California's Efforts to Lead the Future of Agtech

Sponsored by Case IH: https://www.caseih.com/

The VINE: https://thevine.io/

Farmhand Ventures: https://www.farmhandventures.com/

The Reservoir: https://www.reservoir.co/

F3 Innovate: https://www.f3innovate.org/

Today you’ll hear from three people: Hannah Johnson, Connie Bowen, and Danny Bernstein. Hannah is the Industry Lead for The VINE at  UC Ag and Natural Resources. Connie is the founding general partner at Farmhand Ventures who works with The VINE. Danny is CEO and managing partner at Reservoir, which includes Reservoir Ventures, and nonprofit incubators, Reservoir Farms & Labs, which is what he’ll be talking about today. 

I attended FIRA-USA this past October to try to better understand what’s happening in ag robotics and automation. What I didn’t expect was to see some really fascinating public-private partnership efforts that I think fill some real needs in agriculture innovation. But as luck would have it, that’s what happened, and so I wanted to put together this episode to highlight it. I think this type of work is critical. Running a farm, doing industry-leading research, growing a startup, all of these things are all-consuming tasks. It really is important to build the connective tissue to empower and fully enable new and lasting innovations in agtech. 

Brought to you by Case IH:

Case IH designs,engineers and produces cutting-edge farm equipment based on a comprehensive understanding of farmers’ needs, wants and challenges, integrating these insights into their development and manufacturing.

For example, take their Model Year 25 Magnum tractor. The new Magnum is purposefully designed to answer farmers’ needs in every design and engineering choice. Improved horsepower for pulling heavier loads, faster.

Bundled, integrated and ready-to-go precision tech for greater accuracy in the field. And a transmission farmers can tweak for improved control and performance in different tasks.

That kind of design thinking is exactly where the future of ag is headed, and that’s why you’ll be hearing me talk to the folks at Case IH at different points throughout this quarter about what they do and how they’re working to push the ag forward.