Danny Bernstein’s vision of creating a home for agricultural technology with Reservoir Farms has become a reality and was celebrated during the grand opening of its Salinas, California, farm. However, Reservoir is not stopping in Salinas, as the agtech incubator plans to bring the same model to Yuma, Arizona, eastern Washington, and elsewhere in California.
Following a soft launch of its Salinas location last year, Reservoir Farms held a grand opening ceremony on March 16, which was part of the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit’s first Innovation in Action tour. The tour also visited the Tanimura & Antle headquarters, nearly three miles from the home of Reservoir Farms.
Located on a 40-acre farm at the corner of Highway 68 and Hitchcock Road, Reservoir Farms’ Salinas location houses a dozen start-ups, including Agtom, BHF, Cropr, Farmblox, High Degree Ag Machinery, Lumo, TRIC Robotics, Bonsai, Neuralzone Cybernetics, and Numanac.
Reservoir Farms brings start-ups together to collaborate and solve market challenges, explained Bernstein, CEO and founder of Reservoir. Through the collaboration, agtech founders learn how to deliver technology to farmers and how to approach the market, explained Adam Stager, founder of TRIC Robotics.
“From the founder side, we all are learning so much about how to deploy technologies in ag and because we learn different things we can share those learnings and together be so much faster market. ... As an engineer, we don’t always know how to deploy, but with the farmers and strategics, we can learn the right way to bring technology to the farm. I think that’s a huge level up from being in the lab and building in isolation,” Stager elaborated.
Start-ups are not only working together to develop go-to-market and agtech adoption strategies, but they will increasingly need to band together to overcome the funding challenges, Bernstein explained. Agtech start-ups are struggling to raise funding, as venture capitalists look for later-stage companies or have pulled out of the sector entirely.
“One of the things we do expect to see at a macro level is more mergers of equals. It could be a California startup working on X and an Australian start-up working on X. They may realize that pooling capital makes a lot of sense. Those bonds need to be formed early. And so, we think that if startups can build relationships earlier on, those harder, strategic questions become a little bit easier,” Bernstein added.
Editor’s note: The video was produced with the support of Caroline Rude, digital content specialist at William Reed, AgTechNavigator’s parent company.
