Danny Bernstein, CEO of The Reservoir, a nonprofit on-farm ag innovation incubator, says the fresh produce industry faces a major challenge when it comes to technology — a major disconnection between the innovation and the grower.
Which is what Bernstein says he set out to solve as he developed The Reservoir. Bernstein joined the latest episode to talk about the disconnect between ag tech startups and agriculture.
“What we’ve found, for example, is that startups would raise venture capital without having validated the idea with the major producers, the major growers in that space,” he says.
He says he found this to be directly in contrast with how things work in Silicon Valley, with structured customer validations and conversations. But, that’s just not happening in agriculture.
“You’d have a lot of amazing tech that was in search of a problem to solve,” he says. “And at this point in the state of the fresh produce industry, when there’s all these pressures on margin and pressures on labor and productivity, we needed tangible, rational tech that is solving real problems.”
The other challenge Bernstein says he hopes to conquer is access to true farming operations.
“Bruce Taylor has this funny line where he says, if he were to give away farmland for all the ag tech trials that were requested, then he wouldn’t have any farmland left,” he says. “So what we have tried to do is make it so that a technologist who wants to tackle ag, which we know is, of course, really challenging … we’re just trying to make that as easy as possible.”
The Reservoir leases 40 acres in Salinas, Calif., from Tanimura & Antle. Naturipe Growers will manage five acres of strawberries on the land and Tanimura & Antle will manage lettuce and celery grown on those 40 acres. Bernstein says, along with the Central Coast, The Reservoir aims to be in the Central Valley, as well as in Yuma, Ariz., to help ag tech startups work more efficiently.
“We’re really focused on what is the innovation system that we can put in place? How can we work with others to put in place to make ag tech work better at a system level?” he says. “One is, can we give them access to a farm really early on? Can that farm not just be an amateur farm, but could it be a farm that’s professionally farmed by growers that are respected at an industry level? Can we put farms in multiple locations so we can cover lots of commodities?”
He says a major goal of The Reservoir is to continuously improve on measuring outcomes — yield, cost, resource use — to better understand the impact the ag tech solutions have on the grower’s bottom line. He says, too, he also doesn’t want the innovations developed through The Reservoir’s incubator to disrupt existing grower relationships.
“We’re not going to bring a startup in that replaces a relationship they might have had for 60 years,” he says. “All these little bits and pieces need to work together in a system and that’s what we’re optimistic about.”
Another thing Bernstein says he hopes to debunk is the myth that all ag tech startups need to sell to growers. That’s not the case at all, he says. Instead, ag tech startups need to work with other tech companies to create holistic ag tech solutions.
“I remember there was a gentleman who was a very strong engineer. He said, ‘I’m building a robotic arm that’s specifically for agriculture. ... I’d like to meet a bunch of growers.’ And I said to him, ‘But growers aren’t your customer. I don’t know any grower who’s buying a robotic arm. That’s just not a priority for this grower. They buy a complete solution. They likely buy it from their dealer. Maybe they buy it alongside one of their input providers, because they want to think about how it integrates with that workflow.’ ... We hear stories like that all the time.”
