places below the plant’s leaves.
The robotic harvester’s onboard system represents an advancement, noted Ventura County strawberry grower Matt Conroy. He marveled at the system’s accuracy in identifying plants loaded with fruit that are nearly ready to pick.
The L5 robotics team said the company is working to help growers on the genetic side by counting flowers and fruit and identifying dead plants for accurate field calculations.
“Collecting data and getting it right every time is massive because right now, we’re depending on someone (walking the field) to write it down,” Conroy said.
Being an early adopter of technology on the farm he manages, Conroy said he appreciates the progress made so far by L5. Though he said he thinks a self-operating harvester is still years away from being ready to release into strawberry fields, he called L5’s harvester software system a game changer.
“We might not be quite here with everything, but we’re dang close,” he said.
Ag-Bee, a Temecula company founded in 2019, deployed its 250-pound drone, which hovered over a strawberry field performing a precision water drop. With a single operator, Ag-Bee drones can monitor field conditions, assist with pollination and apply crop-protection materials.
The drone also can handle field-scouting duties, especially when the ground is wet and muddy. It operates about 25 to 30 feet above the field, low enough to avoid aircraft, and is legal in restricted airspace near airports.
The drone’s fertilizer application on strawberries impressed researcher and consultant David Holden, who said he thought the drone achieved good coverage and that it could do well applying micronutrients, insecticidal soaps and foliar materials.
Holden said he visited each exhibitor’s station and gave them feedback. Having been around farmers long enough, he said he knows what it takes to persuade a specialty crop grower to make the switch to automation.
Growers need to hear about the return on investment and how long before a product pays for itself, he said. Claims about water savings and reduced input and labor costs sound good, he said, but growers want to see the proof for themselves.
For leafy greens, Verdant Robotics—in business since 2019—conducted a precision weeding demonstration in young lettuce.
Holden said he thinks the company’s SharpShooter precision-control weeder is the most market-ready of the products shown at the field day. After a single pass over beds of lettuce plants, attendees could see how many weeds the camera-controlled sprayer identified and treated with a benign solution of water and dye.
The multipurpose sprayer can thin seed-grown crops or release beneficials. It is compatible with conventional, organic and no-till systems, the Hayward company said.
UC’s Youtsey said the university wants to take the interactive field events a step further with innovation grants and team-building projects that assign a grower and researcher to work with a tech firm on a promising technology so the industry has verifiable data. The transparency and involvement of a grower could lead to greater trust, he said.
“Ultimately, what we’d like to see are those companies offering really valuable solutions to stick in the regions, grow here and create jobs,” he added.
The next VINE Connect event about tech and San Joaquin Valley crops is scheduled for June 26 at the West Side Research and Extension Center in Five Points.
— Rob McCarthy
California Farm Bureau
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