The third-annual FIRA USA expo held October 22 to 24 at the Yolo County Fairgrounds set record levels of attendance for the event, with more than 2,000 attending the three-day conference. Admission for growers was free, leading to a grower turnout of 500.
Held in Woodland, the event brought tech innovators, venture capitalists, UC staff, ag tech connectors, state officials and growers together to network and learn about automation solutions for specialty crops, including winegrapes.
CDFA Secretary Karen Ross kicked things off, praising the development of the ag tech sector as a welcome addition supporting the state’s agriculture industry, ensuring food security, promoting climate resilience and creating high-paying jobs.
The event featured 85 exhibitors and 20 demos. Attendees came from more than 30 states and 40 countries. According to the list of registrants, vineyard company attendees included a dozen employees from Lodi-based Vino Farms as well as staff from Napa-based wineries Caymus and Domaine Chandon, along with other wine industry participants.
The exhibition areas were wildly diverse, a true melting pot with Indian entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley hawking their vineyard Wi-Fi technology, a San Joaquin Valley-based sales team showing off its autonomous LIDAR enabled sprayers, a Sonoma vintner turned ag tech software maker demonstrating a fleet, and a first-time exhibitor from China with a vineyard robot.
“Labor challenges and climate change are particularly impacting specialty crop production,” said Walt Duflock, senior vice president of innovation for Western Growers Association (WGA), one of the main sponsors of the event. “We are convinced robots are the new era of climate-smart machinery.”
The FIRA USA event is a three-way partnership with GO FAR (a French nonprofit that runs the global FIRA ag tech robotics show in Toulouse), UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (and its innovation group The Vine), and WGA (which has 2,200 farmer members).
WGA recently published a landmark case study showing Braga Fresh “ran two [Carbon Robotics] LaserWeeders to cover 4,700 acres… including spinach and arugula… resulting in annual savings of $822,500, a 39% reduction in weeding costs.”
As a result, startups, venture capitalists and investors and growers are taking note and bringing more products to market.
New Ag Tech Robotics Incubator Announced
On October 23 at the show, organizers of a new ag tech incubator, Reservoir Farm, announced the launch of their two coming facilities in Salinas and Merced in 2025, which will offer spaces for startups to conduct research and development to create new ag tech products that meet growers’ needs. The goal is to help startups go further faster with access to Reservoir Farm’s testbed plots and offices to speed up commercialization of innovative products.
The centers are not focused on specific crops and welcome startups to become members no matter what crop they work with.
Vineyard Automation Products Demos
More than 20 vineyard equipment manufacturers brought their products to the event, including Agtonomy (software enabling partners’ tractors), Amos Power (autonomous tractors), Burro, Farm-ng, Guss and MQ Autonomous Agtech (both sprayers), Map and Zap (laser weeders), Naio (autonomous vineyard machines used in France) and Skysense (drones).
Popular in France, Naio just recently received FCC approval for its equipment to operate in California. It offers both a wheel-based solution and a crawler (gentler in terms of soil compaction).
To see a list of vineyard products from FIRA USA exhibitors, click here.
In a show of force in an afternoon demo, Agtonomy deployed three Doosan Bobcat tractors moving simultaneously and autonomously through parallel vineyard rows. Founded by Geyserville grower and vintner Tim Bucher of Trattore Farms, Agtonomy’s approach is to develop state of the art software to control tractors growers already use. The company’s units are currently in use in trials with E. & J. Gallo, Silver Oak, Treasury Wine Estates and others.
Vineyard Automation Panel
A Thursday panel titled “Addressing Automation Needs in the Vine Industry” featured growers demonstrating a variety of vineyard sizes. Panelists included Agustin Santi, vineyard operations project manager at sparkling wine producer Domaine Chandon in Napa, owned by LVMH, a French luxury company. The winery farms 1,000 acres of vineyards in Napa. It recently stopped using synthetic herbicide and received a (non-organic) regenerative certification. It relies on automated irrigation systems.
Jamie Reamer of Reamer Farms in Clarksburg farms 1,200 acres of vines. She spoke about the challenges of holding vendors accountable when equipment does not work, and it is unclear which vendor in the system is responsible for fixing things.
Eric Pooler, vice president of viticulture and winery relations at Silverado and Nuveen Natural Capital, oversees winegrape growing on more than 15,000 acres in California and was enthusiastic about some of the products he saw at the show.
