AGTOOLS Real-Time Data Tech Improves Bottom Line for Farmers
By Stephanie Metzinger O n any given day, farmers face a number of in consumer preferences, currency swings, drastic weather conditions, market crop pricing and more. A predictive analytics startup has come up with a tool that aggregates immense amounts of data and simplifies it down to key factors to improve decision-making for farmers, suppliers and buyers. “We mine official data—think facts and stats from government agencies, research institutes, central banks, satellites—and put it all into one place,” said Martha Montoya, founder of AGTools. “Our algorithm takes that information to make the data accessible and easy to understand so we can predict better.” The algorithm was developed by Montoya’s brothers—two accomplished engineers from Boeing and Amazon—and already has a proven track record of success. During the testing of the tool, the game- changing system was able to predict the May 2018 unpredictable variables that can take a heavy toll on their bottom line, including labor strikes, changes
significant amount of money on that sale, paying for transportation, cooling and handling paperwork. We prevent farmers from spending more money on the ground,” said Montoya. Today, AGTools has 513 fruits, vegetables, nuts and floral products in its database. It also has more than 81 million records of market data plus 25 years of historical data of all commodities on a national and global scale. Providing Easy Access to Real-time Data to Increase Profits, Reduce Food Waste Montoya, who grew up on a coffee farm in Colombia, originally launched AGTools after noticing there was a communication gap between farmers and food retailers. While serving as an international agricultural development liaison for companies such as Calavo and Del Monte, she would hear discrepancies between the growers and buyers. “The farmer
would say that the price of a certain commodity was good while the retailer was saying the price was in the dumps,” she said. “Only one party could be right so I ended up pulling government data and sending it over to both of them. That’s when it clicked. We need an algorithm that can put everyone in the same lane of information.” While government organizations
Brazilian truck strikes affecting papaya shipments. AGTools’ ability to track exchange rate trends also prevented one blueberries to Spain, as it was more cost-efficient to just keep his product in the United States and donate it to the food bank. “That grower would have lost a farmer from sending his
Martha Montoya with fellowWGCIT startups Nathan Dorn of Food Origins and Colin Brown of TracMap duringWGCIT's 3-year anniversary celebration.
26 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com MAY | JUNE 2019
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