Access to new technology is often not a limiting factor for innovative farmers, as AgTech sees a rise in companies building industry-specific products. The challenge lies in ensuring meaningful return on investment from the time and resources spent on new technology. So what motivates farmers to adopt new technology solutions?

“If you look at farmers as a whole, people think that farmers are overalls-wearing individuals that aren’t very intelligent; but it’s actually quite the opposite. If a new technology comes that has great ROI, like drip irrigation, they’ll implement that pretty quickly,” said Curtis Garner (pictured, left), senior farm analyst at Bowles Farming Co. Inc.

Garner and Megan Nunes (pictured, right), founder and chief executive officer at Vinsight Inc., spoke with Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during this year’s FOOD IT: Fork to Farm event in Mountain View, California. They discussed the latest trends impacting agriculture technology. (* Disclosure below.)

Creating clear incentives for innovation

Vinsight is a new company developing solutions using machine learning to predict crop yield to within 10 percent of error, according to Nunes. She broke down her development strategy for this new application of machine learning.

“We collect data from four major sources: remote sensing or satellite imagery, weather, historical yield, and geographical information like soil time, elevation or angling. We built out this 20-year historical archive and utilized machine learning to train on that data to understand what matters to the plant,” Nunes said. “We then give you a crop forecast on what you’re going to produce. Our goal is starting to understand supply and relating that to pricing and benefiting both the grower and consumer.”

In the face of new technology such as Vinsight, Garner explained that Bowles Farming embraces new technology. He cited an example of converting a drip irrigation pumping system from diesel to electric and then offsetting the cost with a recently installed 1 megawatt solar installation.

“Bowles has a legacy of innovation, and we have a lot of innovative people. For us it’s a matter of survival. With regulatory pressure and increasing cost of farming in California, innovation is going to be key, and that’s coming in the form of technology,” he stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the FOOD IT: Fork to Farm event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for FOOD IT: Fork to Farm. Neither Western Digital Corp., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial influence on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE