Danny Bernstein, founder and CEO of The Reservoir, a nonprofit on-farm ag innovation incubator, has a vision for the future of agtech in the specialty crop industry: an agtech village within the Salinas Valley.
This village, he says, will help bridge the gap between technology and growers, where there’s often a disconnect between the agtech startups and the growers using the technology. Bernstein says the next generation of agtech startups must build from the ground up in agricultural communities, where there’s more of a direct connection to the work being conducted and the needs of the ag community.
And what makes Reservoir Farms unique is The Reservoir leases 40 acres from Tanimura & Antle to create a research and development plot of land. The Reservoir has also partnered with Tanimura & Antle and Naturipe Berry Growers, where both companies will grow specifically for research and development purposes. The site will also feature co-working facilities, infrastructure for equipment testing and shared services to support early-stage ventures.
Naturipe will manage five acres of strawberries at Reservoir Farms and oversee all aspects of farming. The company will also work with the team at The Reservoir and participating startups.
This, Bernstein says, will help mitigate the hesitation many specialty crop growers have when working with agtech startups and ultimately further innovation.
“What we hear from growers is things like, ‘Yep, you can test on my property, but I have a zero tolerance policy for failure,” he says, but a designated research and development plot changes the equation for agtech startups. “You basically get the best of both worlds as a startup. You get professional-grade, high-value crop farming, but in an okay-to-fail environment.”
Being located in Salinas, Calif., also helps growers understand the challenges that agtech startups face, Bernstein says. That immersion from an agtech CEO is critical to building relationships.
“When a grower sees that same level of commitment from a startup, their tolerance level for failure goes way up because they see what’s happening, and they see that effort,” he says. “I think that there’s this sort of new generation of agtech CEOs that’s going to live it, and they’re going to connect much more authentically with the grower.”
Bernstein says The Reservoir will focus its attention on three key areas of innovation: autonomous solutions and harvest assist equipment; smart implements and precision agriculture and AI-enabled software.
“We think we can increase their success rate by immersing them into agricultural communities,” he says.
Bernstein says he’s noticed a lot of positive response to The Reservoir within the industry. And partnerships with Tanimura & Antle, Naturipe as well as support from Western Growers, Taylor Farms and others within the industry have helped bolster the nonprofit’s profile.
“We’ve gotten an extremely strong signal, and now it’s how do we build on this? Where do we go from here?” he says. “Now, the next questions are, can we start to accelerate agtech and make it more efficient and make it more cost-effective.”
