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.”
