This story originally aired on “Marketplace Tech” on May 21. Find part one of the series here. Listen to Marketplace each weekday at 3pm on KVPR.
This week, we’re heading to California’s Central Valley to see how technology is transforming this agricultural region. Yesterday, we visited a farm to see the latest gadgets in action. And today, we’re going straight to the innovation source: the University of California, Merced.
“Thanks for making the trip up,” Leigh Bernacchi greets us as we walk through the back of a science building. She’s the executive director of the Valley Institute for Sustainability, Technology and Agriculture. “Normally, we wouldn't take you [through] the back route, but you're kind of getting to see a campus in the making.”
She takes us out to the research greenhouse where students build and test the latest in agtech. There's also an experimental smart farm on campus.
“This is an electric tractor, because farms are a source of electric power,” Bernacchi points to the tractor sitting parked outside the greenhouse. “And we have a professor working on the best use cases for an electric tractor.”
Electronic tractors have become a bit of a thing in the Central Valley, says Bernacchi. “And I think that there's certain crops that are really interested in having automated tractors, like vineyards, or high value crops that spend too much on drivers, [those] would really benefit from automated e-tractors that can run all day.”
Research like this is a major focus of Farms Food Future, also known as F3. The nonprofit got a $65 million federal grant from the 2021 American Rescue Plan to help turn this agricultural region into an innovation hub, like Silicon Valley just a few hours away.
It’s funding research that can be commercialized and scaled up quickly — like a clip-on sensor developed by mechanical engineering professor Reza Ehsani. It can be attached to crop leaves. “Then, it uses AI to provide recommendation on best irrigation time for the plants,” he explains. “And it’s such a low-cost compact sensor that even homeowners can use that.”
For example if people have killed plants by overwatering them, “or underwatering. That's very common,” Ehsani added.
He also says technology like this will play a critical role in the future sustainability of farming, like “use AI to decide how to shake a tree, because that actually [requires] experience that only expert operators can have,” he said, explaining that shaking a tree too hard can damage it while a soft shake can lead to missing out on valuable product. “AI can actually, based on the canopy size and volume, decide how long to shake it, at what frequency.”
But you can’t just shake up an entire industry without the buy-in of workers on the ground. That’s what postdoctoral researcher Kimberly Gibson is looking into. “As people who work hands-on in agriculture everyday, they often are the first to see the problems that we're facing and to have ideas for solutions. And so we really need to be thinking about these workers as key contributors to innovation,” she said.
Gibson is analyzing survey responses from 11,000 farmworkers about their career aspirations and how technology fits in. “Farmworkers are really excited to learn, and view education as important. And some of that is an ag and agtech, and some of it not,” she explained, “but I think as we move into a world where we have more technological support for agriculture, having diverse interests is really important.”
It’s access to that kind of on-the-ground insight that positions the Central Valley, and UC Merced, to shape the future of agriculture tech, says Leigh Bernacchi. “Everyone in the nation eats the food that is grown in this valley, and if we don't do it now in California, we might miss the chance to be global leaders.”
Tune in tomorrow to hear from some of the workers who are upskilling for the farms of the future.