cell phone app, specifying the date and the field to be serviced. “Eventually we will have a purchase option as well,” Boyer said. “In fact, we are taking orders for delivery next year.” Boyer noted that there are quite a few companies that are currently touting automatic weeders. He expects that two or three, including FarmWise, will survive, but he does expect there to be consolidation. And he also expects automated weeding to be quite prevalent in a relatively short time span. “What sets us a part is the team that we have built,” he said. “We have two sets of workers. We have a group with technology expertise such as AI (artificial intelligence). And we have another group of workers with farming expertise. That helped us loop in farmers in our development process very early.” Boyer said the early involvement of people that knew exactly what happens in
the field and what a weeder had to be able to do and the challenges it faces helped FarmWise develop a workable unit very early in the process. He said the business strategy has worked. FarmWise has created an automated weeder that does the job, does it economically for the user, and the economic model works for the company. “Each machine is profitable,” Boyer said, noting that the company isn’t yet profitable because of the high cost of development. But he said as FarmWise scales up, the financials will pencil out. In addition, Boyer has greater ambitions for the machines the company is continually upgrading. They are developing this automated equipment so that one machine can do multiple tasks and work on multiple crops. In the future, he expects both the service and purchase options to be available. When a grower buys a machine, Boyer envisions that he
or she will be able to weed a leafy greens field one week and a broccoli field the next. The same machine will be able to be programmed to spray multiple crops, the week after it weeds a ranch. Boyer said he wants to “democratize” ag automation by building equipment that allows the user to determine how it will be utilized. This, in a nutshell, is the promise of AI. The machine will continually learn offering new services and new data. Already, Boyer said a machine that moves through a 10-acre field weeding also is gathering data that the grower can access. For example, after weeding a broccoli field, a report can be generated that will tell the grower how many plants are in that field and their stage of growth. The data generated is an important aspect of how this new technology will compound its value to the user.
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JULY | AUGUST 2022
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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