Silicon Valley meets Salinas Valley through ag tech
By Caitlin Fillmore Eight units in a warehouse space near the Watsonville airport hummed with
life as welders in an- other room fabricat- ed steel tube frames. A few doors down, a group assembled and prepared to flush some “brains.” These brains
Wren Ramsey, a “robot wrangler” for the Salinas Valley agricultural tech firm farm-ng, monitors the company’s farming robot, the Amiga, at Jacobs Farm del Cabo in Watsonville. The firm is among several tech startups drawn
power farm-ng, an agriculture tech- nology company that located its man- ufacturing center in Watsonville to work with farmers in the Salinas Valley vegetable-growing region. As autono- mous solutions pick up steam across the agriculture sector, farm-ng has carved a niche with its farming robot, the Amiga. In the process, the company says it hopes to “democratize access” in the food system. “If we can create innovations to make small farms more economically viable, we can create farmers,” said Nathan Dorn, business development manager at farm- ng. Dorn called the company a “rapid pro- totyping shop” because farm-ng specializ- es in a robot that begins as an unadorned square frame with four wheels. From there, Amiga owners decide how to use the bat- tery-powered robot to help lift, pull or oth- erwise solve time-consuming challenges on the farm. The firm is among several agricultural
to the vegetable- growing region.
tech startups moving to the Salinas Valley, home to the Western Growers Center for Innovation and Technology, which sup- ports companies that develop robotics that help farmers often facing worker shortages to harvest crops, control weeds and more. Some area growers are already employ- ing its $13,000, 320-pound Amiga platform, which offers a customizable, automated
system for those looking for assistance with manual labor tasks. Instead of spreading compost with a wheelbarrow, the Amiga can affix farm-ng’s “integrated compost spreader assembly” kit and roll along on cruise control. The limited capacity of a back- pack-mounted sprayer can be replaced by a larger tank resting on the Amiga, which
can carry up to 1,000 pounds, according to farm-ng. Farmers can also purchase kits from the company for implements such as seeders and finger weeders. “(The technology) is practical to im- prove people’s lives now. It’s applicable now,” said Ethan Rublee, who founded
See ROBOTICS, Page 14
July 19, 2023 Ag Alert 11
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