that has done tens of thousands—even hundreds of thousands—of passes without a driver. That is clearly creating value. And Cafiero said the beauty of the high- tech equipment on the tractor is that those passes are also generating a mountain of data. “The more passes we make, the more that data becomes meaningful.” For example, he said the passes are basically mapping every field and a farmer can quickly see where he has compaction. That data, he said, can be used to work those areas and increase yield and productivity. But Cafiero was quick to add that “data for data’s sake is useless.” It has to actually do something that benefits the farmer. The company is not resting on its laurels, and, in fact, Cafiero said the acquisition by John Deere has allowed the firm to speed up development on other ag technology. The common thread is that the company is focused on “developing the best-in-class technology for autonomous agricultural equipment.” Its goal is to reduce the need for labor in terms of “mundane tasks” and free them up for more revenue-generating operations. Speaking of the ag space, Cafiero said farmers are not trend chasers, and in any endeavor, there will be those early adopters and those that trail behind waiting for the concept to get a bit more mature. “But we have found plenty of early adopters,” he said. “If you show value and they see something that will move the needle, farmers are quick to adopt it.”
Bear Flag’s night service
process that could be automated, saving time and money. The startup had a goal to deliver value to the end user as quickly as possible. Bear Flag had this philosophy and executed it well, but Cafiero said the move to the field was still too slow. Farmers, he said, are not looking for perfection. They are looking for something that works. “My advice is to get out into the field with what you have as quickly as you can and work with farmers as soon as you can.” He explained that the trap some startups fall into is that they gather a lot of smart people in a garage, and they develop and build a high tech piece of equipment that’s really cool but doesn’t necessarily do what the farmer needs it to do. “When we started Bear Flag, we were a robotics
company trying to create an autonomous tractor to deliver to the farm community. Now we are an ag farming company trying to deliver value to the farmer through the use of robotics. That’s not just semantics. It’s a big difference.” Cafiero said the great thing about farmers is that they are not looking for perfection, they are looking for value. If you can provide something that does the job better, they will quickly embrace your technology. “They are very quick to adopt new technology if it has value,” he said. At its core, the Bear Flag concept was pretty simple: create an autonomous tractor that could do a job in a more efficient way. Cafiero said tillage is an operation every farmer employs. Bear Flag has now put real equipment in the field
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JULY | AUGUST 2022
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