Packer Tech

The Fertilizer Gap Is Real — Here Is the Tech Closing It

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:07:03 GMT

The ripple effects of global conflict are landing squarely on the farm, where rising fertilizer prices and tightening supply chains are forcing difficult decisions. For many growers, the math no longer works the way it used to.

“More than 80% of rice, cotton and peanut producers reported they cannot afford all required fertilizer,” says Arthur Erickson, CEO of Hylio, underscoring the scale of the challenge facing production agriculture. While specialty crop-specific data remains limited, the broader trend shows that farmers are being pushed to do more with less.

That shift is accelerating interest in precision agriculture tools, particularly drones designed to apply inputs with far greater accuracy than traditional equipment.

Erickson describes the approach as fundamentally data-driven. Farmers can deploy scouting drones or satellite imagery to assess field variability, identifying exactly where fertilizer or crop protection is needed — and where it isn’t.

“You could analyze the pixels essentially across the imagery on your farm, and then, of course, just target those specific areas,” he says. “In that way, just being a lot more surgical … would lead to an overall reduction in your input needed to get the same or better result.”

That level of precision matters most when budgets are squeezed. If growers are cutting fertilizer use by 30% to 50%, blanket applications can translate into wasted product in some areas and insufficient nutrients in others. Targeted spraying allows them to stretch limited resources without sacrificing yield potential.

Arthur Erickson, CEO for Hylio, says farmers can deploy scouting drones or satellite imagery to assess field variability, identifying exactly where fertilizer or crop protection is needed — and where it isn’t.

(Photo courtesy of Hylio)

“You have to have the data,” Erickson says. “You also have to have a precise enough application tool to do right by that data.”

Traditional equipment, he adds, often lacks that granularity. Even with strong field intelligence, a 120-foot boom sprayer or aerial application cannot match the pinpoint accuracy of drones capable of treating small, defined zones.

An Accessible Alternative

The economic pressure extends beyond inputs. Erickson points to a “double whammy” of rising costs paired with falling commodity prices, leaving farmers with less revenue and higher expenses per acre.

“What we’re seeing is a huge reduction in new purchases of traditional, larger equipment,” he says, noting that tractor sales are down significantly in some regions.

In contrast, drones are emerging as a more accessible alternative. Erickson estimates that a fleet of agricultural drones can cost a fraction of traditional machinery while covering thousands of acres per day.

“Instead of spending $500,000 on a tractor, you could spend $100,000 and still have a fleet,” he says. “So, four or five times cheaper in terms of capital cost and also on the operating cost side.”

That affordability is helping drive adoption even in a tight financial environment. In fact, Erickson describes the current moment as a turning point for farmers who may have been hesitant to embrace new technology.

“This was kind of a big enough shock to actually convince them to try something ‘new’ or untested as drone technology,” he says. “Once they use it, they’re going to realize it is pretty darn effective.”

Eye on the Horizon

Supply chain uncertainty is another factor reshaping decision-making. From COVID-19 disruptions to ongoing geopolitical tensions, farmers are increasingly concerned about access to equipment and replacement parts.

“Half the conversations we have with farmers come up like, ‘Hey, if I do buy your drone, where are your parts coming from?’” Erickson says. “Is it one-day shipping, or is it three months’ shipping for a replacement part?”

That concern is driving interest in domestically produced technology. Erickson notes that Hylio has seen demand increase during past disruptions as farmers sought alternatives to overseas supply chains.

“It’s been one thing after another,” he says, citing COVID-19, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and current tensions involving Iran. “Even the people that normally wouldn’t pay attention are being forced to think about that every day.”

Incentives Serve as a Catalyst

Public funding may also help accelerate adoption. Several states already offer grants for precision agriculture tools, and federal programs tied to the next farm bill could expand access to subsidized loans or direct funding.

“These grants are generally funding precision agriculture tools,” Erickson says, adding that many programs include Buy American requirements that favor domestically manufactured equipment.

For growers navigating today’s volatile environment, those incentives could lower the barrier to entry for technologies that promise both cost savings and efficiency gains.

The implications extend beyond the farm gate. Reduced planting or lower input use could tighten supply and push food prices higher in the coming months.

“There’s going to be a price hike,” Erickson says. “I mean, the number of farmers that literally can’t plant crops this year or they’re severely cutting back on the acreage, there’s a pretty good chance [of] significant price increases.”

While the exact trajectory remains uncertain, the direction is clear: As global pressures reshape agriculture, tools that help farmers maximize every input are moving from optional to essential.

How Produce-Native AI is Optimizing the Full Grocery Enterprise

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:32:04 GMT

For years, grocery tech was built for the predictable aisles of center store and retrofitted for produce — usually with messy results. Now, Afresh is flipping the script. After mastering the chaos of the fresh perimeter, CEO Matt Schwartz is expanding the company’s AI platform to every department in the enterprise, proving if you can solve for delicate raspberries, you can solve for anything.

With Afresh’s expanded platform, grocers can now manage replenishment, demand forecasting, inventory management and distribution center buying across every department on a single grocery-native AI platform.

What does this mean for the retailer’s bottom line? To learn more, The Packer recently connected with Schwartz.

The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Traditionally, grocery tech has started in center store and then adapted to fresh. You did the opposite. Now that you’re moving into the packaged goods space, what is a lesson learned from produce that is making your center store AI better than traditional systems?

Schwartz: Produce is one of the hardest environments in the store, and it forced us to build a system that can make accurate decisions even when the input data is unreliable.

That’s the first lesson: grocery data is messy. If you take it at face value, you’ll make bad decisions.

In fresh, that’s obvious. There are no barcodes, variable pack sizes and demand that shifts with weather, quality and seasonality. In center store, the data looks cleaner on paper, but the same issues still show up: inventory drift from shrink, mispicks and execution errors at the shelf.

The second lesson is that static rules don’t work. A single forecast and a single inventory number aren’t enough when both are often wrong. You need a system that accounts for uncertainty. What if demand is higher? What if inventory is lower? And [the system] still makes the right decision.

Most systems were built the opposite way, [with] clean data assumptions, rigid logic [and] one answer. In reality, inventory is often only 50% to 60% accurate, and those systems break as soon as that assumption is off.

We built for that reality in fresh — making decisions that hold up even when the inputs are wrong.

That’s why it translates so well to center store. The variability is lower, but the data is still imperfect and the same approach produces better decisions.

Does managing replenishment, demand forecasting, inventory management and distribution center buying across every department on a single grocery-native AI platform improve a retailer’s profitability? If so, how?

It improves profitability by reducing coordination gaps and eliminating manual overhead.

Today, fresh and center store run on separate systems, with different data, different forecasts, different order recommendations. No one really has a clear view of how those decisions interact, especially when it comes to cross-merchandising. When everything runs on one system, that changes.

A simple example is promotions. A retailer runs a “family dinner for $15” meal deal that includes pasta, sauce and a baguette. There’s no
produce in the bundle, but customers add salad, tomatoes or a cucumber.

Without visibility, produce reacts after the shelf is already light. With it, the system adjusts ahead of time, and just as importantly, brings orders back down when the promotion ends, without someone having to go in and fix it.

The other piece is overhead. Legacy systems require teams of analysts to constantly tune forecasts for seasonality, promotions and holidays. That’s ongoing maintenance. With our system, that work largely goes away. The models update as conditions change, so corporate teams can spend more time on strategy and less time tuning forecasts.

Matt Schwartz, CEO of Afresh, says produce is one of the hardest environments in the store, which forced the company to build a system that can make accurate decisions even when the input data is unreliable.

(Photo courtesy of Afresh)

As Afresh expands beyond fresh to include everything from shampoo to frozen pizza, how will you ensure continued innovation focused on fresh produce and other fresh items?

Afresh is a fresh-first AI company, and that doesn’t change. We started there because fresh is the most complex part of the store — and it’s still where we push the hardest. Expanding to center store isn’t a shift away from that. It’s the same system applied more broadly.

“Today, produce teams see an item sell faster than expected and have to figure out why. That delay is what leads to missed orders and empty shelves. When every item in the store runs on the same system, you can see what’s driving that demand.”

Matt Schwartz, CEO of Afresh

The core problems we solve — bad inventory, demand variability, execution gaps — exist in every department. What changes is the context.

When more of the store runs on the platform, fresh decisions actually get better. The system can see promotions, traffic patterns and how customers shop across the full basket.

This isn’t about becoming a general retail system. It’s about extending a fresh-first architecture across the store in a way that continues to improve fresh.

You mentioned a 95% or more adherence rate. How will produce managers benefit from using a unified platform with other department managers? How does this improve or change the daily workflow for a produce clerk?

Our 95%+ adherence rate means store teams trust Afresh across all departments.

For produce managers, the workflow doesn’t fundamentally change, but the quality of the recommendation does. Now those recommendations reflect what’s happening across the entire store, not just produce. That leads to fewer misses with fewer out-of-stocks and less shrink.

There’s also a labor benefit. When all departments run on the same platform, teams can flex more easily. If a produce manager is out, someone without years of department-specific experience can still place a good order because the system carries that historical context.

And at the corporate level, produce performance is no longer isolated. It’s visible alongside every other department, which drives more consistent focus and investment.

How does having every item in the store on one platform specifically help the produce department? Are there additional benefits to cross-merchandising strategies throughout the store here as well?

Today, produce teams see an item sell faster than expected and have to figure out why. That delay is what leads to missed orders and empty shelves. When every item in the store runs on the same system, you can see what’s driving that demand.

For example, if a retailer features ranch dressing on an endcap, more customers buy carrots and celery to go with it. Without that visibility, the system just sees carrots selling faster than expected, and stores react after they’ve already sold through. With it, the system knows the promotion is happening and increases orders ahead of time.

The same thing happens with substitutions. If a packaged item goes out of stock, customers shift into fresh alternatives. Without that signal, produce teams chase the demand late. With it, they adjust early and, just as importantly, reduce orders again once the packaged item is back in stock.

Can you share an example of how a produce buyer at the DC makes a better decision because they now have visibility into the inventory levels of the non-perishable aisles?

A simple example is a short-term supply issue in center store. Let’s say a top-selling jarred salsa is out of stock in a region for 10 days.
That doesn’t always change behavior, as customers may switch to another jarred option. But in some cases, you do see a small shift into in-house made pico or fresh alternatives.

The challenge for the produce buyer is knowing whether that change is real and how long it’s going to last. Without that context, they might see a slight lift and either ignore it or overreact. With visibility, they understand the cause. That allows them to make a small, measured adjustment and, more importantly, to unwind it at the right time.

For fresh items with a 3- to 5-day shelf life, timing matters more than the initial increase. The risk isn’t missing a bit of upside; it’s being left with excess inventory after the demand disappears.

Afresh is known for reducing food waste. How will expanding to center store and general merchandise help retailers to reduce waste throughout the store?

Afresh has prevented more than 200 million lb. of food waste since founding, and most of that has been in fresh, where waste rates are highest. But the underlying problem is the same across the store.

In fresh, waste shows up quickly as spoilage. In center store, it shows up more slowly through excess inventory, markdowns or discontinued products that don’t move. In both cases, it comes from ordering too much or ordering at the wrong time.

When forecasting improves and inventory is more accurate, products move through the system faster. That means less spoilage in fresh, and less excess and fewer markdowns in center store.

Do you have a retailer success story you can share from the produce perspective? How do you see this success evolve as Afresh tech expands to the whole store?

Across our retail partners, we consistently see the same pattern in produce: shrink comes down, sales go up, inventory turns improve and store teams adopt the system quickly because it earns their trust. In many cases, that means double-digit shrink reduction, sales lift and meaningfully faster turns within the first few months.

As the platform expands across the store, that impact compounds. Retailers don’t have to rip out their existing systems or go through a new, heavy implementation to get there. They can expand incrementally, adding new departments onto the same platform or integrating Afresh as the decision engine behind their existing tools.

In practice, that means the store teams don’t have to learn a completely new system, and corporate teams don’t have to rebuild their tech stack.

Your next read: Afresh Launches Suite of Solutions Designed to Help Grocers Maximize Sales, Minimize Waste

Reservoir Farms Targets Crop-Specific Innovations to Bridge the Ag Tech Gap

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 23:04:40 GMT

Last month, the Reservoir officially opened its innovation hub for specialty crops, Reservoir Farms in Salinas, Calif. Founder and CEO Danny Bernstein says since the first announcement last June, there has been much forward momentum.

Bernstein sat down with The Packer to talk about the future of the Reservoir and to share some success stories of some of the startups involved in the incubator.

Shift Toward Crop Specific Solutions

Looking to the future, Bernstein says a lot of the conversations at the Reservoir have focused on becoming more crop-specific and having more nuanced conversations at a crop level. Bernstein says this Producer Program, which will be announced in greater detail soon, looks to a niche spot in the ag tech ecosystem.

“How do we better serve the end grower, the end producer, the end shipper with more specific programs and narratives that speak at their level, which is more crop specific?” he says.

Take a commodity like strawberries, Bernstein says. A large strawberry grower likely has some internal proprietary research and development, but there’s a strong need for crop-specific solutions, and that’s where the Reservoir sees the opportunity to assist.

“It’s not critical enough to be proprietary, but it’s critical enough to be prioritized and therefore needs the industry,” he says.

Bernstein says he sees this scenario playing out similarly for key crops such as vegetables and leafy greens, as well as strawberries, in Salinas, viticulture in Sonoma, Calif., etc. He says the Reservoir team is working to pull together what a crop-specific ag tech program would look like and then bring the right stakeholders to the table.

“We want to have a leafy greens-specific ag tech program, a strawberry-specific ag tech program, and then eventually that becomes brassicas and maybe even a click down further into just broccoli,” he says.

While the Reservoir is working to recruit ag tech companies into the incubators, Bernstein says the team is also looking at what ag tech companies are a fit for these more nuanced offerings.

Bernstein says that the Reservoir is engaging with more than 300 companies all around the world; some are a part of the incubator programs, but he says the larger number speaks to the breadth of the Reservoir.

“We can share a pipeline of 300 companies with companies with the growers that we’re actively engaged with,” he says. “We can categorize [the companies]. We can talk about their different technology readiness levels. We can say which crops they’re focused on. We can share a pretty detailed matrix. Then, we can also set up structured introductions.”

Meeting Growers Where They Are

Looking ahead, Bernstein says he sees a strong need for field marketing, which he says ag tech is a little behind in getting on board with.

“We’re wondering if a little bit more of meeting the grower where they are [is needed], thinking really crop-specific,” he says.

Bernstein envisions almost a concert tour with solutions targeted specifically at the predominant crops in a geo-location.

“Bringing the right companies to the right crop at the right time in their cycle — that’s another element that we’re thinking a lot about, that we’re really trying to put the producer first in our model,” he says.

And Bernstein says the ag tech industry desperately needs to accelerate technology outcomes for the specialty crop grower.

“I feel like the ag tech buyer is becoming more discerning and has a pretty good risk appetite, because they are getting better and better at assessing the efficacy of ag tech,” he says. “This is an area that we want to lean into more and more with our producer partners, and that’s part of why we’re doing this program.”

Proving the Ag Tech Work Ethic

Another thing that Bernstein says has come out of the Reservoir is debunking this myth that the work ethic of ag tech companies is different from that of the growers those companies hope to create solutions for. But he says the team at Agtom, a farm automation platform for irrigation, fertigation and more, has proved that being a part of the Reservoir incubator and having real-time access to specialty crops has its benefits.

Bernstein says the team works six days a week, working from around 9 a.m. to nearly 3 a.m. the next morning. He says the team says the Reservoir has been an ideal working environment, with the ability to test in strawberry fields and make modifications immediately.

“They have the work ethic. They have the drive,” he says. “We’ve been able to provide a platform with a work environment that allows them to accelerate.”

Another one, Bernstein says, is BHF, a Canadian ag robotics company. He says as a result of participating in the Reservoir’s incubator, growers have been more likely to trial the company’s solutions. He says it speaks volumes to how important ag tech companies see being boots on the ground in California. He adds that BHF has trials set up with major vegetable growers in the Salinas area thanks to this approach.

“We’ve seen not only companies be able to get themselves on rails with being inside of our environment, but we’ve also seen some acceleration of commercialization, because, basically, folks are able to show that they’re leading with humility, that they’re integrating,” Bernstein says. “And BHF, as a Canadian company, basically said, ‘We need to be in California to accelerate,’ and now it’s starting to happen.”

South Mill Champs' Lewis Macleod on Why Mushroom Automation is No Longer Optional

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 22:35:15 GMT

Mushrooms are a challenging crop to grow, doubling in size every day. There is a fine line between a mushroom that is ready to be picked and one that is past its prime, and this is where the potential for automation comes in, says Lewis Macleod, CEO of South Mill Champs.

Macleod joined “The Packer Podcast” to discuss automation in the mushroom industry.

“The challenge when it comes to picking mushrooms is making sure you pick the mushroom at the right time before it opens but also at the right time so it’s grown to be the optimum size that mushrooms are going to grow,” he says. “The challenge of growing mushrooms is every mushroom is different.”

He says it’s a fine line between the optimum time to pick a mushroom and one with gills that have opened and flattened out and has become too mature.

“Once it’s opened, the value of that crop is 20% to 25% of what it was beforehand,” he says. “The value of a product that’s become mature is below the cost to grow. So, it’s fundamental that you pick that crop at the right time. If you don’t have the labor, you’re really out of business.”

It’s this distinction between the optimum time to pick and too late that requires an incredibly skilled workforce.

“One of the challenges you have in the industry is this is not an unskilled labor job,” he says. “This is a job that requires nine, often 12, weeks of training to really require dexterity, and it’s also a repetitive job. It’s also a very difficult job.”

Labor is also a costly portion of growing mushrooms, he says, which can vary between 30% and 50%, and there’s also the ergonomics of picking, which can be harder for workers depending on the type of growing system.

While labor has been abundant in the U.S. in the last 20 to 30 years, it’s been a greater challenge in Canada and Europe, which has forced mushroom growers to modernize both infrastructure and automation.

Automation, Macleod says, increases efficiency and therefore helps reduce the overall cost of goods, which he says is critical as mushrooms compete against different commodities to fill consumers’ shopping carts.

“It’s simple math: When you’ve got labor as such a high percentage of your cost of goods and labor inflation exists, the cost of your product is increasing greater than maybe some of the competitive products that mushrooms compete against there on the shelf space,” he says. “This need to automate is really to allow it to compete against its alternative price on the shelf space.”

Macleod says the potential with artificial intelligence and machine learning with automation is high. Not only can automation allow for more fine-tuned picking of a bed more than once, but the robots will also pick continuously, which will boost quality.

“The opportunity to improve yield is really, really important when it comes to quality,” he says. “The great thing here is you can ensure the specification of what you committed to that customer is what goes into the pack.”

And coupled with cold-chain technology, the mushroom can be stored at the optimum temperature to provide the best product to the end consumer.

For the U.S. mushroom industry to reap those benefits, Macleod says, many growers need to upgrade to more modern production styles that are essentially more robot-ready. In Europe and Canada, more than 90% of growers use the Dutch production style, whereas in the U.S., that number is around 25% to 30%.

“There’s this transition that has to happen within the U.S. — to transition from old infrastructure to new infrastructure, to allow automation to happen in the U.S.,” he says.

Innov8.ag Turns Harvest Data Into a Morning Playbook

Wed, 18 Mar 2026 23:28:10 GMT

Innov8.ag has released its HarvestReplay, a service that transforms data into a decision-making tool. It looks at an operation’s labor, crop production and harvest management and provides daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal insights.

The company says HarvestReplay delivers these insights into online visualizations and customized daily audio briefings with three key features:

Replay history — Deep, retrospective analysis in geospatial views that turns multiyear harvest and labor records into reports and benchmarks showing true cost per unit, block and variety performance and the economics of past harvest decisions.
Replay live — Same‑day and in‑day feedback layered on GPS labor tracking, with benchmarks and alerts to flag issues like station congestion, slowdowns or misallocated crews so managers can reassign in the same shift.
Replay podcast — An artificial intelligence-generated, multilingual, interactive private audio intelligence briefing built from a grower’s own harvest data, tailored for each key farm role, delivered daily, weekly, monthly or seasonally to match operational needs.

HarvestReplay is built on more than a decade of commercial harvest data, which includes 12.3 million recorded farm labor hours and 11.1 million captured GPS events, according to Innov8.ag. The service also integrates proprietary and public data sources, such as university research, labor modeling and aggregated benchmarks from technology, research and industry partners.

HarvestReplay can also connect field data with packinghouse outcomes to create a closed-loop system to better inform how a crop was harvested, how it graded and performed postharvest.

‘Remember When?’ With Context

Innov8.ag founder and CEO Steve Mantle says HarvestReplay takes the historical data of an operation and provides data and context in a more modern “Remember when?” that growers so fondly speak of.

Mantle says this daily audio briefing can provide information such as the forecast ahead so growers can better anticipate potential weather interruptions, trends and context around production. He says this is all with the intention of helping growers better understand current trends and also places to improve.

Instead of relying on spreadsheets and raw data, HarvestReplay helps a grower see things differently, Mantle says.

“Where it’s not just reliant on memory alone,” he says.

The audio briefings, Mantle says, help set a grower’s agenda for the day.

“This is like a game film review for Friday,” he says, adding that most HarvestReplay users listen to the briefing to start the day and then check in and see the HarvestReplay data in real time.

“This audio intelligence briefing shows what happened yesterday and what could have gone differently, then that turns into today’s playbook,” he says. “Then [growers] can also log in and check what’s happening in the moment on that day.”

Mantle says that information gleaned before the day begins can have a big impact on the day’s productivity.

“We see actually trends up hour to hour to hour to hour,” he says. “So, getting it right, right out the door where your people are knocking out of the ballpark, that’s where your bang for the buck is.”

The audio playbook is interactive, he says, where growers can push a button to ask for the top things to know about that day or for more context.

Rollout And Pricing

As of now, HarvestReplay is for current Innov8.ag customers growing blueberries, cherries and apples, Mantle says. He says the company has the most confidence in the data already in its system, but plans a broader rollout in 2027.

Pricing is at scale, he adds.

Return on investment, Mantle says, has a high potential, especially as HarvestReplay informs more efficiencies on the farm.

“When your farmers are running big crews, say 1,000 or more, even a few points of labor productivity has this massive impact straight to their profitability,” he says. “A 7% to 8% improvement in a 1,000-worker operation, doing something like just optimizing harvest station placements so workers spend less time walking, with scale it can actually translate into a seven-figure savings.”

Innov8.ag estimates HarvestReplay can offer an estimated savings of:

$25,000 to $100,000 for small-scale farms (less than 100 workers).
$100,000 to $250,000 for medium-scale operations (100 to 999 workers).
$250,000 to $750,000 and up for large-scale agribusinesses (1,000-plus workers).

Lighting Up the Ranch for the Next Generation of Agriculture

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 22:29:51 GMT

Connectivity is a significant hurdle to the future of smart farming, says Don Cameron, vice president and general manager of Terranova Ranch. He says he’s wanted to add Wi-Fi and connected devices for a long time to better automate farm tasks, especially irrigation.

Once Cameron started working with high-speed internet service provider Cal.net, he began to explore broader implications of smart farming at Terranova Ranch. Later, he connected with Emergent, an ag tech company that provides an automation platform for the ranch.

Taking Manual Work Out of the Field

Cameron says that Emergent’s dashboard helped Terranova track irrigation on the ranch’s 2,200 acres of processing tomatoes instead of crews manually operating valves.

“We had guys going around every seven hours or eight hours, opening and closing valves to irrigate subsurface drip irrigation on tomatoes,” he says. “For every 75 acres, we have three valves.”

Cameron says this system is critical as groundwater management becomes a greater focus in farming in California. He says Terranova has specific allocations on groundwater use, so there are accurate records of irrigation as well as even applications.

“We’re seeing allocations on how much groundwater we can pump in certain areas here, and so being able to use water efficiently is really imperative for us,” he says. “As we move forward with groundwater management, it’s going to become extremely important.”

Cameron says Terranova benefits not only from accurate irrigation records through this precision irrigation application, but he’s also seen reduced labor and vehicle use.

“We can change the irrigation schedule from a phone. We do deficit irrigation as we approach harvest, so we can make these changes relatively easily,” he explains. “We can get better-quality crops, higher-yielding crops, and save water. We can irrigate during off-peak periods with electricity.”

Cameron says all of this is critically important as water use is the No. 1 issue California growers face. The more information he has on water usage, distribution and more, the better, he says.

“The more information we have, the more data we have on our water usage and even what’s going on with our wells, our pumping,” he says. “To me, that data is going to be even more important in the future because of the regulations we have here in California and how valuable water really is.”

Cameron says Terranova farms in four groundwater sustainability agencies, which have slashed the amount of water allocated.

“Next year, they’re cutting the amount of water to be pumped from the underground to 1 acre-foot per acre,” he says. “And a crop of tomatoes typically takes 2.5 acre-feet. Almonds could use as many as 4 acre-feet. So, you understand really quickly how important data is when we’re talking about exactly about water and crops that we can grow for the future and planning for the future.”

Building a Digital Paper Trail for Compliance

Cameron says Emergent’s platform has opened the door to where he can monitor much more of the farm beyond the irrigation.

Smart farming’s reach extends to well monitoring with AgMonitor and electronic timecards on workers’ phones, both of which he says are to stay in compliance with regulatory issues. Workers clock out for breaks, and having that electronic record is critical.

“If we ever get an issue with labor and proving our guys took breaks at the right time, believe me, this is a really important thing to have,” he says.

The timecards feed into Terranova’s payroll program, which has eliminated some manual work, Cameron says.

He also uses fixed-wing photos that take NDVI images to show moisture stress.

“This gives us assurance of what we’re doing with our irrigation,” he says.

Cameron has also placed trackers on Terranova’s sprayers, which helps monitor efficiency (and inefficiencies) on the ranch.

“We know if they miss a row,” he says. “We know how long it takes them to fill the sprayer, and if they’re spraying or if they’re screwing around.”

Vetting the Next Wave of Technology

Cameron says crop selection, in light of potential water use restrictions, will play a bigger role in the future of agriculture in California.

“They’re going to have to use conservation measures, and they’re going to have to use their water much differently than they have in the past,” he says.

Cameron, who has been a pioneer in groundwater recharge, says it’s critical to renew aquifers and prevent downstream damage during flooding.

Cameron switched to subsurface drip irrigation in 2009, and he says he saw not only water savings but better yields.

Connectivity also will play a major role in the future of agriculture, but he says there’s still much work needed in improving rural access.

“What we’re doing now, I think with IoT [internet-of-things] technology, I think is going to be really helpful long term,” he says.

Cameron has also experimented with automated weeders. The challenge with automated weeders, however, is that they have to pencil out in terms of speed and cost, he explains.

“What I’d love to see in the future is more automation in weeding, better technology, faster technology and lower-cost technology,” he says.

Cameron also hopes the future brings more integration of CRISPR technology with built-in disease resistance, “along with other new traits to make what we grow more flavorful, healthier, and more resilient,” he adds.

As for being a pioneer in the integration of technology, Cameron says he views taking a chance as being critically important.

“Sometimes you just have to say, ‘Look, we’re going to try this, and hopefully it’s going to work well, and let’s get behind it and give it a chance, and it solves a problem that we have,’” he says. “Typically, what happens is it works out well, and if it doesn’t, we stop.”

Catalytic Generators Shares 2026 Global Expansion Strategy, Smart Ripening Innovation at Fruit Logistica 2026

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 20:42:03 GMT

BERLIN — At the recent Fruit Logistica 2026, Catalytic Generators, a family-owned company providing ethylene application systems for fruit ripening, shared its worldwide expansion strategy and offered an advance look at its soon-to-be-released digital control and remote monitoring for fruit ripening operations worldwide.

While the Norfolk, Va.-based company operates across the globe, supplying fresh produce companies, grocery distribution centers and growers with the tools to ripen bananas, avocados, tomatoes and more, banana ripening is a core part of Catalytic Generators’ business — something that’s critical to get right, says president and CEO Greg Akins.

“When fruit is ripened properly, evenly and to the right color, there’s less shrink and consumers return with their tastebuds,” Akins says.

Inside a ripening room in Europe.

(Photo courtesy of Catalytic Generators)

Helping to get the ripening process right is Catalytic Generators’ different conversion settings that allow users to set the parts per meter of ethylene.

“It’s set-it and forget-it technology, which is valuable because there’s no measuring required,” he says.

Safety is Key

Safety is another key tenet of Catalytic Generators’ business, Akins says.

“Our generators are very good at creating ethylene efficiently and safely, which is the hallmark of our business,” he says.

The company’s generators are certified by TÜV SÜD, a global, accredited technical services provider. Through rigorous testing of its generators and frequent inspections of its production facility, TÜV SÜD has certified Catalytic Generators’ compliance with international safety standards.

“TÜV is akin to UL [Underwriters Laboratories],” Akins says. “It shows our products have met the highest safety standards.”

Catalytic Generators manufactures both ethylene generators and ethylene concentrate.

The company says it’s working with an EU task force to ensure ethylene is reregistered as a legal and safe plant protection product while pursuing the necessary product approvals.

A Solution for Every Operation

The company offers a variety of sizes to suit the needs of different operations. At Fruit Logistica, the company showcased one of its Easy-Ripe models that is compact and narrow to help prevent it being hit by a forklift — something Akins says is a common issue. It’s also wall mountable.

For larger ripening centers, Catalytic Generators offers a centralized system that pumps ethylene liquid to every room through a tube that feeds the generators, so there’s no need to walk around and fill them, Akins says.

Smarter Ripening

Catalytic Generators says its core value proposition is to create a system designed to make ethylene application the easiest, safest and most predictable part of the ripening process.

“Once customers see how simple and dependable our system is in day-to-day use, the conversation quickly moves from ‘Why change?’ to ‘How fast can we implement?’” Akins says.

And it’s about to get even easier, he says.

At Fruit Logistica, Akins teased the company’s newest innovation that’s expected to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026: a digital platform that wirelessly connects its ethylene generators to a secure, cloud-based interface.

Through a dedicated web portal, customers will be able to view generator status in real time, confirm when ethylene application starts and ends or is interrupted, monitor Ethy-Gen II levels and receive alerts if performance is affected.

This gives operators confidence that ethylene application is correctly occurring during the critical 24-hour application period, Akins says. Generators can also be adjusted remotely and integrated with room control systems for optimized ethylene levels.

“This innovation gives ripeners peace of mind when it matters most,” Akins said in a news release. “Ethylene already works quietly in the background. Digital visibility will take it one step further by removing uncertainty and reinforcing our promise that ethylene should be the easiest part of ripening.”

What You Need to Know About Protecting Your Reputation in the Age of AI

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 12:14:31 GMT

BERLIN — As generative artificial intelligence continues to reshape how information is created, distributed and consumed, protecting your personal and business brand reputation has never been more important.

At the International Fresh Produce Association Executive Leadership Summit Europe on Feb. 3, the day prior to the start of Fruit Logistica 2026, Pete Wilson, partner and head of digital reputation for EMEA FleishmanHillard, addressed a room of produce industry leaders on the topic of “Trust, Intelligence and Influence: Protecting Brand Reputation in an AI-Driven World.”

“I’m a reputation management guy,” Wilson said. “And I’ve been asked to talk to you about managing your reputation through marketing and communications.”

Just three years ago, business communications were human to human. Sure, we had spell check and Google finishing our sentences, says Wilson, but it was all driven by humans.

“Three-and-a-half years after ChatGPT came on the market, we’re only at this point now where humans and machines are working together,” he says. “And initially it was just a chatbot, which was quite a lot of fun.”

Next came AI-generated images, which were easily identifiable as fake. Then last year OpenAI Sora came onto the market, and that meant we could create videos that weren’t real.

“The market is moving extraordinarily fast,” Wilson says. “That’s the first thing we have bear in mind ... We don’t know what’s coming, but we can guess already it’ll be machine plus human, as opposed to human plus machine.”

6 Key Things to Know About Communications and AI

Wilson highlighted the following in this new world of marketing and communications.

1. AI Shapes Reputation

While it may seem obvious, Wilson says, the key is it’s not passive any longer.

“AI is actively shaping your reputation,” he says. “This should matter to you, because AI is shaping your reputation, not just you personally, but also your business and your sector. And it’s being done all the time.”

Consider that there are 2.5 billion prompts in ChatGPT every day that come from virtually nothing, he says. Three years ago, Google got 15 billion searches a day.

ChatGPT is catching up to Google, and quickly. While it isn’t the only large language model out there, it is the dominant player, Wilson says. Another fact to consider, he says, is that 20% of all content on YouTube is fake, and creating fake content on Facebook is also easy to do.

2. Trust Is Being Outsourced to AI

Do a Google search and you now get an AI summary overview — a condensed response of everything on the internet.

“When you used to ask a question, you’d say, ‘Provide me with everything about BMW 3 Series,’ and you’d get a series of links. They’re called blue bits,” Wilson says. “Now, if you said to Google, provide me [with everything I need to know] they’re going to know about a BMW 3 Series, it’d say, ‘That’s quite a car, right?’

“Why is it doing that? It’s providing a value judgment,” he says. “It’s algorithmically programmed to summarize and provide a value judgment. Now imagine that’s your business that I’m asking a question of.”

People can ask if they think your business is trustworthy, and you might not like ChatGPT’s answer.

Google and ChatGPT aren’t just going to provide a bunch of links. They’re programmed to keep you interacting, Wilson says.

“All of this means Google wants to keep you in its program,” he says. “That’s not surprising. Facebook does. Meta does. They all want to keep you in their program. They don’t want you walking away. They want you to interact with the results so you stay exactly where you are.

“That’s worrying for e-commerce businesses,” he adds.

3. AI Collapses Time in a Crisis

“What does that mean? In the old days, when you’ve had a crisis, a reputational crisis, you had time on your side,” Wilson says. “I expect you had a media consultant or a crisis consultant who would say to you, sit put, sit tight, do nothing. And you’d wait, and you’d wait.”

Then you’d consult your social and legal playbooks and finally decide how to move forward.

“Nowadays, that time is gone,” he says. “You can’t sit around and have a meeting, because by that time, something else has already happened.”

And misinformation and disinformation can spread like wildfire in the age of AI.

4. AI Lowers the Cost and the Practical Consequences of Disinformation

Wilson shared the story of someone who created a fake company with fake products and a fake website to see if he could trick ChatGPT and other large language models. He then wrote reviews about his products in three well-known blogs. He put reviews up there, saying what great products they were.

He then created an FAQ section on the same fake website that specifically said the company was fake, the reviews not true, etc.

But because ChatGPT is geared up to look for earned answers, it continued to generate answers to questions about the fake company that were based on the initial lies.

“That means ... that these large language models continue to get it wrong,” Wilson says.

Why? Because earned “content” has more weight than what you say about your own business, he says.

“Five to 10 years ago, disinformation could only be done at government level or very, very high level, because it cost a lot of money,” he says. “Nowadays, I could do it at home. You could do it at home. You could take down a business, almost on your own at home, because disinformation is that easy to do.

“Disinformation is a real problem, and it’s not just on a government-, foreign-acting level now,” Wilson continues. “It’s really at an individual level.”

Disinformation isn’t just done casually in a vacuum; it’s done where there’s an emotional appeal attached to it.

5. Disinformation That Pulls at the Heartstrings

When there’s an emotional appeal, Wilson says, that makes the disinformation stick.

6. AI Doesn’t Care; It Just Pretends to

“AI is an algorithm. It’s a predictive algorithm. It’s a series of words in a known order,” Wilson says. “Actually, it doesn’t care. It just tells you what it thinks you want to hear. Because every time it learns from what you ask it, and it thinks, ‘Oh, that person is easy. They liked it. That means I’m doing the right thing.’ It doesn’t care; it’s just built to succeed.”

5 Things We Can Do About it Now

Wilson recommends taking the following actions today.

1. Stress Test Your Reputation

Find out what large language models think about you. Put your brand or business into any of those large language models, and it will have an opinion of you. Either you as an individual or your business or both.

Find out what large language models say about you, because you may have a problem without realizing it.

2. Decide What You Want to Do About That

You will have a reputation, and now you need to decide how much data you want to put in the system. We want to have a balance of negative and positive in the system. To give these systems a bit of credit, they will always look for balance. They will look for the bad and the good — the contrary views.

3. Put Yourself Out There

Speak in public more often. Stand on a stage and speak in public. Get on your LinkedIn channels. Do videos. Be active. Be proactive.

“You as individuals, and your C-suite, your leadership, are very difficult to impersonate,” Wilson says. “If you don’t speak often, then any one of you can be personated.”

4. Have a Crisis Plan

Use AI to build an automated playbook that you can operate within an instant of the crisis going on, Wilson says. You could use AI to create 50 responses to possible crises. You also can use AI to monitor your brand, the media message of your brand and the social message of your brand or business. You should be doing that already. The more you listen to now, the more prepared you are.

5. Have an AI Governance Policy

Prepare an AI governance policy for every employee in your operation who uses AI.

Simbe Launches Tally 4.0 with Advanced Physical AI

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 20:35:26 GMT

Simbe has unveiled Tally 4.0, the most sophisticated evolution of its industry-leading autonomous robot. As the flagship hardware for Simbe’s Store Intelligence platform, Tally 4.0 represents a decade of innovation in Physical AI.

The latest model introduces significant breakthroughs in edge computing, vision systems and battery run time. These upgrades allow Tally to navigate even the most complex environments, including the high-traffic produce aisle, with speed and accuracy. By transforming every shelf into a real-time data source, Tally 4.0 provides retailers with the ground-truth insights needed to eliminate out-of-stocks and optimize store operations in the modern era.

According to Jeff Gee, co-founder and chief design officer for Simbe Robotics, Tally 4.0 is designed to operate seamlessly in fresh departments like produce, where conditions change constantly.

“Using enhanced vision, depth sensing and expanded 360-degree coverage, Tally 4.0 autonomously scans open displays, bins and shelves throughout the day to capture real-time availability, pricing and placement,” Gee says. “That data flows directly to store teams, providing associates a clear, up-to-date view of what needs attention, without requiring manual walks or interrupting shoppers.”

How will Tally 4.0 benefit retailers in the produce aisle?

“Produce teams operate in a constant cycle of replenishment, rotation and quality checks, yet they’re often making decisions with incomplete information,” Gee says. “Tally 4.0 gives retailers a dependable, always-on view of produce execution, allowing associates to start their shifts with clear priorities instead of manual walks. That reduces wasted effort, supports fresher displays and helps teams spend more time with shoppers. For shoppers, the impact is immediate: better availability, cleaner execution and greater confidence in the department. At scale, this consistency across stores helps retailers reduce waste, protect margin and deliver a fresh experience shoppers can trust.”

With up to 12 hours of runtime, new ultra-high-resolution and specialty cameras, expanded 3D and 360° coverage, and the full-stack NVIDIA AI infrastructure platform, Tally 4.0 captures more of the store, more often, and delivers insights into what’s in stock, how it’s priced and where it’s placed faster than ever before, the company says, adding that Tally retains the same beloved, shopper-friendly form factor, reinforcing Simbe’s commitment to thoughtful, human-centered innovation.

“Tally 4.0 represents what 10 years of collaboration with the world’s best retailers makes possible,” Gee says. “While the robot is faster, sharper and more capable, its design has stood the test of time. Tally 4.0 stays true to the principle that has guided us since Day 1: technology should serve people.”

With these improvements, the company says Tally further cements itself as the robotics foundation for retail’s modern AI tech stack, empowering Simbe clients to not just capture, measure and execute upon shelf-level data more effectively but to strategically transform their businesses at large.

A New Era for Store Intelligence

The retail operating model has fundamentally changed. AI and automation are now essential to how the physical store operates, and Simbe says it has pioneered this shift for a decade. From Tally 1.0’s debut as the world’s first autonomous shelf-scanning robot, to the additions of Tally RFID and Tally Spot, to the introduction of Tally 4.0, Simbe has evolved alongside its clients and the ever-changing retail environment. Today, the company says it offers the only AI-driven, physically multimodal platform capable of operating in any environment from regional grocer to big box store to national hardware chain.

With Tally 4.0, Simbe delivers the foundational data layer for the physical store, connecting shelf conditions to the decisions that shape initial use cases, including on-shelf availability, price and promotion accuracy, and item location precision, while further elevating store team and shoppers’ experiences with more mature applications for planogram compliance, forecasting, replenishment, omnichannel fulfillment and merchandising.

“The future of retail depends on closing the gap between digital decision-making and physical execution,” says Brad Bogolea, co-founder and CEO of Simbe. “With Tally 4, we’re delivering the next foundation of shelf-level data infrastructure that connects the two, giving retailers a trusted source of ground truth to power AI-driven operations at enterprise scale.”

“Running physical AI at the edge is critical to making robots and humans work better together in retail environments,” says Azita Martin, vice president and general manager of AI for retail and CPG for NVIDIA. “Simbe’s Tally 4.0 robots, supported by NVIDIA’s full-stack AI infrastructure platform, demonstrate the power of real-time AI, enabling retailers to turn shelf data into immediate, high-impact decisions at the store level, as well as massive operational decisions at enterprise scale.”

Tally 4.0 will be available to Simbe customers starting mid-2026.

Kakadoodle and Spira Farms Prototype a Tech-Enabled Local Supply Chain

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 12:14:17 GMT

In the traditional local food model, the seasonal gap and fragmented logistics have long been the Achilles’ heel of regional produce. However, a high-tech collaboration in the Midwest between Kakadoodle, a decentralized distribution hub, and Spira Farms, an indoor vertical microgreens operation, is providing a blueprint for a resilient, year-round supply chain that mirrors industrial efficiency through artificial intelligence and deep technical integration.

For Marty and MariKate Thomas, founders of Kakadoodle , scaling a local food business to $60,000 in monthly revenue required a fundamental shift in how “local” is branded. Marty Thomas argues that the modern consumer, who typically shops at conventional grocers, craves the polish and reliability of established institutions.

A former software engineer who pivoted to agriculture following a personal battle with cancer, Thomas’ Kakadoodle has evolved from a small pastured-egg operation into a sophisticated decentralized distribution hub. Headquartered in a state-of-the-art facility in Frankfort, Ill., the company serves as an “online farmers market” for over 600 households, aggregating chemical-free products from more than 30 regional producers.

Marty and MariKate Thomas’ company, Kakadoodle, serves as an “online farmers market” for over 600 households, aggregating chemical-free products from more than 30 regional producers.

(Photo courtesy of Kakadoodle)

By replacing traditional marketing with “vibe coding,” using AI to build custom logistics and communication software, Thomas has created a tech-forward marketplace that prioritizes convenience and institutional trust, proving that local food can compete with the reliability of big-box grocers.

“I think our modern consumer would trust the chicken at Chick-fil-A more than they would trust going to the farm and buying chicken from the farmer,” Thomas says. To meet this expectation of professionalism, Kakadoodle leverages AI and high-quality branding:

AI-Enhanced Visuals: The company uses AI to transform low-quality product photos into high-end, “beautiful” imagery suitable for a digital marketplace.
Institutional Reliability: Rather than relying on traditional marketing, which Thomas says never worked, they focus on “boring” fundamentals such as maintaining a high percentage of “perfect deliveries” to build institutional trust.
Tactile Professionalism: The brand invests in high-quality, bright yellow branded grocery bags that act as a mobile marketing tool at markets and on doorsteps.

Kakadoodle isn’t just a delivery service; it’s a software-first enterprise. Thomas uses a method called “vibe coding,” using AI to write and debug code via natural language. This allows the hub to operate with the agility of a large tech firm without the overhead of a massive IT staff.

“I don’t even write code anymore,” Thomas says. Instead, he uses AI as a “group of 10 software engineers” to diagnose logistics errors. For instance, when a customer recently had two deliveries scheduled for the same day, Thomas told the AI to find the error in the logs, write a fix and create a debugging script to prevent a recurrence. This automated backend allows the business to scale customer communication via AI-managed SMS, allowing them to manage accounts and upsell products with extreme efficiency.

Spira Farms: Solving the “Basket Size” Problem

While Kakadoodle manages the interface, Spira Farms provides the consistent, climate-controlled production required to sustain a year-round model. Operating out of a 6,000-square-foot vertical warehouse, Spira grows approximately 40 varieties of greens on an outracking system.

Founded by Chris Borek, the family-run Spira Farms specializes in nutrient-dense microgreens grown in a climate-controlled outracking system that uses 95% less water than traditional field farming.

(Photo courtesy of Spira Farms)

Founded by Chris Borek, the farm specializes in nutrient-dense microgreens grown in a climate-controlled outracking system that uses 95% less water than traditional field farming. By using solar power and compostable packaging, Spira eliminates the volatility of the Midwestern climate to provide a consistent, year-round harvest. More than just a greenhouse, the farm functions as a data-driven production engine, using custom software to track 40 varieties of greens at the tray level and syncing its planting cycles directly with consumer demand.

For Borek, the partnership with Kakadoodle solved the primary headache of small-scale farming: logistics. Historically, home delivery for niche products like microgreens failed because “basket sizes” weren’t large enough to be cost-effective.

“What Kakadoodle is doing ... they are able to create that basket where it makes sense to deliver directly to consumers,” Borek says.

The integration is more than just a vendor relationship; it is a digital handshake, he says.

Data-Linked Planting: Thomas and Borek built a custom API bridge that allows Spira’s internal application to extract order data from Kakadoodle weeks in advance.
Precision Harvest: This allows Spira to plant exact amounts based on projected demand rather than speculative yields.

The Season of Survival and AI-Optimized Margins

As they look toward 2026, both companies are using AI to navigate after a “season of survival” in 2025. For Kakadoodle, this means using AI to maintain a strict 50% margin. This focus was sharpened after Thomas discovered that rising cattle commodity prices had quietly pushed their cost of goods for ground beef to $10.50, putting the business in “dangerous territory.”

Now, AI automatically calculates costs across complex value-added products, tracking everything from the initial carcass purchase to secondary processing for items such as hot dogs and bacon. By using AI to provide alerts when margins “creep up,” Kakadoodle aims to reach a $100,000 monthly break-even point. This synthesis of AI-driven logistics and precision vertical farming isn’t just about local food, Thomas says, it’s about building a smarter, more profitable local food industry.

Your Next Read: In the Year of the Cooperative, Rural Grocers Find Power in Partnership

Ask These Questions Before Taking the Plunge on New Precision Ag Tech

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 22:52:11 GMT

Editor’s note: This is the fourth of a series on questions growers should ask before investing in new ag tech. Because fresh produce is a high-value segment of agriculture, there are a lot of options available to spend money on, but asking the right questions before a purchase can save time, money and headache.

A lot of tech out there today either runs on data, generates data or both. Whether this is a connected internet-of-things-style irrigation sensor or a logging program to keep track of driver miles or a system that tracks harvest records that ties to payroll, there are some questions you should ask if data is involved in a new ag tech purchase.

They include:

Do I have what I need for this tech to be useful to me?
How usable (and actionable) will the data be?
How can I use that data with artificial intelligence (AI)?
Is this tech (and its supplier) right for me?
Does it work with my business’ workflow?

No. 1: Do I have what I need for this tech?

This one might seem a bit basic, but it still bears asking. You can’t really have a useful “internet of things” system if, for example, you can’t get an internet connection out to your orchard.

Lack of connectivity was a reoccurring issue that Liz Turner, marketing and special project coordinator for Croptracker, a precision ag tech software provider serving the fresh produce industry, encountered in her work early on.

“People were not taking into account that a lot of the data capture needed to happen where there wasn’t a lot of signal. And so missing data became an issue,” she says. That pushed Croptracker to develop offline data collection strategies. So, if your answer to “Do I have sufficient connectivity for this system to work?” is no, then you should likely ask the ag tech supplier if they have a system that can handle offline data collection.

But checking in on if you have what is needed for a data-focused ag tech system or solution can be less direct too. Because it takes a lot of data to help get the most out of data-focused ag tech, Chris Higgins, general manager of Hort Americas, a components and materials supplier for CEA growers, stresses the importance of having historical data well organized.

“Five years ago, I would have said that the largest growers were not even ready to have the tech conversation because their data was unorganized,” he says. The large growers have gotten organized since then, he adds, but smaller growers are still struggling with data.

“The smaller growers are battling the fact that, ‘Oh yeah, one guy knows all of this data.’ Now getting that guy to sit down and put it into an Excel spreadsheet is very, very challenging,” Higgins says.

Turner specifically recommends growers have an eye to the future of data — i.e. AI — when they think about the organization of their historical data.

“Thinking about ways that you’re organizing and maintaining your historical records, even without a big clear vision about how AI is going to replace XYZ processes in your operation, is really important because that historic data can become really valuable for future AI uses,” Turner says.

She urges growers to think about how their historic records and data, things like production practices and fertilization records versus yield records, might fuel a personalized predictive model in the future.

“It’s important to consider that you’re not just capturing [that data] for now or for a government regulation,” she continues. “You can be capturing it for the future. That historic data that’s specific to your farm and your location and your varieties is very valuable to you and should be treated as such.”

No. 2: How usable will the data be?

This was the most common recommendation from all sources The Packer talked to when it comes to investing in a new precision ag system or data-generating sensor. It’s a key question because, if the data coming out of the system isn’t usable to you, there’s little point in investing in it.

Unusable data will just become an expensive dust (or storage space) collector, as Steve Mantle, CEO and founder of Innov8.ag, a data- and AI-focused tech consulting group that works with permanent crop produce growers, experienced.

“There was one grower I met with recently who had a stack of basically two reams of paper soil fertility reports, and you could tell they’ve been sitting there for several months,” he says. The grower told Mantle he’d “paged through” the data a bit, “but, it was clear that it wasn’t really actionable for them. It stopped at the owner’s desk. It hadn’t trickled down to those other tiers that actually could make a difference with that data.”

Turner also highlights the importance of the data being usable to the right people in your organization. This involves thinking about who will be using the data and what format that data should take to be most useful to them.

“For the most part, people at a desk making decisions about packing or quality or sales aren’t going to be able to look through every single QC form,” she says. “So it’s thinking about not just ‘I need all of this information,’ but ‘I need my sales desk to be able to look at a single screen and read that information in a way that can actually action on it.’”

Actionability, the correct next step, is the key difference between useful tool generating usable data and a cluttered dashboard according to Roy Levinson, commercial lead for digital farming and water meters at Netafim North America.

“Remember that information is great, but if you don’t have the tools to actually execute on the information you are gathering, you are wasting resources,” he explains. “Be sure that if you are implementing a tool that gathers information, you then will also have the ability to apply changes because there is nothing worse than not having the ability to do anything when you know you should.”

No. 3: What can the data do with the help of AI?

Mantle recommends growers ask AI-related questions of their suppliers when it comes to selecting a new data-generating ag tech product or system.

For example, he suggests growers ask how the data, once extracted, could be used and translated by non-proprietary AI tools.

“I think a really good way to ask tech providers is: ‘How can I use other tools like large language models that are relatively accessible to people now to input and think about this data differently?’” he suggests.

“If the answer is you can’t or haven’t thought about it or ‘Let’s have a discussion about it,’ then maybe you’re not talking to the to the right guys,” he adds.

No. 4: Is this tech and its supplier the right one for me?

Mark Lukenbill, commercial leader at MileMaker, a trucking-focused software solutions arm of Rand McNally, also suggests growers ask some specific questions about the suppliers of any data-focused ag tech under consideration. For example, what is that supplier’s security history?

“Security is important,” he stresses, adding that growers should ask about data breaches and potentially steer clear of companies that have had them.

When it comes to the specific sensor system or program or other precision ag item you are considering, Lukenbill also urges growers to ask: “Will this put me into tech debt?”

“For instance, if I go buy an iPhone 11 right now, I’m in tech debt because even though it’s a new phone to me, that phone’s going to be obsolete in two years,” he explains.

The risks of going into tech debt by investing in older technology include the limitations of that older technology compared to competitors, plus needing to upgrade more often and sooner than otherwise, Lukenbill adds.

“Implementing especially big, big tech inside your business is a big undertaking,” he continues. “It’s going to create a lot of friction. There’s costs. The fewer times that you can do it over X period of time, the better off you’re going to be.”

No. 5: Does the tech work with my (team’s) flow?

Speaking of the potential of causing friction in your business or on your team, Turner recommends growers ask if a system or new data-generating tech item works with how things already work on your operation. She pointed to wisdom learned in supporting berry growers with harvest tracking and payroll solutions.

“[Berry pickers’] pay depends on them moving quick, so delays where you are making them wait and stop so that you can take account of that inventory is detrimental to everyone’s productivity,” she notes. “Is your software able to support that speed or does it slow it down?”

She gave the example of an inventory system that allows for quick picker badge scan followed by scanning in of the berry totes compared to a system that requires someone to type even one number into a device. While the former allows everyone to move in their rapid flow, the potential slowdown of the latter could mean it’s more efficient for everyone “to count everything at the end while the workers are doing something else,” she explains.

“Whereas the benefit of having it in real time means that traceability is more secure, it’s more one-to-one, you’re less likely to make mistakes,” Turner says. “But if that process is too slow, then it’s not worth it.”

Basically, if a potential new system or device doesn’t work with the existing workflow, it might be skipped, bypassed or otherwise not used to its fullest potential. Which means the team or people who will have to use it need to be consulted, she says.

“The biggest things that we try to get people to ask is ‘Who should be involved in making the decision?’” Turner says.

This usually translates to ‘Who’s going to be the most impacted?’ she adds. “Our most successful onboarding for payroll processes and inventory tracking and things like that happen when the person who’s going to use that data for reporting and payroll is in conversation with the person who’s on the field capturing that data.”

This usually means bringing in, at least, the field supervisors into the decision soon “so that they can test out the flows,” Turner says.

Next week’s installment of the Tech Questions series will dive into this topic even more by focusing on what questions growers should ask their team before investing in new ag tech. Catch the rest of the series here:

Technology to the Rescue in 2025

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 11:33:21 GMT

Not all the big headlines in 2025 were doom and gloom. The Packer’s technology coverage often highlighted the hopeful and helpful ways the produce industry is growing and adapting the changing conditions.

By it’s very nature, most ag tech is helping arm the growers of today for the realities of tomorrow.

For example, in mid-March, The Packer’s Jennifer Strailey talked with FarmWise CEO Tjarko Leifer about how the business’ restructuring was helping it prepare for the next chapter in ag robotics with its precision weeding technology. That new chapter involved being acquired by Taylor Farms , which had previously implemented FarmWise’s Vulcan technology and saw a reduction in its weeding costs of nearly $550,000 as a result.

“We believe in the FarmWise technology and think we have an important role to play with industry adoption in the specialty crop space,” said the president of Taylor Farms agricultural operations. “This acquisition is another step forward in our mission to drive the future of agriculture with thoughtful and impactful innovation.”

Reducing Food Waste With an Apps

In late August, The Packer’s Jill Dutton looked into how various apps are changing the way retailers deal with unsold food items approaching their sell-by dates, thereby preventing food waste. The three food waste-reducing apps in focus in the story are Too Good To Go and Flashfood, both geared towards connecting retailers with individual consumers in need of lower-cost options, and Careit, which connects retailers to nonprofits and community organizations in their areas for food donations.

Apps like these have a big potential to not only reduce food and especially produce waste, Dutton’s sources said, but also benefit retailers financially as well.

“The ability to sell more product, even at a discounted price, suggests greater food access could be achieved while recouping previously lost revenue,” one source said. “Additionally, applications that enable more accurate forecasting, facilitate coordination of logistics and optimize inventory management could prevent food from going to waste all along the supply chain.”

A Visceral Type of Technology

For a long time, consumers have shunned GMO foods. But in early September, Strailey sat down with Nathan Pumplin , CEO of Norfolk Healthy Produce, the company behind the Empress Purple Tomato, which is bioengineered to have more antioxidants. He said that consumers are hungry for change and starting to see through GMOs’ past bad publicity.

“When the first GMOs were launched, they were really marketed to farmers, and the innovative farmers said, ‘OK, there’s these new GMO crops, do I want to use them?’ And they very quickly saw, ‘Wow, this solves a lot of problems for me. Yes, I want to adopt them,’” said Pumplin.

“What was forgotten was that it was food being produced and sold to consumers, and consumers never had an opportunity to engage with GMOs in the food system,” he added.

But that has changed. Pumplin reported that 80% of consumers the company surveyed about the purple GMO tomato said they were interested to extremely interested in trying it.

Technology in Defense of Tech

In late October, The Packer’s Christina Herrick did a deep dive on a device to deter copper theft called Cop-R-Lock. The brainchild of a former law enforcement official and customizable farming automation company Farmblox, the Cop-R-Lock device aims to reduce or even eliminate the costly issue of copper thefts on farms.

“Every pump site, depending on its location, has upwards of a 40% chance of being hit every year by a thief,” said the Farmblox CEO. “Every time it happens, it’s between like $8,000 and $100,000 just for fixing the equipment, not minding the cost to the crop for the lack of irrigation for weeks on end, sometimes months.”

Working much like a home security system for your farm equipment, the system involves a wire wrapped around and inside the irrigation system’s conduit. When cut by a potential copper theif, an alarm goes off. The system will text the grower and also alert local law enforcement in the area, in an effort to help prevent and respond to copper thefts while they are happening.

These were some of the top tech stories The Packer covered in 2025, and there will be plenty more coverage in 2026, which you can find here .

Questions to Get Into the Nitty-Gritty Details on Ag Tech

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 22:39:35 GMT

Editor’s note: This is the third of a series on questions growers should ask before investing in new ag tech. Because fresh produce is a high-value segment of agriculture, there are a lot of options available to spend money on, but asking the right questions before a purchase can save time, money and headache.

OK, you’ve decided on a general genre of new tech that might improve things on your operation. You might even be looking at specific items, systems, services or suppliers. Maybe you’ve even made contact with a seller and are considering something specific. But there are some general questions you should ask about it first.

No. 1: Ask all the detail questions for the future

This is a bit of a cheat because it’s actually a bunch of questions. Still, it helps to think about the nitty-gritty, small-print details that can impact the beginning (and potential end) of your relationship with items of ag tech and the companies that make them before investing.

These questions might include:

Does the company have a customer success team? Ongoing training for its products?
For physical tech, what is the warranty? What voids that warranty?
For apps or programs, what is the subscription model? What’s included in this subscription versus that subscription? What happens if I end my subscription?
For anything that generates data, who owns that data? Do I have access to it? Who else has access to it?

Charlie Anderson, CEO of autonomous robot company Burro AI, recommends growers look for companies that have customer success teams, i.e. dedicated people whose job it is to make sure their company’s tech works for you and is meeting your needs. It’s especially important they get into the field with clients, he adds.

“If [they’re] not on site, it’s really hard to know what’s actually going on,” he says, pointing to his own company’s emphasis on having Spanish-speaking customer support teams that work directly with grower’s on-the-ground crews.

Steve Mantle — CEO and founder of Innov8.ag, a data-and-AI-focused tech consulting group that works with permanent crop produce growers — says growers should ask a lot of nuanced detail questions for any piece of ag tech that involves data or uses a subscription model. By their very nature, subscription-based services are likely to be transient, so keep the likely end of that relationship in mind with your questions before you ever sign up.

“If I stop subscribing, can I pull the data out?” he gives as an example. “A critical piece that often growers don’t ask is: What does that look like in terms of pulling the data out? Is it actually usable to me in the future?”

Mantle points out there are many different data formats out there, and they aren’t all created equal when it comes to usability. How human-readable is it? How machine-readable is it? Asking questions about data format beforehand could prevent a situation where a company technically turns your data over to you, but functionally leaves you with something unusuable.

No. 2: What happens when something goes wrong?

Along a similar mindset, it’s important to ask questions about what happens when something fails. This again can involve a number of questions growers should ask their supplier before investing:

Are you (or your service technicians) local?
What kind of repair or maintenance services do you offer?
What are the usual maintenance costs and needs of this item?
How user-friendly is fixing this thing if I need to do it myself?

Dan Ovadya — co-founder and CEO of FloraGen Tech, an ag tech innovation company for the controlled environment agriculture industry — stresses how important it is to ask questions about replacement parts for anything you’re investing in.

“Let’s say you’re going to invest in a very high-end fertigation system,” he offers as an example. “We’re talking water treatment, multiple injectors, a lot of different stock tanks and sensor equipment to monitor pH and EC. And when that stuff breaks in a controlled environment hydroponic system, you have less than 24 hours to correct that problem.”

“If you call up a Dutch company and they’re like, ‘well, it’s a holiday now and we’re out of the office, and we’ll get into you in three weeks,’ no — your crop’s going to be dead by then,” he says.

But even outside the realm of CEA, the question of parts availability can even be something as simple as what sizing system is involved.

“You even start getting into metric system versus U.S. units for things like irrigation,” Ovadya says. “If something breaks and you’re in metric system, you’re not going to [be able to] run down to the hardware store and fix that.”

No. 3: How will this work with what I already have?

Unless you are in the unique positions of either starting a produce operation from scratch or completely revamping your entire operation, you already have tech systems.

Roy Levinson, commercial lead for digital farming and water meters at Netafim North America, stresses that the right new ag tech investment will complement a grower’s existing systems and infrastructure, not clash with it. So, making sure any new tech items will “play nice” with the old is a must.

Speaking from the perspective of irrigation management systems like Netafim provides, he says: “The right system should integrate with your current valves, flow meters and sensors, so you can phase in your tech at the pace you prefer. Technology that builds on your operation’s strengths will serve your operations now and in the long run as it evolves.”

Also speaking from a service perspective of ag tech, Mark Lukenbill — commercial leader at MileMaker, a trucking-focused software solutions arm of Rand McNally — stresses the need to make sure any program or data system you select can grow with you and your operation. For example, if you don’t already have a cloud-based strategy, does the supplier have an on-premises service now with the ability to go to the cloud later?

“That’s something that everybody’s going to have to do at some point,” he says.

He recommends some other questions along a similar line, including:

Can the app or program be configured to the needs of my business?
Will I have to change how I do things to use this program/service?
Will the provider continue to release new features that are going to help my operation keep improving?

“There’s going to be a level where it plateaus,” Lukenbill says of new systems. “I’m going to see savings in that first year, maybe even the second year, but then what about year three through 10?”

No. 4: Will this make me stand out from my competition?

Or, phrased another way: How will this help my relationship with my clients?

Speaking from the world of trucking and logistics, Lukenbill says every single day companies that need to move produce get calls saying, ‘Hey, I can do it better. I can do it cheaper. I can give you better service. Give me a shot.’

“So, what’s going to make you stand out?” he asks. “Is it going to create a competitive advantage with your client? Are there benefits for your client?”

He recommends those looking to invest in new ag tech think about how a potential investment can help their relationship with their clients. He also suggests they think about how they can use that investment in conversations with clients, something like ‘Hey, we’re implementing this new technology, and here’s how it’s going to help me serve you better.”

No. 5: Why am I thinking of investing in THIS new tech?

Chris Higgins — general manager of Hort Americas, a components and materials supplier for CEA growers — says when he was trained in sales, he was taught to focus on why a prospective client wanted to buy something.

“Do they want to buy something because they like to be the leaders in tech?” he asks. “Are they techies? Do they want to buy something because they’ve witnessed their four other neighbors buy it? Do they have a true problem that they need to solve?”

All of these different reasons are justifiable, he adds. But it helps to know what your individual motivations are for any given piece of new ag tech before you purchase or subscribe.

“The right solutions for tech for each company vary. I don’t think there’s one path to success in this, and we’re all comfortable making investments for different reasons,” he says. “So, my closing comment is: Really do it for what’s important to you.”

Catch the rest of the Tech Questions series here:

Steve Mantle on How to Make Data Actionable for Growers

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 21:55:03 GMT

As Steve Mantle, founder and CEO of Innov8.ag, an ag tech company that provides data-driven solutions to growers, began working in agriculture, he says he underestimated the complexity of agriculture with its layers and layers of information that growers process to make decisions.

In the latest episode of “The Packer Podcast,” Mantle shares the importance of actionable data to improve operations. He says back when Innov8.ag started six years ago he quickly learned the variation between crops, regions and even growers.

“Every farm wants to do something slightly different and has different processes,” he says. “The toughest one, I think, was realizing that the tech adoption pace in farms is much slower than it is in pure tech and in B2C and B2B type scenarios. Realizing that the pace depends on personal relationships and the value of field-ready solutions, not just theoretical potential.”

Mantle says it’s easy for ag tech companies to get lost in the idea of a big picture solution, but for many growers, simple changes can have a huge impact.

He shares how one blueberry and cherry grower that uses Innov8.ag’s FairPick system learned that 15% of workers weren’t covering the minimum wage with the crops picked. So, the grower took those workers and worked on retraining and allocating to other projects, and the other 85% of workers picked an additional 10 minutes.

“That identifies as about $4,500 a day in savings,” he says. “So that quickly adds up, obviously, in a month.”

He says Innov8.ag has a project with the U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council, which equipped automated harvesters with cameras. He says one camera pointed down at the bins, which would be filled with blueberries as the harvester ran and then another positioned at the back of the harvester to see what was left on the blueberry bushes and what fell to the ground. He says this helps growers understand what’s happening with the harvesters.

“Bringing that all together is really key to making it actionable,” Mantle says of adding technology. “It’s all about the layers of the data and thinking about the data in different ways. And it really comes down to your process management at the end of the day, too, on being able to take action on it.”

One thing he’s seen is the greater need of growers on clarity of the data being generated, and this is the role technology plays in helping growers better understand the meaning behind the data.

“What works in apples could be different for blueberries or row crops, but the demand for trusted data is absolutely universal, and as tech providers, it’s our responsibility to ensure that we understand the complexity of each crop and each region,” he says. “Not going in arrogantly believing that what works in one place works in another or that we have all the answers; always be listening is really key.”

He says he approaches solutions for growers by asking the simple question: What keeps you up at night? And from there, he sees what types of data points, or lack thereof, creates stress for the growers.

“Quality is key that ties into profitability,” he says. “Often, we’ll hear people talk about, ‘Oh boy, how do I keep people working or more productive more of the time? How do I make sure that they’re not standing in line for different things?’” he says. “How to even just check out and check in, how do we make their [growers’] lives more simple? So, it’s just getting down in the brass tacks around pain points and challenges.”

And for growers seeking to turn data into action, he recommends starting with the basic question: What problem do you have that you need to solve right now?

Mantle says this is where collaboration between growers, tech companies and organizations plays a critical role.

“It’s important to collaborate closely between growers and researchers and tech innovators,” he says. “But often we’ll go to these research days, and it’s like, ‘All right, yeah, but that’s not going to apply to my field.’ So, feedback really accelerates meaningful innovation.”

How a Sticker Can Help the Produce Industry Fight Food Waste

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 13:36:00 GMT

Ryp Labs CEO and co-founder Moody Soliman didn’t necessarily intend to start out in the fresh produce industry, but after working in medical devices, he encountered sticker technology that could extend the shelf life of fresh produce.

“I’ve always worked on technologies that can impact people’s lives,” he says, adding that he then turned his focus to food waste. “We started to realize that this is just a massive problem.”

That challenge is one on a huge scale, according to Soliman, who says every minute people waste enough food to feed more than 1 million people and release tons of greenhouse gases.

“It’s environmental, social and economic, and it’s experienced all across the supply chain from the farm all the way down to the consumer,” he says.

And that’s around the time he and his co-founder came across technology, created by a young entrepreneur from Malaysia, that extended fresh produce shelf life.

“We figured out that if it’s going to be an impactful solution that’s really going to make a difference, it has to be very easy to use, can be applied anywhere along the supply chain, scalable, and very importantly, can be adopted by the largest distributors and packers in the world down to the smallest smallholder farmer,” Soliman says.

What Does Ryp Labs Do?

Ryp’s main product is StixFresh, which is a food-safe sticker coated with 100% natural food-grade bioactive formulation that inhibits fungal growth. It’s also OMRI listed in the U.S.

“You can apply our sticker to the fruit, or to a package of the fruit, and it releases those natural bioactive and can extend the shelf life anywhere from 40% to 100%, depending, of course, on the use case conditions,” Soliman says.

He explains there are essentially three ways that produce decomposes: through oxidation and dehydration; through the production of ethylene; and through pathological and microbial damage.

“Essentially what we’ve done is we’ve taken how plants have been defending themselves for millions of years and we’ve repurposed it to now extend the shelf life of fresh produce,” he says. “We just inhibit the fungal growth in the vapor phase.”

Soliman says an important part of what Ryp Labs has introduced is that its technology is easy to integrate into the supply chain. Ryp’s formulation is applied to the surface of a standard PLU sticker.

“One of the challenges that we saw and learned from earlier on is if you’re adding anything into the supply chain, it’s going to hinder the adoption of the technology,” he says.

Ryp Labs also has sachets with the same bioactive formulation.

Soliman says the company uses volume-based pricing for its technology.

“As we get higher and higher volumes, we can bring the cost down considerably,” he says. “Today, we estimate that based on their losses, if we’re talking about a very high-value, short shelf-life produce, they can see up to 300% ROI. For every dollar they’re spending on the technology, they can get $3 back.”

Where the Future May Lead

Soliman says one goal is to get to a scale to bring costs down to a place where it is a fit with more produce commodities.

“Our ultimate goal is that this technology becomes readily available and becomes an industry standard,” he says. “Of course, it’s a huge challenge, especially in this industry. We, you know, learn sometimes the hard way of how risk-averse people are and how conservative they are and slow they are to adoption, but we’re definitely making our way there.”

Latin and South America and Southeast Asia have been very interested in Ryp’s technology, Soliman says.

“When you go down to South America and Latin America, they want to ship their produce further, longer distances into the U.S. and into Europe, and that’s where they see a lot of breaks in the cold chain and a lot of issues happening, and that’s where they can get higher prices for their produce, so they’re a lot more excited about something new,” he says.

While Soliman says it’s been harder to get into Japan, he sees strong potential for strawberries.

“That’s why Japan is actually an ideal customer for us, because of very expensive, high-end strawberries; they pick them so they don’t sacrifice the quality, but then it means it goes bad a lot quicker,” he says.

Soliman says he also sees potential for packaging to contain the bioactive materials as well.

“It’s going to take time, but eventually we want to get to the point where that customer, [with] the box they’ve been buying off the shelf for the last 20 years, they can just now pick one up and the box itself is going to keep their produce fresh,” he says.

Ready to Invest in Ag Tech? 5 ROI Questions to Ask First

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:32:24 GMT

Editor’s note: This is the second of a series on questions growers should ask before investing in new ag tech. Because fresh produce is a high-value segment of agriculture, there are a lot of options available to spend money on, but asking the right questions before a purchase can save time, money and headache.

Once the existential questions are out of the way, any grower thinking about new ag tech needs to turn a questioning mind to the balance sheets; specifically, the question of return on investment.

Aaron Fields, CEO of Campo Caribe, a Caribbean-based controlled environment agriculture company, told attendees of a summer webinar hosted by Indoor Ag Conversations that every ag tech decision has to revolve around ROI.

“Is this helping my lettuce, my plant, my produce, grow faster so that I can create more in a set amount of time? Or is it taking away cost to add value because I can’t necessarily make that lettuce worth more money to somebody else, but I can produce it cheaper?” he asked.

His questions highlighted the four key areas of focus in a technology audit : grow revenue, increase productivity, reduce costs and make operations smoother. If a technology doesn’t impact one of those, he said growers really have to question whether it’s worth it.

He explained: “I think everyone should ask themselves that when making any decision: What’s the ROI on this, and does it really make my life better?”

Asking what is the ROI can be a bit daunting, however, given its centrality to an operation. Here are some ROI-focused questions to ask yourself when zeroing in on a new piece of ag tech.

No. 1: Where will I likely see the highest ROI, anyway?

As mentioned in the first installment of this series, Chris Higgins, general manager of Hort Americas, a components and materials supplier for CEA growers, recommends growers look to their expenses. There they can find where any improvement, especially technological, will most likely be worth their time.

“If you have something that’s allocated as 1% of your expenses, maybe that’s not worth trying to fix today,” he says. “If it falls in that 1% of cost category, you can probably go make that money back faster by just selling more product at a higher price.”

If it represents, say, 50% of expenses, then that’s an area where even a small bit of improvement will pay off, he adds. That translates to a higher likelihood of ROI. Alternatively, he recommends looking at expense areas that have an outsized impact on yield as a potential area where a good ROI is likely.

“I like to take it back to their income statement and their profit and loss statement, because that then helps that small business entrepreneur determine if it’s worth their time,” he says. “If they can identify the things that are most important to them, the tasks that might seem very daunting become more important.”

No. 2: What level of tech is needed?

Say the problem you’re trying to solve or the goal you’re trying to achieve has pointed you toward, for example, some level of CEA. Would you invest in a proverbial (or literal) glasshouse when a high tunnel would work? Of course not.

“If you want to grow 100,000 pounds of tomatoes, you can grow it in a high-tech glass house, a semi-closed, a retractable roof, a poly house, a tunnel or a field,” Richard Vollebregt, CEO of greenhouse roof company Cravo Equipment Ltd., said during the webinar. “They all grow 100,000 pounds of tomatoes, but how much capital did you need to grow them? And what was your cost per pound to grow that tomato?”

He noted that most consumers and retailers don’t care about the specifics of how a piece of produce was grown, so long as it meets spec, is there when it needs to be and is available at an acceptable price. With that in mind, he said growers need to focus on the finances involved with growing.

“You need to figure out what is the profitable production system that’s going to make your capex [capital expenditures] efficient and minimize your opex [operating expenses] and hit the highest price window you can to generate the most revenue per acre or per hectare,” Vollebregt said. “It doesn’t matter what crop or what country you’re in, that’s the fundamental starting point.”

No. 3: Will it help me prevent problems before they get expensive?

Going back to the four key focuses of a technology audit, Roy Levinson, commercial lead for digital farming and water meters at Netafim North America, recommends looking to reduce expenses by proactively preventing problems before they start — or at least before they get expensive — with potential new ag-tech items.

“Some of the most significant unwanted expenses in fresh produce operations come from avoidable issues, like missed fertigation windows, leaky valves, burned-out pumps or nutrient imbalances,” he says.

Some of the most practical technology, and thereby most likely to have a good ROI, for dealing with these issues “will give you the visibility and control to catch problems when they happen,” he adds.

“Alerts can be set up to warn you, for example, when the operating pressure drops or irrigation schedules conflict or give you reminders for routine maintenance,” Levinson says. “This round-the-clock monitoring frees people up so they can focus on evaluating growth rates, emitter checks or other high-value tasks.”

No. 4: Is the ROI compelling for my operation?

Charlie Anderson, CEO of autonomous robot company Burro AI, says that a lot of growers start with the question “will this piece of tech work for my operation technically?” where the focus is on the “working technically” part of the question. But almost anything can be made to work technically, he says.

Instead, he recommends growers assume the technology will work technically and ask if it will work financially and logistically for them.

“Oftentimes, the technology working is actually a much smaller portion of the risk. And the larger portion of the risk is, if the technology works, can it yield a compelling return in my operation? And can it do it in the real world with real world people, not something that is more of a pilot?”

He advises growers identify their operation’s best use-case for a potential piece of new ag tech, particularly since most tech can do far more than one thing, and that can be a distraction.

“Generally speaking, it works best to figure out a high-utilization job that has to be done for many months out of the year, and preferably one that is easy to start with,” he says. “Begin by proving out the technology from a return perspective and also by proving it out to your team or to your crew.”

No. 5: Do I have the time to see the ROI?

Not all tech ROI is as easy to determine, either because of the tech itself or because of the operation to which it might be applied. Extended time commitments might be required to realize the ROI on a piece of tech, says James Reid, founder, owner and CEO of South African precision ag orchard machinery manufacturing company Red Ant Agri.

“In an annual environment, every year you can literally measure against the last year and against your neighbors and industry norms,” he says. “When you come to a perennial crop, like a fruit tree, you’ve now got to have a bit of faith because it’s going to take two or three years of doing the same things right before you’re going to see a difference.”

Even in an ideal situation where a new piece of machinery or a new process or management program is implemented well and is making good changes, those changes won’t likely be obvious overnight, Reid says.

“So, are you prepared to take this on as a medium to long-term commitment?” he asks.

Catch the rest of the Tech Questions series here:

GrubMarket CEO Reveals AI-Powered Benefits of Procurant Acquistion

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 18:29:09 GMT

Enterprise AI solutions provider GrubMarket has completed its acquisition of Los Gatos, Calif.-based Procurant, an SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform that streamlines fresh procurement, order management and regulatory compliance for the fresh food supply chain.

GrubMarket CEO Mike Xu says the move marks a strategic extension of the San Francisco-based company’s technology portfolio, allowing it to serve more needs of more customers in the food supply chain industry.

Procurant was also an attractive acquisition, as its products complement GrubMarket’s existing software suite, offering growth opportunities through either cross-selling to its existing, growing software customer base, or offering its software products to the newly acquired customers, Xu says.

“Procurant’s successful trading platform complements GrubMarket’s eCommerce technology, making purchasing even more efficient for GrubMarket’s internal companies,” Xu tells The Packer. “[It] allows us to integrate, build and offer AI-powered end-to-end procurement solutions to existing and new external customers.

“Procurant’s point solutions for compliance, food safety and collaboration can easily integrate with GrubMarket’s comprehensive, AI-Powered ERP, WholesaleWare, offering revenue growth opportunities,” Xu adds.

Founded in 2018 by CEO Eric Peters, Procurant was created as a modern, cloud-native alternative to legacy procurement systems in the fresh food industry. The platform supports real-time collaboration, operational efficiency and end-to-end visibility across the perishable goods supply chain.

Procurant offers a comprehensive suite of innovative tools, including Procurant One for procurement, Procurant Open Link for connecting suppliers with retailers and foodservice operators, Procurant Inspect for quality control, Procurant Trace for FSMA 204 traceability compliance, and Procurant SureCheck for food safety management, which processes over 1 million temperature checks daily and logs over 40 million food safety and checklist observations per month, according to a news release.

In total, Procurant connects more than 850 customers across 14 countries, facilitating $5.5 billion in gross merchandise volume annually. Its broad network includes major national retailers such as Costco, Walmart, Target and Albertsons Companies, along with growers, shippers and distributors throughout the U.S., as well as internationally, the release says.

Together, Procurant’s customers are responsible for more than 90% of all food sold in the U.S. The company’s experienced leadership team will continue to lead the company following the acquisition.

What Retailers Can Expect

Xu says the greatest benefit the Procurant acquisition provides to GrubMarket’s retail partners is “more comprehensive, AI-powered solutions powered by both Procurant’s proven trading capabilities and deep insight into retailers’ needs and wants, combined with GrubMarket’s unparalleled AI technology leadership.”

He adds that retail partners can also expect new integrations, innovative AI products built specifically for fresh food retailers, and configurable, end-to-end solutions.

“The addition of Procurant’s comprehensive solutions will not only benefit our growing base of GrubMarket software customers but also create powerful synergies across our own GrubMarket network,” Xu says in the release. “By integrating Procurant’s platform with our existing technology stack and AI development capabilities, we will deepen the impact of e-commerce internally and offer new AI-powered procurement solutions to the broader fresh food industry. We are uniquely positioned to accelerate digital transformation across the fresh food supply chain as a team, together.”

Synergies Across GrubMarket

GrubMarket says the acquisition creates synergies across multiple dimensions of its business. Procurant’s customers, which include major retailers and suppliers throughout the fresh food supply chain, will benefit from integration opportunities with GrubMarket’s comprehensive software and AI suite, including WholesaleWare , GrubAssist AI , Orders IO , and GrubPay, the company’s digital payments platform specifically designed for the needs of the food supply chain industry.

This acquisition will also offer GrubMarket’s existing software customers the opportunity to explore access to Procurant’s advanced trading network and procurement capabilities, creating a more comprehensive technology ecosystem, the release says. GrubMarket’s own network of subsidiary companies will be able to leverage Procurant’s platform to achieve greater procurement efficiency through cost savings, stronger supplier collaboration and new digital trading capabilities.

What’s Next

Grubmarket has steadily made strategic acquisitions in recent years, such as its June 2025 acquisition of San Diego-based Coast Citrus Distributors , a national distributor specializing in tropical fruits.

What are GrubMarket’s plans for continued expansion?

“GrubMarket will continue to maintain its leadership position as the enterprise AI solutions provider for the American food supply chain,” Xu says. “The go-forward strategy will continue to be multifaceted, including continued R&D and advanced AI tech development in-house, strategic external partnerships as well as acquisitions when and where the right opportunities arise.”

Walt Duflock Unpacks the Future of Farming and Ag Tech

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 23:40:52 GMT

Walt Duflock, senior vice president of Western Growers, doesn’t have “ag tech bouncer” in his title, but maybe he should. Duflock shares some of what makes his role at Western Growers unique on the latest episode of “The Packer Podcast.”

Duflock says his role and Western Growers’ role is to help ag tech startups on the journey from idea to real-world impacts. He estimates there’s more than 2,000 startups in the ag tech and biologicals space, and there’s about 2,300 members of Western Growers.

“There’s no way that any of them can take calls from all 2,000 vendors,” he says.

He says ag labor in the state of California costs growers $16.3 billion a year at around 850 million hours of farm labor. And two-thirds of that 850 million hour is harvest, which is a challenge to automate.

“We work hard to get the one-third of the non-harvest, the weeding, thinning, planting, spraying out there at scale,” he says.

So, Duflock says it’s his job to help these startups understand what’s needed every step in the development of a new innovation.

“Our role is to kind of be the chief coordinator, the general manager, if you will, of the space and help those startups understand: What do you need to know at the start? What do you need to know when you go into trials? What do you need to go that first time you talk to the grower? And what do you need to show that grower in terms of economics? That shows them your tool can come in and help them, not just by doing the job, but by doing the job in economics that work for them,” he says.

Duflock, a fifth-generation farmer with more than 30 years’ experience in Silicon Valley startups (including eBay), says ag tech is the toughest space for startups to operate in.

“No space requires more patience than ag tech, and that’s the one thing startups don’t all get a lot of,” he says. “If you took venture capital money and you got venture capital board members breathing down your neck to deliver, deliver, deliver, it can be really tough. So, the first thing we tell startups is listen, play for the long game and build a product that is going to do the job no matter how long it takes.”

Because with specialty crop agriculture being such a tight-knit community, he says, growers will talk.

“Inevitably, it’s not always the stuff that does work that gets shared with everybody, widely,” he says. “It’s quite often the stuff that didn’t work. So, they’ll warn their friends off of taking some bad pass, but they may hold the good stuff a little closer to their chest.”

Duflock says he coaches ag tech startups to tailor the message to the audience, whether that’s a grower or an investor. He says startups need to understand that when discussing innovations with growers, it’s about improving economics and experience working with growers of a similar type of operation. And startups need a healthy dose of patience.

“That’s the trick for startups, is we’re one of the slower-moving spaces, so people just have to adjust their time frames and expectations on that side,” he says.

One thing Duflock encourages growers and startups to do is focus on the economics. He tells growers it’s important to discuss their economics to make sure the innovations would truly make a difference to their bottom line. And, Duflock says he tells startups the same thing, if they’re not able to show exactly how the economics of the solution pans out for the grower.

“[I] tell the startups, look, if you can’t get to the level of detail, you’re not there,” he says. “You’re not ready to sell it, you’re ready to share your machine. You’re ready to demo, but you’re not ready to trial or offer a sale to anybody. So, keeping both sides focused on economics has been one of the big wins the last couple of years.”

IFCO Launches IFCO Digital, Earns 2025 Smart Solution Award

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 13:08:12 GMT

IFCO, a global provider of reusable packaging solutions for fresh foods, has launched IFCO Digital , featuring its new Tracking-as-a-Service (TaaS) solution the company says is a key milestone in its digital transformation journey. The innovation has also earned IFCO the Smart Solution Award 2025 at the Supply Chain Awards in Germany.

Since 1992, IFCO has championed circular logistics with its SmartCycle pooling model, ensuring reusable packaging containers (RPCs) are collected, cleaned and redeployed for reuse. With the introduction of its digital services, IFCO says it is taking this model to the next level, combining real-time tracking, AI and advanced data analytics to make supply chains smarter, more transparent and more efficient.

IFCO says its Digital TaaS solution enhances transparency, traceability and sustainability across supply chains

In today’s global supply chains, companies face challenges such as misplaced or stolen assets, inefficient return logistics and limited visibility into shipment conditions. These issues drive up costs and disrupt operations, creating a need for smarter, connected and sustainable solutions, the company says.

The new IFCO Digital TaaS solution uses Bluetooth Low Energy and GPS technology to provide real-time visibility into the location, temperature and condition of reusable crates and pallets throughout the supply chain.

“Our digital solutions have already enabled us to track more than 1 billion trips of reusable packaging containers — a milestone that reflects the scale and maturity of IFCO’s digital transformation,” says Sebastian Grams, chief digital officer at IFCO. “With Tracking-as-a-Service, we’re taking this even further, turning data into actionable insights that make our customers’ supply chains more transparent, efficient and sustainable.”

IFCO says its Digital TaaS solution is plug-and-play, requiring no infrastructure investment on the customer side. All connectivity is enabled through smart trackers attached directly to IFCO’s reusable crates and pallets, eliminating the need for gates or fixed installations. This simplicity makes the system easy to scale, fast to deploy and highly cost-efficient, according to the company.

IFCO says TaaS offers customers actionable insights that help them:

· Reduce asset and produce losses through precise real-time tracking
· Optimize use and reverse logistics, improving operational efficiency
· Enhance quality assurance by monitoring temperature-sensitive goods throughout transport to avoid food waste
· Support sustainability and ESG goals by minimizing waste and lowering carbon dioxide emissions

Pilots are already underway in collaboration with growers, retailers and logistics partners across North America and Europe.

Smart Solution Award 2025

Recognizing excellence in digital and sustainable supply chain management, the Smart Solution Award 2025 , presented by Logistik Heute and PwC Strategy&, highlights IFCO’s leadership in digital innovation and its commitment to developing scalable, sustainable solutions for the fresh supply chain industry, according to a news release.

IFCO says the recognition showcases how digitalization and circular business models can work hand in hand to make supply chains smarter, more efficient and environmentally responsible.

AgroFresh Expands Digital Ecosystem with AI-Powered Imaging, Analytics

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 12:30:16 GMT

AgroFresh Solutions has expanded its FreshCloud digital ecosystem through partnerships with Aerobotics, which specializes in orchard and packhouse analytics, and Neolithics, which specializes in in AI-powered quality inspection.

“What we’re doing at AgroFresh is trying to build more of a true end-to-end supply chain focus,” Bradford Warner, head of digital solutions for AgroFresh, told The Packer.

Warner says AgroFresh has intentionally sought out technology solutions to ease friction and lower waste within the fresh produce industry.

“These two solutions were one that we said, there’s a friction point preharvest and that what we’re doing typically, whether it’s citrus, grapes, apples, is we’re sending pretty well-trained agronomists out into fields with calipers and things like that,” he says. “We should be at a point now where we can handle this through imagery.”

And Warner says what was appealing about Aerobotics is users just needed an iPhone Pro or a smartphone with lidar capabilities.

Through this partnership with Aerobotics, AgroFresh integrates Aerobotics’ TrueFruit modules into FreshCloud to enable growers to analyze smartphone imagery. AgroFresh says growers using Aerobotics’ TrueFruit boost packouts by an average of 1% to 5%.

AgroFresh says Aerobotics enables growers to:

Measure fruit size, color and quality accurately and objectively
Improve harvest planning with accurate size forecasting, blemish detection and color grading models
Monitor quality with standardized measurements, from the orchard to the packhouse
View yield data in one place for informed decisions

“There’s still other data that’s kind of unknown preharvest,” Warner says, “But this is where we’re really focused in today. So, it’s size and color that gets you to a yield correlation and then looking towards obvious blemishes.”

Aerobotics’ TrueFruit can help improve packouts by an average of 1% to 5%.

(Photo courtesy of AgroFresh)

Warner says what was appealing about Neolithics is the ability to analyze berries, grapes or even avocados. He says through traditional quality analysis in packinghouses, there might be significant variance in the results or even the results might be misleading about the quality of the produce coming from that block.

“The human error factor gets magnified the more times you do those tests,” he says. “Neolithic stood out to us as having a real strong base to say there was a good hardware format but kind of like a kiosk could run these at a better volume so that the sample size goes up.”

Neolithics Light devices use AI and optical sensors to deliver fast, accurate and non-destructive quality analysis in real time. AgroFresh says Neolithics’ integration into FreshCloud offers packers technology that delivers quality assurance to match the speed and scale of the modern packhouse with above 90% accuracy.

AgroFresh says Neolithics offers:

High-throughput inspection, from 1 kilogram per minute for berries to over 6 tons per hour for avocados, scanning every piece for internal and external quality.
Measurement of key parameters such as Brix, acidity and dry matter, while detecting hidden internal and surface defects.

And then Warner says all the data gathered is compiled into FreshCloud to help provide both a grower report on quality and help track quality.

Warner says the additions of Neolithics and Aerobotics will help packers and distributors give accurate grading and help reduce waste. Integrating some of AgroFresh’s other solutions would help suppliers stand out, he adds.

“Suppliers could start to differentiate themselves on quality and not see rejections, not see the problems that are just part of our industry today,” Warner says.

AgroFresh seeks to build an entire traceability suite from preharvest to transit, he adds.

“We’ve been trying to build the FreshCloud platform with traceability in mind. Now we’ve already kind of solved for traceability like inside a packer,” Warner says. “But now we’re trying to solve for it from preharvest down through transit.”

AgTech Alliance Seeks to Unify Tech Efforts in California

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 12:43:59 GMT

The University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development have launched the California AgTech Alliance.

Gabriel Youtsey, chief innovation officer at UC ANR, says this new alliance will help build a collaborative network to help those working in the agtech space work together for the betterment of California agriculture. And this is part of a $15 million investment by the state of California in agtech.

“What it really means for California is there’s a recognition by the California State Government, beyond the California Department of Ag, to the broader state government, that agtech is an economic engine in its own right, if done well,” he says. “And that’s what this investment really represents is California investing in agtech as an economic driver alongside the ag ecosystem, to help strengthen it, to be more climate resilient and meet the state’s broader climate objectives, but also to grow jobs and support the farming communities.”

Nine regional hubs will be a part of the AgTech Alliance to trial new technology, train ag workers and more. Youtsey says the innovation hubs help put the focus on the specialty crops grown in each region, as not all agtech solutions work in all commodities.

“That’s the blessing and the curse of California, is we do so many things, and we grow so many things here,” he says. “Something that’s going to work in table grapes is not going to work in tree nuts or lettuce or vegetable crops. Maybe sometimes there are transferable things.”

The AgTech Alliance’s efforts have been bolstered by more than 50 partner organizations, including Western Growers, California Almond Board, the California Farm Bureau, and California Citrus Mutual and more. Youtsey says it’s important that the alliance develop creative funding models to develop this innovation to reduce the regulatory burdens and create more equitable solutions for growers.

“It can’t be on the backs of traditional venture investors,” he says. “It has to be a more holistic solution where farmers come to the table and invest … We’re looking for those holistic, kind of cross-sectoral wins but also to create both the hyper-specialized technology solutions to keep some of these pretty niche industries here in California working, but also are transferable across the broader specialty crop infrastructure.”

According to UC ANR, the alliance has three pillars:

Agtech deployment commercialization — to connect startups and researchers to growers with the network of field demonstration hubs as well as $2 million in innovation grants to support commercialization and adoption.
Workforce development and training — the alliance plans to expand training for new and established farmworkers through programs such as the Farm Robotics Challenge and Academy and AgSTEP Workforce Program as well as with partnerships with colleges and universities. The Alliance plans to use technical trialing, digital literacy and hands-on learning.
Regional collaboration and investment — Nine regional hubs span from the northern part of the state to the Imperial Valley to ensure innovation is locally informed and reaches the state’s diverse agricultural landscape.

Youtsey says a great example of why this collaboration is needed is the development of a tomato harvester for the processing tomato industry at UC Davis.

“Innovation is why we still have processing tomatoes in California,” he says.

And he says it’s critical that the industry also prepares the next generation of agtech workers as these new innovations take shape.

“If we think about a more integrated, holistic approach to innovation, where we develop automation solutions and, at the same time, we upskill these workers to participate in the operation of these new technologies, even while jobs are shifting to prepare workers to be in more of an agtech community,” he says.

This funding model also helps mitigate some of the risks involved with investing in agtech, Youtsey says. This way, growers can see firsthand the solutions that could make an impact on their farm, and the ultimate goal is to ensure Golden State farmers stay in the state.

“If we don’t find solutions, these crops are just going to keep getting exported to other places where, basically, labor is cheap,” he says. “I don’t believe it can last forever.

But Youtsey doesn’t see that crop exodus as being permanent and believes the AgTech Alliance can help solidify that future for California growers.

“We have to find ways to move these solutions forward here, and we just got to keep learning from the failures but coming up with new approaches to developing these solutions that work at scale and make sense for the grower to buy into these solutions,” he says.

Bonsai Robotics Debuts New Lineup

Tue, 21 Oct 2025 20:50:50 GMT

Bonsai Robotics debuted its new Amiga lineup at FIRA USA 2025. The company says this is a major milestone following its July acquisition of farm-ng. The company debuted the Amiga Flex, the first vehicle to be fully integrated with Bonsai Intelligence, alongside the Amiga Trax and Amiga Max.

Tyler Niday, CEO of Bonsai Robotics, told The Packer this new iteration of the v6 Amiga features is a machine that can outperform tractors in many use cases.

“With this release, it’s a really exciting time, because we’re coming out with the new version of the v6 which has more robust feature sets, more hardware,” he says. “It’s called the Flex. In addition, we’re coming out with the Trax, which is, I would say, a higher horsepower, low cost machine for, you know, medium-sized crops.”

The Amiga Flex is roughly the size of a small ATV with an 800-pound payload, a 700-pound lift and a 1,600-pound towing capacity. Bonsai says it can tow, carry or operate implements used in research, agriculture and light-soil work. This includes weeding, hauling materials, towing sprayers or mowers and scouting crops. It also has capabilities to enable sensors and autonomy research tools.

Amiga Flex comes with Bonsai Intelligence, which powers its vision-based autonomy for intelligent navigation, perception and task execution and a swapable battery system with more than 8 hours of run time per pack.

The company also debuted the Amiga Trax, a low-clearance vehicle for rugged outdoor environments and the Amiga Max, with heavy-duty capabilities. The Trax is ideal for vineyards, perennial crops, off-road work and more and offers towing, hauling and automation capabilities. The Amiga Max offers spraying, towing, hauling and lifting in bedded crops, orchards and more and is designed for tough terrain and heavy loads.

“This is the productized version in a strawberry form factor, and it is hybrid electric, not just electric,” Niday says of the Amiga Maxx.

Niday says the entire new line features updated batteries for longer run times.

What Niday says sets the new iterations of the Amiga line apart is the integration with Bonsai Pilot, a cloud-based application for growers to plan, monitor and manage autonomous operations, across the entire offerings. For growers, this means the entire product line runs off of Bonsai Pilot and generates data in one place.

“We’re now able to run all these machines off the Bonsai Pilot, which is our Bonsai autonomy app stack,” Niday says. “Previously, farm-ng didn’t have an app, and we fundamentally believe you need A-to-B navigation and being able to run plans. I think it’s a huge feature set unlocked, not only from the hardware perspective, but also to be able to run these machines fully autonomously.”

Agtonomy CEO on Saving Farms from ‘Farmageddon’

Wed, 15 Oct 2025 11:34:01 GMT

Tim Bucher, CEO and co-founder of agricultural technology company Agtonomy, says he created the prototype that would become the company’s first autonomous tractor to save his farm, but in doing so, he says he’s developed something that has a much broader appeal.

From Farmer to Engineer

Bucher’s background is unique. Raised a dairy farmer, he says he has always had a love of tractors, and he designed, fixed and repaired his family’s tractors. He says he always knew he wanted to be a farmer.

“I fell in love with the growing of grapes, because all of my friends were growing grapes in Sonoma County, Calif., and were mostly Italian immigrants,” he says. “I learned how to prune grapes probably by the age of 8. I learned how to make wine by the age of 10, and I bought my first vineyard at 16.”

He named his vineyard Trattore Farms, which means tractor in Italian and is a nod to his love of tractors. He also grows olives for olive oil processing. He studied agriculture at the University of California, Davis, and he says one computer course changed the trajectory of his future.

“I went in a farmer, and I came out a farmer and an engineer,” he says.

Bucher then went on to study computer science at Stanford University while still farming. He says he deployed various high-tech implements on his vineyard, from systems for automatic water recycling, computer-controlled fermentation tanks and more.

Bucher also has had a long career in the tech space, including executive roles at Apple, Microsoft and Dell.

“My engineering background and my farming background allowed me to do agtech for decades before the word agtech existed,” he says. “I can do anything from anywhere in the world, and it’s allowed me to be in Silicon Valley at the same time as well. There was one thing I hadn’t automated, though, and that was the field work.”

Bucher says things on Trattore Farms were good — until about seven to 10 years ago when he realized his farming expenses outpaced the growth of his farm’s revenue, which he called “farmageddon.”

“As I started to dig into it, I realized that the amount of money that I’m paying on labor is just going up and up and up,” he says. “Eighty percent of your labor force is needed preharvest and postharvest — whether it’s in the pruning activities, the mowing activities, the fertilizing, the plant cultivation or spraying. If labor is the biggest part of my expense and I’m going underwater here, and of that, if 80% is preharvest and postharvest work, why can’t I automate some of this?”

Agtonomy has an orchard simulator at its headquarters, where each pole symbolizes a tree. In this simulator, a Kubota M5-112 senses what is a tree and what is not.

(Photo: Christina Herrick)

Idea to Prototype

Bucher says that with the massive amount of money put into researching self-driving cars, he saw potential for some of that knowledge to be deployed in agriculture. He named his first prototype Spirit after the NASA Mars rover.

“On the one hand, the technology for self-driving cars is much harder from a navigation standpoint, but on the other hand, the work that you’re doing in agriculture is much more difficult, because you’re not just navigating the vehicle from Point A to Point B,” he says. “You’re doing work along the way, and that work has to be correct.”

And it was after showing the prototype to a friend, who became a co-founder, that he realized he had created something with potential.

“I built this prototype with some friends and then showed it to my other colleagues from Silicon Valley, and said, ‘Look at what we built to save Trattore Farms. And one of my co-founders, Valerie, said, ‘This is not about saving Trattore. It’s about saving the world,’ and we started a company.”

An Agtonomy-enabled Bobcat CT4045 runs in the Agtonomy vineyard simulation, where each pole immitates a grapevine.

(Photo: Christina Herrick)

Prototype to Fields

Bucher says one thing he realized early on is that, despite his love of tractors, he knew the solution he created would need to work with OEMs instead of creating a whole new tractor company.

“There is nobody in the world who would want to build a tractor company more than me, but the farmer hat in me said that would be the stupidest thing in the world to do,” he says. “Why? Because growers need those trusted brands. They need the dealer network. They need the parts and the service, right? This equipment is for the livelihood of the business. Trusting it to some fly-by-night startup, you’re not even going to get the traction.”

He says he also knew that equipment manufacturers need solutions that looked to the future. Instead of creating a retrofit kit, he saw the importance of embedding the autonomous technology in the vehicle itself for better performance and lower costs.

Agtonomy currently works with both Kubota and Bobcat to integrate the Agtonomy solution into its product line.

“That’s what we built Agtonomy for is, first and foremost, to help with the challenges that growers are having just getting the work done, not being able to get labor, or having labor that just costs too much, where they go out of business, but do it in a way that is not a paradigm shift,” he says. “It basically just falls in line with how they work today. They love the OEMs.”

Bucher says he also felt it was important the solution he created be something a grower could buy, instead of a farming service. He says he wanted to develop something that a grower could operate from a tablet or a smartphone.

“We want to enable somebody, anyone who doesn’t have any experience in tractor driving or equipment operation, to be able to manage an entire fleet of these super smart machines from the palm of their hand,” he says.

He adds that he also knew the autonomous tractors need to work in various environments, often in locations with little to no cellular service. All Agtonomy-enabled equipment comes with integrated cellular and Starlink connectivity. Bucher says the Agtonomy-enabled tractors’ software platform features advanced vision-based navigation.

“They can actually change their behavior based upon the situation that they find themselves in,” he says. “Software that has a great understanding of this great situational awareness to know, you know what needs to be cut, what needs to be sprayed, how much to apply, how to navigate, you know, very precisely through these high value crops, how to check on the work and how to do it all in the way that the growers are used to doing it, by keeping them in control.”

He says after several years of customer data, he says he’s seen some pretty significant fuel savings for customers operating Agtonomy-enabled tractors.

“What happens is, a human operating doesn’t always set the RPM exactly the same,” he says. “Every time the person doesn’t lift the implement at exactly the right time, every time drop it at exactly the right time, every time doesn’t actually optimize the routing, either. Well, computers can do that perfectly every single time. We have customers that are citing 20% to 30% in fuel savings, which is massive.”

The other thing he says he’s noticed is the change in how Agtonomy customers see the role of tractor driver evolving into a new type of operator.

“Ninety percent of our customers use existing operators and upskill them to manage the fleets, and they love it,” he says. “But then there are customers that can’t even get anyone, and what they’re doing now is, instead of advertising for tractor drivers, they’re advertising for agtech operators. And in the job description, one of the requirements is video game experience. Now, what automation is doing is bringing a new labor force into the picture and the technology now excites them. It’s Farmville for real, and that’s something that I’m really excited about.”

How AI is Revolutionizing Mushroom Harvesting

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 15:27:08 GMT

4AG Robotics CEO Sean O’Connor says he founded the autonomous harvesting company with mushrooms in mind because he saw an opportunity to address labor shortages in agriculture.

“We thought through where is the largest issues when it comes to access to labor, the mushroom industry was clear No. 1,” he says. “Largely just because of the way the crop growth goes. The crop doubles in size every day. So, it grows by 4% an hour. It grows in a fairly chaotic manner, and so you have to be able to stay on top of the beds when they’re in that harvesting cycle. And because of that, there’s no seasonality to mushroom harvesting.”

And the 365-day nature of mushroom cultivation presented a unique opportunity and challenge, something he says fascinated the 4AG Robotics team.

“It’s also the most difficult crop to automate harvesting for,” he says. “It’s more delicate than a strawberry, more delicate than a tomato. It bruises easily. It splits easily. How you pick the mushrooms has a massive impact on the yield that a farm can produce.”

O’Connor also says he saw an opportunity to use data to help mushroom growers better understand the best time to harvest the mushrooms to maximize revenue.

“If you pick a mushroom at four o’clock in the afternoon, but the right time to pick is four o’clock the next morning, that’s 12 hours more growth,” he says. “That’s 48% more growth or revenue that you’re able to derive from that mushroom if you’re able to pick it at the exact time it should be fixed.”

He says that while it wasn’t exactly quick to develop the autonomous solution, he says it works on Dutch track growing systems, with no need to modify production systems to make it work. And he says customers wanting to add more harvesters helped push the company to this next funding round.

“That was really the catalyst for this financing, is that we’ve got robots that work,” he says. “We’ve got customers that want a lot more of them. And now we need to figure out how do we scale our manufacturing and scale the business?”

Riding the Mushroom Waves

He says the company has been riding the mushroom wave of growing interest among consumers, seeking out new flavors and eating experiences.

“You have this wonderful crop that’s literally growing at an extraordinary rate, and people are being able to scoop up more of it,” he says. “I think for us, we always knew that it was going to be a stable crop, one that was going to be a part of people’s diets.”

But O’Connor acknowledges automating mushroom harvest, or really harvest in general, has been a challenge for agtech companies. He says he and the 4AG Robotics team believed that with a specific approach, they could provide a solution. And artificial intelligence (AI) has really helped bring more actionable information to growers to make better harvesting decisions, he adds.

“The industry itself has gotten us to a place where we can make decisions with variable information that we couldn’t do when we had to build software or use heuristic methodology to make decisions,” O’Connor says. “That’s really powerful when you’re talking about optimizing when to pick each specific object that’s growing at such a quick rate.”

Future Goals

And as for the future? O’Connor says he expects to see some big changes in the mushroom industry quickly. While many farms converted to the Dutch track growing system in the late 1980s, he sees a similar precipice in the mushroom industry, where farms will decide on whether or not automation is a fit in the future.

“If they’re right, and they commit, they’re going to have a cost to them of being able to produce mushrooms at 60%, 70%, 80% of their competition, because you have a crop that turns over every week into revenue,” he says. “You’re effectively going to be seeing the farms that automate, scale and consolidate the industry, and those who don’t see financial woes and end up having to either be consolidated or go out of business.”

This summer, 4AG Robotics’ Series B funding round closed at 40 million Canadian dollars. Cibus Capital, an investment firm focused on sustainable food and agriculture, was the co-lead for this round. O’Connor says this funding will help the company get its technology into the hands of more growers and also help existing customers add more harvesters.

While his technology might seem like it could work in different commodities, as of now, O’Connor says the 4AG Robotics team doesn’t plan to expand into other crops in the foreseeable future. He says 4AG Robotics’ focus is on maximizing revenue for mushroom growers.

“We’re already seeing this now on one of our farms that we’ve gone from being a labor replacement solution into a yield generating solution that we’re no longer just giving you the same amount of mushrooms, but without the labor costs, but we can provide an increase in your yield every week, because our robots can pick for 24 hours a day and pick a mushroom exactly and should be picked,” he says.

O’Connor sees AI playing a greater role in the future of the company, where a grower can understand the quality of the clusters and weight as well as looking to yield forecasting and communicating that to customers.

“It won’t take us long to be able to say at the start of the week, if we see what the bed is looking like, we can communicate to the farm what they have to sell to their customers in advance of actually being able to pick it, in advance and starting its process of expiration,” he says. “All these little things where we can just give a slightly better logistics engine to these farms to become the operating system allows them to be most efficient using the artificial intelligence that we create or adding more automation into the packing room of these farms as well, or other opportunities like that.”

Transforming Sunlight with Quantum Greenhouses

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 13:14:00 GMT

What if we can make light itself better for growing produce? And not by special lighting rigs requiring energy, but passively through greenhouse glass?

A recent USDA-funded study at the University of California, Davis, looked at exactly that.

The study compared lettuce grown in a standard glass greenhouse and one with laminated glass roof panels made with spectrum-shifting “quantum dot” technology during January and February. The results, recently published in the peer-reviewed journal “Materials Today Sustainability ,” found that the augmented glass boosted lettuce crop yields by almost 40% and increased nutrient concentrations.

“For glass greenhouse farmers looking to boost output while reducing energy inputs, this is a breakthrough,” says Hunter McDaniel, CEO of UbiQD, the company that produced the test roof panels.

“These results prove that the sun can be engineered passively through QD-infused glass to deliver more productive, resilient, and sustainable food systems,” McDaniel says.

Study and Findings

The test glass used in the study had a layer of quantum dots sandwiched between a pair of standard glass panes. UbiQD calls it UbiGro glass.

“Quantum dots (QDs) are vanishingly small nanoparticles of semiconductor material that are highly effective at manipulating color and light,” explains Eric Moody, UbiQD’s vice president of sales and marketing.

“If you filled a thimble with QDs, there are more QDs in the thimble than there are stars in the known universe,” says Damon Hebert, senior director of agriculture R&D at UbiQD and one of the report’s authors, trying to put QD’s size in context.

The effect of the QD-infused glass was to give the study’s lettuce plants more of the kind of light they need for growth.

“What this technology does is it shifts a small portion of the blue light and the UV light into the red light spectrum,” explains UC Davis’ Shamim Ahamed, lead researcher on the study. He notes that this is especially valuable when it’s cloudy or during the winter when red light is relatively low.

“This passive tailoring of the sun’s spectrum results in faster growth rates and higher yields,” summarizes Hebert.

According to the report, plants grown in the greenhouse with the UbiGro glass roof panels:

Were 37.8% heavier, meaning more edible yield.
Had more leaves (average 51 verus average 41 in the control greenhouse) and leaf area was increased by 38%.
Had 38% longer roots, meaning more water and nutrient uptake.
Had statistically significantly higher concentrations of nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, zinc and copper).

Top: Test greenhouse with the UbiGro Glass roof. Bottom: Control greenhouse with standard glass. The study was USDA-funded and conducted for four weeks in January and February 2025 in Davis, Calif.

(Photo courtesy of UbiQD)

Tech in Context

“It’s incredibly validating to see these spectral shifts result in measurable improvements in plant performance,” Moody says.

He notes that the company already produces plastic films for greenhouses using the spectrum-shifting QD technology targeting specific uses. But the study was the first deployment of quantum dot-integrated structural glass in agriculture.

“Our film products are already delivering strong results in commercial greenhouses around the world, and this new data supports our broader vision for integrating light-optimizing technologies — like our upcoming glass innovations — into agriculture at scale,” Moody says.

The UbiGro glass and film products are all examples of spectral engineering, Moody and Hebert explain. This includes everything from LED fixtures that can focus on specific light spectra to spectral netting and spray-on products that block specific parts of the spectrum.

“It is important to note that UbiGro Glass does not filter out parts of the sun’s rays but instead captures these UV and blue photons and converts them to red photons that spur photosynthesis in plants, pushing them to produce more fruit and grow faster,” Moody says.

Taking the Findings to the Future

Ahamed says that the most important part of the study’s finding is that, if light is an issue for greenhouse growers — such as during winter, on cloudy days, or during the early mornings or late evenings — the QD-infused glass can get more useable light to plants than standard glass.

“It really helps to reduce the overall cost of the production because of the increased production per unit area,” he adds.

Moody frames the findings in terms of efficiency.

“Just like the research we have done with our greenhouse plastics, growers should understand that our technology can help them produce more from their No. 1 resource — the sun,” he says. “While this research was conducted on a small scale it is basically the same technology we have had with our greenhouse plastics.”

However, he adds that growers will have to wait for the glass technology to be commercially available.

“For glass, Phase 2 R&D studies run through 2028, so we would expect to have commercial pilot trials running concurrently with Phase 2 in 2028,” says Hebert. “However, growers who want to try out the concept of QD spectrum control before glass is ready have the option of installing UbiGro Inner retrofit plastic films, as a proof of concept that this technology does work for their crop in their location.”

Ahamed sees more potential avenues of research for this kind of technology in the future.

“If this kind of spectral shifting is happening, is there any impact in terms of the indoor thermal environment, so in terms of heating costs or cooling costs?” he asks. “What could be the impact in terms of water use?”

He adds that there are other potential applications for this kind of spectral engineering that could be pursued in the future. If the glass could be designed in such a way as to allow only what is critical to the plant and reflect the rest, he offers as an example, “then you could significantly reduce the energy costs.”

How Save the Citrus Project is Part of a ‘Revolutionary Moment’

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 13:04:42 GMT

In September, the Coca-Cola Co. launched the Save the Orange project, which is the first project of the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium. Coca-Cola is a founding member of this consortium, which will use artificial intelligence (AI) to solve some of the world’s biggest challenges.

The consortium also includes OpenAI, Analog Devices, Tata Group, SK Telecom and TWG Global, and it seeks to harness the power of generative AI for public good.

Christina Ruggiero, president of the global nutrition category at Coca-Cola, says this project is very personal to the company as it sells juice in about 140 countries. Orange juice is the top-selling juice for the Coca-Cola in almost every country in the world, except India and Pakistan, where it comes second to mango juice.

“The Coca-Cola Co. wants to be at the heart of innovation and has a very long standing relationship of working with consumers, working with trade, working with industry, working with farmers, but we want to give the products that consumers love most to them in a very accessible way in their households around the world, and for us, and certainly for the juice part of our organization that starts with the orange,” she says.

She says that citrus greening is a huge challenge globally, not just in Florida, but in Brazil, the world’s largest citrus producer. Citrus greening, or huanglongbing, now infects nearly 47% of trees in the country. She says Coca-Cola has had a long-standing relationship with growers in Florida and Brazil and says she saw a need to connect the global research together.

“We want to be the CPG company that partners with MIT to solve real-world problems,” she says. “We want to be able to have AI be in service of humanity. As we were thinking about and exploring those types of concepts and what type of partnership we would have, I flagged this as something really important that we can do. It connects not just to our business, but to our company’s purpose. The Purpose of Coca-Cola is about refreshing the world and making a difference. And for me, this was a material impact that we can make for an industry that needs our help.”

Ruggiero says Microsoft has helped develop a platform to help the Save the Orange research team share findings and understandings. Invaio Sciences, a global biotechnical company, has also joined the Save the Orange project to bring expertise in crop health.

“How can we actually come together on a platform and prioritize different research initiatives to be able to arrest and or stop citrus greening collectively, instead of everyone investing money and working on projects in different silos,” Ruggiero says. “It’s really kind of a revolutionary moment.”

And that collaborative effort is what Amy O’Shea, director and CEO of Invaio Sciences, says makes this effort unique.

“We’re trying to pull together not just industry like Fundecitrus, the premier research organization in Brazil, but also industry partners, like Invaio, where we’ve got some solutions and we have a pipeline, but we were, we acknowledge that it’s going to take a basket of tools right to solve this problem,” O’Shea says. “Having Coca-Cola being the No. 1 juice bottler in the world, standing behind this, having the scientists at MIT who have just absolutely tremendous wherewithal for scientific exploration and discovery, all come together on this — it’s a pretty exciting time.”

O’Shea says Invaio has developed an antimicrobial that’s delivered in a non-invasive insert directly into the tree’s vascular system. She says, so far, the results in Florida have been promising, with an average of 30% reduction in drop and an increase in Brix.

Project Goals

While the Save the Orange project recently hosted an official kickoff at the campus of MIT, Ruggiero says the big priority will be a visit to Brazil in November for all the principals of the project as well as the research team.

“We are moving pretty quickly from kicking off to initial projects, and within the first 45 days, we’re getting everyone out to the trees to see the information,” she says. “We’re also creating a database right now with all of the data that’s available from all of the research that’s been done over the last couple of decades. So, our call to action is to try to get everyone working on this with as much information as they need, actually in 2025 itself.”

Ruggiero says this Save the Orange project has several components. First, how to protect the tree and boost its immunity to the bacteria that cause citrus greening. Second, to learn more about the psyllids and the role the insect plays in the ecosystem. Third, understanding the bacteria that cause citrus greening, which she says has been the biggest challenge in research. And lastly, a delivery mechanism for inoculation.

O’Shea says the consortium will look at the entire growth cycle of trees to understand the best practices moving forward, whether that’s citrus under cover for the first year, to prophylactic applications in young trees and then how treatments change once the trees come to bearing age.

“We know that this is going to take a multitude of solutions. It’s not just, you know, it’s not just an antimicrobial or disease fighting,” O’Shea says. “You need to think about psyllid control. You need to think about nutrition. You need to think about biostimulants or fertilization. You need to think about gene-edited trees.”

Ruggiero says while citrus greening has been a difficult pathogen to fight, she says time is on the Save the Orange’s side, with more than 20 years of research and with the power of AI, she sees the ability to leverage technology to speed up processing the data.

“We’re really hoping that the integration of using this technology will help us to do things that, historically, we couldn’t do before, and a little bit of elevating the call to action,” she says.

Ruggiero says, too, a goal of Coca-Cola is to make sure what results come out of the Save the Orange project will be accessible to all citrus growers and not proprietary, which she says is a big part of the company’s philosophy.

“We’re really trying to make sure that we are helping the growers make a step change in their viability,” she says. “It’s really important that whatever solutions we come up with, our suite of solutions for Coca-Cola is about, it’s being open-sourced. This is for all of the farmers in the world and the growers in the world to have a better crop.”

Ruggiero says it’s hard to really put a set timeline on science, but the project will involve testing solutions in greenhouses and nursery environments before a trial with growers to assess hypotheses in citrus groves, with the goal of providing sustainable solutions.

“If somebody has something that they feel really excited about from a technology standpoint, they might have a solution; we’re really happy to learn about that as well and continue to learn and grow,” she says.

Ruggiero says while citrus greening has been devastating in Florida and Brazil, she’s quick to point out that’s not the only challenge that citrus production has faced in those areas. Hurricanes and a real estate boom have also impacted citrus production in Florida. Meanwhile, Brazilian citrus growers have also faced a changing climate that has impacted production. She hopes the Save the Citrus project will look to help stabilize the future of the citrus industry.

“A lot of it is really looking at genetic sequencing, looking at how things evolve with temperature, climate, humidity — where we have the ability to actually study trees around the world, which also is really interesting,” she says. “There’s actually three different types of psyllids that carry greening bacteria and being able to see if there’s learnings that we can pull across. I’m cautiously optimistic, but we’re certainly putting in everything we can to help it gives its best chance of success.”

Simbe for Merchants to Bring Real-Time Shelf Visibility to Produce and Beyond

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 12:20:43 GMT

LAS VEGAS — Simbe Robotics unveiled Simbe for Merchants at Groceryshop 2025, a new suite of tools designed to give merchandising teams unprecedented visibility into what’s happening on store shelves. The rollout marks Simbe’s first purpose-built solution for a specific retail team, reflecting the growing pressure retailers face to execute flawlessly in a hypercompetitive environment.

Caitlin Allen, senior vice president of marketing for Simbe Robotics, explained in an interview with The Packer that the launch helps solve for real-time visibility in high-volume, high-velocity categories like produce.

“Today, 60% of planograms have inaccuracies,” Allen says. “Our product reads the shelf and gives merchants the ability to look at what we call a ‘realogram’ — basically what the shelf actually looks like — instead of waiting days for field teams to send pictures. That’s not just efficiency; it’s sustainability, too, since it cuts out all those unnecessary car trips.”

“Retailers win or lose at the shelf, yet actual shelf visibility has always been limited to spot checks and occasional store visits,” says Tom Gehani, vice president of product for Simbe. “With Simbe for Merchants, teams have access to the daily insights they need to ensure the right products are where they belong, displays are set right and vendors are aligned on execution.”

Why It Matters Now

The timing underscores a critical industry challenge. Recent Coresight Research shows retailers lose 5.5% of sales and 5% of margin to in-store inefficiencies, while shoppers consistently cite empty shelves and pricing errors as their top frustrations, the company says. With fresh produce playing an outsized role in driving grocery trips and brand loyalty, the implications for produce departments are especially strong.

Allen notes that fresh is where these gains may be most visible.

“Fresh is a big draw for shoppers into traditional grocery stores in a world where online incumbents matter so much,” she says.

By combining robot-powered scans with fixed sensors, Simbe captures critical details several times a day, including whether produce is available, properly priced and stocked at peak demand.

“Let’s say bananas tend to run low around 5 p.m. Our system can flag that in real time so store teams can replenish before customers walk away disappointed,” Allen says.

“Retailers win or lose at the shelf, yet actual shelf visibility has always been limited to spot checks and occasional store visits,” Gehani says. “With Simbe for Merchants, merchandising teams have access to the daily insights they need to ensure the right products are where they belong, displays are set right and vendors are aligned on execution unlocking measurable sales and margin gains.”

Simbe Robotics unveiled Simbe for Merchants at GroceryShop 2025, a new suite of tools designed to give merchandising teams visibility into what’s happening on store shelves.

(Photo: Jill Dutton)

Expanding the Platform

Simbe also revealed Simbe Mobile 2.0, a redesigned app built with store associate feedback. The update promises streamlined navigation, smarter task management and instant store health snapshots. It will be available in app stores next month.

For produce leaders, the launch signals a sharper set of tools to fight margin erosion and shopper frustration. With perishables among the highest-turnover items — and central to how grocers differentiate themselves — timely execution can mean the difference between loyalty and lost customers. By digitizing the shelf, Simbe aims to make produce execution not just measurable, but predictable.

“Solutions like Simbe’s can’t just live with store operations,” says Sean Spillane, former senior vice president of strategy and real estate for Stop & Shop and a strategic adviser for Simbe. “Reflecting on my experience, I recommend bringing merchants into the shelf digitization program early. They have so much to gain from this data, and the value is undeniable.”

The announcement of these new apabilities reflects the growing maturity of the shelf digitization space, Simbe says. Building on milestones such as Simbe’s Strategic Advisory Board and advanced capabilities for fresh departments, Simbe for Merchants leads the way as the first in a series of tailored, team-specific solutions designed to extend store intelligence across the retail organization as foundational data infrastructure that powers modern artificial intelligence initiatives, the company says.