Farming intelligence company Innov8.ag is helping CFOs and farm crew leads better understand their operations with technology that takes badge scans and transforms them into operational insights, including AI-generated podcasts on how a farm is doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal basis, Steve Mantle, company founder, told AgTechNavigator at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in San Francisco.
Founded in 2019, Innov8.ag combines analytics software with in-field weigh stations and badge-scanning devices to provide metrics and insights on farming and labour issues that are occurring in a field, Mantle said. Last year, the agtech company acquired labor tracking and inventory systems provider 2nd Sight to complete its tech stack, which brought with it the weighing stations and badge scanners.
Innov8.ag records badge scans and uses GPS, mathematics, and AI to determine how crops move from the field to weigh stations, calculating what’s being harvested and when, Mantle explained. Typically, farmhands scan their badges when weighing crops that they harvest and are paid by the bucket or the weight, he added.
Users can then compare their current farm’s conditions against historic trends, including how weather, air quality, and other factors differed across time, Mantle explained.
The technology can also help boost traceability in the event of a recall or a disease outbreak, Mantle explained. Oregon Potato Company issued a voluntary recall in late February of 55,000 lbs. of frozen blueberries over a potential listeria outbreak
“From a decade’s worth of data, we are able to aggregate and look at what is typical for labor behaviors ... on your large versus medium versus small segment farm and then have the benefit of being able to look across multiple seasons,” Mantle said.
Press play for farming insight: Inside Innov8.ag’s HarvestReplay
Last week, Innov8.ag revealed a podcast feature, HarvestReplay, which serves as “an instant replay of a farm’s day,” Mantle said in a press release. Mantle was inspired to add the podcast feature after seeing his customers have stacks of unread reports gathering dust on a desk.
“We call it HarvestReplay because that is what the culmination of events is all about, getting towards harvest. But the reality is we are tracking everything that is happening on the farm in terms of your thinning, your mowing, your spraying — all those different pieces,” he elaborated.
The podcast makes the information relevant to specific job roles and responsibilities, Mantle explained. For instance, a crew could identify low- and high-performing field workers, creating opportunities to coach those who might be lagging in productivity, he said.
HarvestReplay “is two people talking back and forth about their farm’s data in a way that is relevant to them. Your CFO and ownership are speaking in economic terms largely. Your farm manager is really high-level operations across really complex view and what to think about, ‘if I have two busses of workers not showing up today,’” he added.
Innov8.ag prepares for seed round
Innov8.ag is focused on delivering its tech to specialty crop growers, including apple, blueberry, and cherry farmers, and has a presence in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Chile, Peru, and New Zealand, Mantle said. Innov8.ag plans to scale its business with the help of seed funding, as the company generates roughly $1 million in annual recurring revenue, he added.
“We are cautiously doing a seed round. We’re focused very much on strategic investors, on that I’m being really careful on who we allow on our cap table,” Mantle elaborated. “Over the last six years, we have about a million that we have raised, and so we are poised well to be able to scale with data and bring on the right investors.”
