Reservoir Farms offers workplace house, store house, storage containers and workable crop testing areas for resident corporations. | Credit score: Reservoir Farms
Reservoir Farms, an agricultural know-how incubator based mostly in California’s Salinas Valley, has opened purposes for its inaugural cohort of 12 startups. The initiative is designed to foster innovation in specialty crop manufacturing by bridging the hole between AgTech startups and growers.
By offering direct entry to the experience and networks of Western Growers Affiliation‘s 2,500 members, the incubator mentioned it goals to speed up the adoption of cutting-edge options within the trade. The initiative is totally supported by the Western Growers Affiliation.
The Reservoir lately unveiled Reservoir Farms. Made attainable by a long-term lease with the Tanimura household and Tanimura & Antle, a produce grower, this location at Freeway 68 and Hitchcock Street is surrounded by a number of the world’s most efficient farmland and is situated minutes from downtown Salinas.
“We’re humbled to start this long-term collaboration with the Tanimura household, Brian Antle and the Antle household, the unimaginable group at Tanimura & Antle, and the broader grower neighborhood on California’s Central Coast,” mentioned Danny Bernstein, CEO of The Reservoir.
Now accepting session submissions!
The Reservoir offers ag startup workspace
The idea behind Reservoir Farms is simple: to offer a platform for agrobotics startups to develop and take a look at their concepts quickly. Firms that be part of the incubator may have entry to their safe storage sheds, together with a completely geared up maker house that may embody machine instruments, welders, CNC routers, and 3D printers to allow them to shortly prototype new concepts.
Every campus will embody take a look at fields that may be cultivated year-round to offer in-field testing of the robots.
The chosen startups will deal with advancing applied sciences in a number of key areas, together with robotic harvesting, rugged mobility, machine imaginative and prescient, light-weight finish effectors, modular area robotics, edge AI, and precision soil analytics. These improvements may revolutionize effectivity, sustainability, and productiveness in specialty crop farming, mentioned the group.
Reservoir Farms was established to handle the rising want for technological developments in agriculture and be certain that new programs are developed with direct enter from growers. This collaborative method enhances the probability of significant adoption and sensible utility of latest applied sciences in real-world environments, it mentioned.
By working alongside skilled trade professionals, startups can acquire insights into growers’ challenges, permitting them to tailor their programs to satisfy the sector’s distinctive calls for. Reservoir mentioned it expects this mentorship mannequin to create a powerful pipeline of viable AgTech improvements prepared for large-scale deployment.
Functions for the primary cohort at the moment are open, and startups can apply for the chance to work intently with Western Growers and different trade leaders. By way of this incubator, AgTech entrepreneurs can refine their applied sciences, take a look at their merchandise in actual farm settings, and convey transformative developments to specialty crop farming.
