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Silicon Valley meets Salinas Valley in partnership to make farming 'smart'

Jun 29, 2013 | Financial Times |
By April Dembosky in Salinas, California

Big data is on its way to the dinner table. Silicon Valley executives are for the first time forming agriculture partnerships using the latest sensor and mobile technologies to create "smart farms".

The Steinbeck Innovation Cluster, named after John Steinbeck, the author who set his classic novel Grapes of Wrath in the Salinas Valley where the venture is based, is a coalition of top technology and agricultural companies, universities and venture capitalists focused on promoting technology research and entrepreneurship in agriculture.

The Salinas Valley, which is home to an $8bn farming industry, produces fruit and vegetables for nine months of the year, and is the main source of lettuce, strawberries, broccoli and other fresh vegetables in the US.

Investors say that the valley is the perfect testing ground for new agricultural technologies aimed at improving efficiency and yields in the fresh food system. With the global population expected to reach 9bn by 2050, and an increasing emphasis on fresh produce to combat obesity, food production needs to double to feed the world's people.

Farmers are already testing soil sensors that help monitor moisture levels from their iPads 500 miles away. Various devices track vegetables from the ground to the grocery store shelves to identify sources of potential contamination. Drones are being considered for deploying pesticides, or determining which sections of a field are ready for harvest.

Larger farms in Midwestern US have been using some of these technologies on durable crops, but Salinas Valley farmers are adapting them for fresh, perishable crops, while the Steinbeck group hopes that innovations will arise from the Silicon Valley partnerships.

Organisers hope that agricultural companies, such as Taylor Farms and Driscoll's, the leading producers of ready-to-eat salads and strawberries, will invest $5m, with Silicon Valley groups and investors putting in $20m.

John Hartnett, a partner at SVG Partners in San Jose and founder of the Steinbeck project, said the marriage of talents and capital between the Silicon and Salinas Valleys would help develop new technologies: "This is an opportunity to connect them together."

The Steinbeck initiative aims to align the interests of big technology companies, such as IBM and Cisco, with large agricultural groups to research and test technical developments before using venture capitalists to help take them mainstream.

Silicon Valley venture capitalists have historically shied away from agricultural technology, preferring instead the high returns of internet and software ventures. Likewise, farmers have eschewed investor relationships that would cut into their already slim margins.

"When you own the land and you take the crop risk, guess what - VCs aren't getting 90 per cent of that," said Dennis Donohue, a radicchio grower and former mayor of Salinas.