Gore: Agtech Business Trends to Watch in 2017

Here are some insights for developers and general ag tech enthusiasts from the AgTech Roundtable quarterly convening last week in Sacramento.

We asked a few of the roundtable’s members to assess business development trends for 2017. Their reports, condensed just for you:

• Ag tech has escalating potential in regulatory compliance for reporting, with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act coming on line in 2017, as well as numerous reporting requirements from the State Water Resources Control Board, noted Mark Lindner from AgraLogic and the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). Then, of course, once the state has all that new data, the analytics would be mega-useful. Real-time visualization for management decisions, even better.

• University of California Ag and Natural Resources (ANR) CIO Gabe Youtsey reported the role of his unit in expanding into UC systemwide ag tech innovation. The impact of this isn’t readily significant, until you realize ANR will be bringing together some of the planet’s leading ag scientists, pure researchers and hardware creators. This is a leading edge to watch. For example, how about a drone center at one of the ag campuses? It probably will happen.

• Broadband is the rural information highway, of course, but there has been a lane change, according to California Public Utilities Commission broadband guru Robert Osborn. “Capacity is now an issue” not so much access … although that continues. With the ag tech market’s explosive growth, growers need a bigger on-farm broadband pipe. Osborn pointed out there are growing pains with the “middle mile,” which determines capacity of the information highway. This is a broad highway, too, involving more than ag: The entire rural socio-economic spectrum of distance learning, remote health care and public safety.

There is a hidden agenda, if you want to call it that, at work here. Members of the AgTech Roundtable (a pro bono group of developers, farmers and regulators I co-founded in 2013) are leveraging your creations to help bring good jobs to disadvantaged rural communities.

The Apps for Ag Hackathon series is one of our creations, mainly the brainchild Clint Cowden, director of the Farm of the Future at West Hills College Coalinga; Patrick Dosier, proprietor of Transvalley Ag; agronomist Robert Tse, USDA economic development officer for California; and the aforementioned Youtsey.

After our fourth Apps for Ag event — this one at the State Fair (after West Hills, Cabrillo College and UC Davis) — Dosier found this account, which explains it all.

That’s why we do this and encourage you to build ag tech.