Agricultural technology’s Axiom No. 1 is: Help the farmer make money.
If you do that, you make money. Do well by doing good, in other words.
Even with an El Niño weather pattern apparently on the way to the West Coast, devices and software that save water will remain a focus. There are, however, developers ahead of you — although integrated analytics (more on that in a future column) remain a huge open door.
Conservation is the key: save water and energy, save money.
Or increase yields and make money.
What else? For the answer, we turn to Tanimura & Antle, a storied row crop grower-shipper in the Baja Silicon Valley, a.k.a. bucolic Salinas.
Reducing labor costs saves money. Historic farm labor shortages plague growers too, so doing essential planting, maintenance and harvesting tasks with fewer works is a big deal.
If this creates next-gen jobs in a disadvantaged rural area, excellent.
Tanimura & Antle, as recounted in the current issue of Ag Alert from the California Farm Bureau Federation, is experimenting with something called Plant Tape.
Plant Tape is a great example to study both for ag tech developers specializing in mechanization and for integration experts. It begins with baby plants, which are greenhouse-started in cute little (and biodegradable) paper diapers.
This enables transplanting, according to the Ag Alert experts, much sooner than conventional “starters.” Ah, but the magic is placing the encapsulated plants, precisely the needed distance apart, in long rows of … Plant Tape! There’s enough to do up to 5 acres at a time.
A special transplanting machine then plants the long list of row crops. A crew of three runs the machine, instead of 23 using transplanting techniques, and it’s faster, the Tanimura & Antle field managers said, racing along at 8 mph instead of the usual snail’s pace of 1 mph.
Direct seeding requires thinning. This new system does not, which eliminates a 20-person crew. Thinning disturbs the soil, which encourages weeds. No thinning means fewer weeds and still fewer workers.
And let’s go back to the greenhouse where growing time is cut in half. It’s the simple idea of having more capacity using fewer resources.
Money is to be made from ag tech, and this is a beginning system developed by a grower, albeit a grower with a long history of innovation and significant resources.
A bit of fame comes with it, too, if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty. Forbes honored Tanimura & Antle with its Impact Award in July.
Get out there in the fields!
