Metal Dog Labs LLC

Happy New Year from the AgTech Alchemy Team (Walt Duflock, Sachi Desai, Rhishi P.)!! We're sending warm wishes to our amazing community as we ring in 2025!   We want to share several milestones from 2024 and several planned for 2025.   Things we are proud of achieving in 2024:        Establishing AgTech Alchemy – with our firsts event in Redwood City in September. After years of discussing such a concept, we finally did it. Building Community Infrastructure – a regular series of events (four), establishing an active Slack community and a Linkedin Channel to share community accomplishments, bring awareness to industry leaders, and original thought leadership. Catalyzing a Passionate Community – since the initial event, we have had tremendous engagement, outreach to bring the events to locations beyond the Bay, and how people can lean in. It doesn’t need to wait for a conference and doesn’t need to be limited to VCs.   Things we are planning for 2025:      #QuarterlyDigitalMagazine - featuring leading voices, thinking and ideas in AgTech, Food, and Pure Play Technology. AgTech Alchemy @#WAT2025 – a special event the evening before World Agritech SF (March 10th) with speakers, mingling, and a dedicated private venue for the community to connect #EventsOutsideofCalifornia – The first AgTech Alchemy event outside of the Bay Area, we are still trying to define what this exactly is, but we have interest and engagement that beyond the Bay is a must.   We will do more than what’s shared but are still planning. Regardless, the goal remains the same. Bring our passionate community of thinkers, doers and investors together to create genuine relationships and level up our industry to create impact.   Thank you for your continued support! We can't wait to see what the new year brings. Happy New Year! 🎉   Now your turn, share with us what you’d like to see the AgTech Alchemy Community do in the New Year in the comments. #AgTechAlchemy #AgTechCommunity #AgTechBayArea #AgrifoodTech #AgTech #innovation #community #connections #thoughtleadership #worldagritech #quarterly David Nothmann Adam Stager Rohita Kotagiri Steve Mantle Ariel Patton Pratik Desai, PhD Lawrence Ibarria Shane Thomas Adam Bergman Robert Sisson Robert Grey Michael Ott Chris Parker Carl Lippert Gilbert Guerrero Erica Bliss Sumer S. Johal

Very good podcast and outlook from the opinionated and always prepared Walt Duflock!

Software is Feeding the World Farmers Edge is the sponsor for December 2024 I am excited to bring another edition of "SFTW Convos" with Léo Carvalho of Solinftec Solinftec is reimagining the future of agriculture with their "technology which lives in the field" Solix robots. They are completely rethinking the paradigm of farming operations in commodity row crops which has been dominated by ever larger and larger machines, and broadcast use of chemicals With food security and climate change, we need to rethink how we do farming and Solinftec is providing an alternate vision (which time will tell if it is applicable or not) Britaldo Hernandez, CEO of Solinftec also recently posted about it and this approach also came up in my convo with Feroz from Syngenta The conversation also touched on -Customer centricity -How to think about your products when you go from one market to another (for example, Brazil to the US) -Incentive alignments within the ecosystem -How robots like Solix can completely transform an agriculture retailers business model from selling products to selling services -Gazing into the future and a lot more The image below reimagines a farm with a swarm of autonomous & electric robots which live in the field, and are managed remotely (or from a control tower) Upgrade to the paid version (15% discount still applicable for annual plans) to read the whole conversation. Link in the first comment

Sign up here --> https://lu.ma/r5at34rm 📢 Join Us for an Exclusive AgTech Event! 🌾✨ We’re thrilled to invite you to "AgTech Alchemy: A Fireside Chat," an engaging event celebrating the year in AgTech innovation and looking ahead to 2025! 📅 Date: December 12th 530-9pm 📍 Location: Shape Shifters Cinema - 567 5th St, Oakland, CA 94607 💺 Limited Seating: First 40 attendees only and it includes Free Wine and Bourbon What’s Happening? A fireside chat & live podcast recording with Walt Duflock, Rhishi Pethe, and Sachi Desai Topics include: 🔹 A Year in Review, 2024 🔹 Trends for 2025 🔹 Impact of Policy on AgTech 🔹 GenAI in Agriculture 🔹 And much more! Why Attend? This interactive session is your chance to: ✅ Ask questions directly to industry experts ✅ Share your own observations and learnings ✅ Network with the vibrant AgTech community We’ll also toast to the season with free wine and bourbon from our private collections, as well as crafter beer + food that will be made available for purchase. Don’t miss this opportunity to celebrate, connect, and shape the future of AgTech together. Seating is limited, so arrive early! Let’s wrap up 2024 and kickstart 2025 in style. See you there! 🎉 #AgTechAlchemy #FiresideChat #AgTechInnovation #NetworkingEvent #EndOfYearCelebration Rhishi P. Walt Duflock Ketan Shende, PhD, MS, E.I.T TRIC Robotics Adam Stager Pratik Desai, PhD 📊 Dan Maycock Lawrence Ibarria Vonnie Estes Rob Trice Rohita Kotagiri Robert Sisson Sujala Balaji Arthur Montazeri Paimun (PJ) Amini Danny Bernstein Erica Bliss Sara Boettiger Michael Ott Chris Parker Tempel Stefan

Software is Feeding the World SFTW brings you another edition of "SFTW Convos". This edition's conversation is with Sona Raziabeegum from CNH. In this conversation, we get into challenges and strategies involved in transforming legacy industries, particularly in the context of CNH's integration of technology and equipment. She highlights the importance of aligning traditional processes with agile methodologies, the significance of customer needs in shaping product development, and the role of dealers in delivering effective support to farmers. The conversation also touches on the automation of agricultural tasks and the investment priorities within the ag equipment industry. In this conversation, Sona discusses the evolving landscape of agriculture and technology at CNH, and much more. Subscribe to get future SFTW content in your Inbox and you can upgrade to paid version to get all content, including archives (15% discount right now on paid plans) Link in the first comment Metal Dog Labs LLC

Over the last few decades, digital technologies, software, and integrated solutions have transformed many industries and all of us have felt its impact in our daily lives Machine learning and artificial intelligence are relatively new tools which have the potential to transform many industries (and some are already on their way) But how do legacy industries adopt to new technologies? What challenges and opportunities do legacy industries like food and agriculture have? I want to study, explore, discuss, and practice over the coming years as I strongly believe legacy organizations which take advantage of these new technologies will do better than organizations which don't In the spirit of learning and exploration, I had a conversation with Kayla Bennett & Richard Barry of the National Fisheries Institute about what the sea food industry can learn from the use of AI in agriculture and food on the #SoFishTicated podcast Link in the first comment

SFTW: Last month in AgriFoodTech (Nov 2024) Farmers Edge is the monthly sponsor for December 2024. This month's edition includes short commentary on stories about ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION -Corteva Agriscience's investor day and their announcement about a GenAI based agent called CAiRL -Keychain is digitizing and creating a data set of manufacturing and using AI to to analyze packaging and processing needs for food companies -Weather Trends International provides year-ahead metrics across 32 million grid points -Starfish Space provides space roombas to to service satellites critical for communication and connectivity in Ag -Boston Consulting Group (BCG) grower survey on tech adoption and farmer segmentation CLIMATE & SUSTAINABILITY -Corteva Agriscience doubles down on SAF -Klim raised $ 22 million to quantify emissions. It is a bit of head scratcher -Truterra, LLC and Indigo to expand access to registry based credits -Satellites have revealed an abrupt drop in freshwater levels globally. Water will be a defining issue of the 21st century. ROBOTICS & AUTOMATION -Harvesting robot market expected to surpass $ 48 billion. The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures recent Crop Robotics Landscape shows the large number of startups in the space, as the labor challenges keep piling up -Hylio launches new ag drones, and according to some drone providers some amount drone based spraying will be used by most farmers -Kawasaki Robotics provides key ways to reduce robotic automation downtime, this will be important with higher adoption rate of robotics -What is the timeline to adoption of autonomy? Colin Hurd, CEO of SmartAg and Mach thinks we are not too far -AGCO Corporation partners with local colleges and dealerships to create a AgTechnician training program. The jobs in farming are changing! INPUTS -USDA reports decline in irrigated farms and water use -Bayer | Crop Science and Netafim expand digital collaboration targeted towards horticulture -Used equipment inventory climbs. Moving Iron Podcast host and equipment expert Casey Seymour is someone to pay attention to on this topic -Corteva Agriscience unveils breakthrough in drought resistant wheat Link in the first comment

AgTech Ecosystem - California has a large ag problem with labor and we either automate or the bigger problem is Peru! I've put together a complete deck that walks through the entire thesis. I'll post the thesis here and then post individual slides worth of content in the next week or so. 1) CA Ag labor problem - $16.3B for 850M hours at $20/hour average and going up (near $30 for immigrant labor - which grew 3x in the last 5 years). Lack of availability and never-ending increases make it harder to compete with other growing regions with significant advantages in cost and availability. 2) Acreage / farmers loss - from 1997-2052 CA forecast to lose 9M acres (31%) and 43k farmers (51%), largely because of labor and cost challenges. 3) Automation is the only way to solve labor - and we are having limited success in key areas like weeding, thinning, spraying, and harvest assist. But harvest (60-70% of hours for most specialty crops) is proving challenging. 4) IPOs have decreased 85% (1,000+ to 153) from 2021 to 2023 and VC has dropped 50% ($345B to $170B) 2021-2023. AgriFoodTech took a 70% drop because CEA (vertical farms) and alt-protein were 42% of the $53B in 2021 and turned into dumpster fires. 2023 was $16B - capital will be tough in AgTech for a while. 5) So if we can't automate, what happens to the acreage - hello Peru! LatAm (100% growth last 20 years) and US (175% last 20 years) have both grown ag exports. But compare CA (141% to $23B) to Peru (2,180% to $10.6B - that % is not a typo) because they are investing in water storage, a new $3.6B port with China, and economic development to recruit new growers to Peru. 6) On top of ag, lots of other industries and founders are leaving CA. I'll roll through some of the key departures in a future post. Short version - the founders and builders that built Silicon Valley (and really a lot of the CA economy) are now increasingly looking to other places to found and build. 7) There are things Sacramento could do to slow down this trend - I will go through ag and AgTech policy recommendations in detail later. For now, it starts with changes in water, energy, and infrastructure policy with an increased economic development focus. For AgTech, the policy focus should be on helping existing startups commercialize more effectively and finding non-VC models to leverage in key crops. Finally, we need an AgTech enabled workforce to make all of it work. This deck has been presented to CDFA Board, Imperial Valley Vegetable Growers, and Doon Insights. We continue investing in automation to solve labor or Peru (and other similarly situated countries) will make an increasingly aggressive play to increase their acreage and jobs metrics at California's expense. I'll put a link to the full deck in the first comment. Rhishi P. Sachi Desai Rob Trice Tim Nuss Norm Groot Jynel Gularte Rob Dongoski Carter Williams Danny Bernstein Damian Mason Todd Thurman Natalie Kovarik Tara Vander Dussen Ben Palone

Super good read for those interested in the role of AI, Digital and Data in Agriculture.. Thanks for the recommendations Indranil Ain - Data is the new tractor, informing new decisions and better precision. - Data is the new microscope inside of our R &D labs, helping with discovery. - Then data is the new shipping container, essentially looking at all of our manufacturing, supply chain and logistics Feroz Sheikh is his Software is Feeding the World Interview with Rhishi P.: AI for legacy companies.. Key takeaways: - Legacy industries face unique challenges in AI adoption. - Data and digitalization are prerequisites for AI success. - A supportive mindset is crucial for implementing AI. - The 10-20-70 formula highlights the importance of change management. - AI enhances the capabilities of agricultural advisors. - Feedback loops are essential for AI effectiveness. - Fairness in AI involves ethical considerations in content creation. - Data ownership remains with the grower, ensuring privacy. - AI democratizes access to technology for smallholder farmers. - The future of agriculture will see more autonomous technologies.

Software is Feeding the World for Nov 24th, 2024 This week’s edition includes three separate but related topic, about the right metrics to compare performance, the right data to think about unit economics, and the right business model for the context. 1. What is the right metric to measure equipment performance? It draws on comments from Feroz Sheikh (CIO of Syngenta), Craig Rupp, CEO of Sabanto and how smaller equipment can redefine productivity. 2. How did Four Growers, Inc. think about robot unit economics, and where does unit economics need to be for tomato picking robots? 3. What does Jaisimha Rao (CEO of Niqo Robotics ) think about different business models based on the context from his interview with Tim Hammerich of Future of Agriculture podcast Happy Thanksgiving! https://lnkd.in/gTGSY65K