We are thrilled to announce the finalists for the 2021 AgSharks Pitch Competition. After sorting through over 100 impressive applications we selected 5 companies who will pitch their innovations to a panel of judges composed of growers, shippers, processors and venture capitalists during the Western Growers Annual Meeting in San Diego, California on November 9th 2021. They will be competing for a chance to win a $250,000 minimum investment, potential access to farm acreage to pilot their technologies, and of course mentoring from S2G and WG and access to WG’s expansive network of leading fresh produce companies.
Meet our five finalists:
3Bar
3Bar Biologics is the global leader in customized technologies and bio-manufacturing solutions for living agricultural microbe products.
Problem(s): Product development bottlenecks are expensive, commercial microbes lose viability before application, no current biological manufacturing process can guarantee zero contaminants and growers prefer liquid formulations, yet dry microbes have far greater shelf life.
Innovation: The company’s proprietary bio-manufacturing and Just-In Time activation technology increases shelf life, enables the use of liquid formulations and can guarantee a 100 percent pure microbial product even at scale.
Application: Helping ag biological customers overcome traditional barriers to microbe productization and rapidly and cost effectively commercialize their microbes.
Learn More: www.3barbiologics.com
Boost Biomes
Boost Biomes is harnessing the potential of microbiomes for food and agriculture to develop microbial crop input products.
Problem(s): Traditional approaches for identifying microbial products are slow and usually only address single microbe products.
Innovation: The company is developing a proprietary platform technology that uses high-throughput DNA sequencing, selective enrichment and advanced informatics to understand microbial interactions and identify microbial products with important commercial roles.
Application: Boost Biome is currently using the platform to generate unique data sets about microbiomes that can help reduce the enormous waste in agricultural products due to crop loss to fungal pests in the field and post harvest.
Learn More: boostbiomes.com
Global Water Innovations
Global Water Innovations is a system integrator and project developer moving to water-as-a-service.
Problem(s): Desalination has historically been too expensive for agriculture, primarily owing to the costly and environmentally problematic disposal of brine generated by current desalination technologies.
Innovation: GWI has worked to identify and combine technologies from several innovative desalination companies to develop a process that recovers much more of the water than traditional methods will significantly reduce brine disposal.
Application: The company is positioned to demonstrate the first economic solution to the brine disposal problem achieving non-thermal zero liquid discharge with almost complete water recovery and low energy use.
Learn More: globalwaterinnovations.org
Naio
Naio technologies develops, manufactures and markets autonomous robots for agriculture in close collaboration with farmers.
Problem(s): Farm worker shortages, the strenuous physical nature of agriculture and the overuse of chemical weed killers.
Innovation: The robots R2K GPS systems enable them to work autonomously and precisely while covering a wide set of operations.
Application: The core technology enables autonomous field operations, fleet management and “intelligent-farming” while providing fast return on investment for growers as well as facilitating more sustainable farming practices.
Learn More: naio-technologies.com
Vivent
Vivent uses unique, patented, electrophysiology sensors and artificial intelligence to give farmers instantaneous insight into crop health.
Problem(s): Optimizing growing conditions and diagnosing crop problems like nematodes, fungal infections, nutrient deficiencies or insect infestations, especially before visual symptoms of plant stress appear, is expensive and often ineffective leading to lower crop yields and excess use of water, fertilizers and pesticides
Innovation: Until recently plant bio-signals were only measurable in a laboratory for short periods. Advances in electronics and signal processing allow for sensors that can be used in-situ for full crop cycles. Advanced analytical tools including machine learning models reliably detect the impact of plant stressors, often days before visual symptoms appear.
Application: Vivent provides real-time information on crop health that can be used to optimize growing conditions, diagnose plant diseases before visual symptoms appear, and to quantify effects of fertilizers, pesticides and other crop protection products. Farmers’ deep knowledge can also be recorded and combined with Vivent’s AI algorithms to markedly increase the effectiveness of manual and robotic crop scouting.
Learn More: phytlsigns.com
We can’t wait to learn more about these companies at the AgSharks event on November 9th! Check back here post-event to learn more about the winner.
