I’ve been a huge fan of Agrology’s work in the past so I wanted to check in Dana Revallo, head of customer success, on the latest developments. Here is our interview:

So what’s the newest and latest at Agrology?

Dana: This past week, Agrology just released our AI Agronomist.

We’ve moved from just measuring soil health and reading a field’s whole carbon and water story to letting growers ask questions about the data we’re collecting in plain English.

It’s really amazing because our system takes measurements – like 17 different data inputs…Everything from soil moisture, use efficiency, field capacity, to the more environmental metrics and microclimate, like canopy humidity, vapor pressure deficit, heat stress, and then also like photosynthetic hours, photosynthetic efficiency, and then whether your field is absorbing carbon or emitting carbon.

We’ve been working on this for the past 18 months and done a soft release to some of our existing customers.

PHOTO - SEE SUBSTACK FOR THE Sample of the new AI agent from Agrology

Well, let’s back up a bit - how’s it going? What are you finding after five years in business?

We have been measuring carbon for three years. The previous two years before that was more ground truth microclimate and environmental metrics.

PHOTO Agrology sensors in the field

And can you just briefly describe the technology?

We measure carbon through a soil chamber, measuring respiration and the microbial life and and root exudation, so basically like a Haney test in real time. And then we use a carbon gradient mast similar to an Eddy covariance tower. These Eddy towers are out of reach for a lot of small and mid-sized growers because of the cost. It costs typically like $200,000, and then you need someone with a postgraduate degree to decipher the data and do all the gap filling.

PHOTO Demo at Robert Hall winery in Paso Robles which conducted a major study on regenerative versus conventional grape growing using Agrology sensors to document changes based on soil health.

So, what are people using that data for?

We’re using that data to show whether your regenerative practices are actually moving the needle and increase soil health and crop quality.

It’s really important for all of our vineyard customers. Because we can show through that, through measuring the carbon cycle, we can show when a vine is actively photosynthesizing. So, for example, if we have like a really big heat dome or some kind of heat wave, a lot of times when the temperatures reach 95 degrees, the vine will actually shut down because it can’t photosynthesize.

But sometimes treatments can increase the vine’s resilience to continually photosynthesize, transpire moisture, and cool the canopy based on treatments.

Like if you’re going no-till or keeping a ground cover, the ground cover can keep the the overall temperature in that block a few degrees cooler.

If there was a heat wave, you can show what blocks are shutting down and which ones are not, and then that allows you to apply irrigation proactively instead of reactively. So even if you don’t have overhead sprinklers, you can turn on the irrigation during a heat dome, and then that water will reach the vine, and then also just the evaporative cooling from the moisture, evaporating from the soil can help cool the canopy down as well.

What crops do you work on?

We work on everything from blueberries to silage, corn, and soy in the Midwest.

A lot of growers are moving away from more synthetic, salt-based fertilizers and incorporating more biology because they’re really seeing that can create resilience and increased yields in their crops as well.

We also work in a number of different grazing systems as well, measuring the carbon cycle and benefits of rotational grazing. We work in orchards and a lot of potatoes actually, too, up in Idaho and Washington.

How did you and why did you develop this new AI function?

The farmer can ask what our sensors are reading and then create different management decisions in real time. It answers questions about their data, and then the grower and agronomist can make the call as to what’s working and what’s not.

And is it voice activated or you have to type?

It’s currently a text interface.

Are people using it with other agents?

They can. We do have an open API, so we can incorporate other sensor data into our chat interface, so we can pull on that data. You can also upload other soil tests like micro and macronutrients, Haney tests, and it can digest all that data. Then it pulls all of the scientific peer-reviewed studies.

A lot of the measurements that are used in the scientific literature were all measured using gas flux, like Eddy covariance towers. So now we can incorporate direct measurement from these small growers and access all of the peer reviewed studies, so that growers can see how their their crop and and soil data are comparing to these other other studies.

Well, that sounds pretty amazing. Has the market been asking for this?

I feel like we work with some of the most talented grape growers, vineyard managers and farmers in the country, but a lot of the tools that they’ve been using are not able to give them the data they need in real time.

A lot of times when they’re sending using Haney tests or soil samples, they’re taking the sample, they’re sending it in, and they’re waiting four or five weeks before they get that data back.

So when growers are, or even fertilizer companies are, are trialing application rates and new amendments, new biological stimulants in their crops, they can see the results in real time.

And what does that enable?

That enables them to see if if a product is working during that season and not have to wait until the season’s end to make a decision for the next year.

Do you see them doing a lot more on farm experiments or trials?

100%. Yeah, we were working with a potato grower up in in Idaho, where they were trialing two different biological amendments, living biology, and what we saw was that the control field they were using actually started out with higher soil health metrics.

Prior to the biology being applied, the control field was already outcompeting the trial field. But within 45 days, we saw that the trial field actually overcome the control and created major benefits, and then the yields that we calculated at the end also reflected that.

So, when you say major benefits, what benefits are you looking at aside from yield?

The photosynthetic hours and the canopy CO2 drawdown. The treated crops were photosynthesizing longer throughout the day.

It was a really hot summer up in Idaho, and so we saw the control field shutting down, and the potatoes were stopping photosynthesizing while the treated fields could continue absorbing carbon and transpiring moisture, cooling their canopy, and then that resulted in not only higher yield but higher yield of quality potatoes that were large enough to sell.

So I’m curious, who are your clients both inside and outside of the wine world.

I think people were pretty psyched just to be able to get the data, but we don’t really know much about how they use the data. And then, of course, in the wine world, we have all the regenerative and organic people who are maybe more actively looking for tools like this? Can you fill me in?

Well, especially with input costs rising so much, growers are under a lot of pressure to make sure that what they’re applying is getting an ROI.

We’re working with different input providers and farmers who are paying for these inputs. Sometimes they’re $20 an acre, sometimes they’re $100 an acre, and sometimes the $20 an acre one actually does better than the more expensive one.

And are you seeing any correlations with nutrient density?

That’s a great question. We haven’t worked specifically with anyone like with Edacious. I really love what what Edacious is doing. We haven’t necessarily worked with nutrient density, but a lot of our vineyard customers are doing juice samples, looking at tannins and polyphenols and Brix.

Why do wine grape growers use this technology?

Well, it shows when a vine shuts down due to too much heat stress.

We use irrigation deficit techniques in order to make sure that the grapes aren’t too full of water and that they have the right flavor compounds. But if a vine goes under stress, like high vapor pressure deficit, and stops photosynthesizing for days on end, the grapes can start to develop off flavors.

And then, in terms of vine health and longevity, we’re wanting to make sure that we’re seeing really healthy levels of respiration post-harvest, so that the vines go into dormancy really healthy, and then they can come out next year full of health, so measuring the soil respiration and carbon flux post harvest is is really important.

We’ve worked with growers that usually put on a really large irrigation post-harvest, and that usually tracks very closely with soil respiration.

I remember one grower last season missed a few irrigations prior to November 1 - typically when we get that first inch of rain - and the soil health really dropped off due to just being starved for water. So that grower made this change of adding three solid irrigations, keeping that soil moist right until we get into that first inch of rain.

And does it also impact fertilizer application or compost application?

Yeah. So when we’re running trials, we can measure water use efficiency, field capacity. When you’re adding organic matter, biochar, and compost, you’re adding a lot of organic matter to the soil, and it’s increasing that water holding capacity. And we can measure the the water holding capacity and the water use efficiency of those vines.

Is there a way to figure out how to optimize those applications, like terms of volume, terms of timing.

Every site is is so different.

What we’re able to do with the agronomist is, if we start to see a vine shutting down or a block shutting down, and the other ones are not, we can start to find the metrics that are out of line, like what whether it was due to low soil moisture, was it due to higher heat, or are some blocks more resilient than others?

Some can continually photosynthesize and transpire moisture to cool the canopy and cool the crop, while others don’t. And sometimes, and sometimes those those blocks even have lower soil moisture. They’re just able to pull on that moisture and continually cycle nutrients that the vine will need in order to continue operating.

So, are you able to pool the data that you get from all of your clients into a database that feeds your AI, or that all remains siloed and private?

We use our data that we collect to train our model, but all of our data remains confidential for the individual growers.

But they are able to leverage the collective data?

That’s correct. Yeah, especially the environmental data we pull from weather stations, and then incorporate it with the microclimate data that we collect as well.

So, what does that enable? I mean, is that weather forecasting, or…?

We can forecast heat waves by pulling that microclimate data based on the GPS location.

So, do you have many people who are doing comparative trials like the one that was conducted at Robert Hall, comparing conventional and regenerative organic, are people interested in that?

Yes, most definitely.

Some of the trials that we’re running are on conventional farms, and they are starting to incorporate living biology in addition to their conventional practices. Especially in the Midwest and in Idaho and Washington, we’re seeing growers that are starting to to realize that their yields have been declining, and that their crops aren’t nearly as resilient as they once were, and they’re coming to the conclusion that it’s based on treating their soil.

So does this enable them like a periscope into microbial activity?

We can measure microbial activity through gas flux. A lot of the the soil biology is aerobic, just like we are. They take in oxygen, breathe out CO2. So that’s how we’re able to measure the soil activity.

Is the sensor data revelatory for some farmers?

Starting to look at the CO2 cycle is very new to a lot of these growers because they’ve never seen this type of data before.

They’ve never actually seen numbers to how much they’re photosynthesizing, but with the AI Agronomist, we’re able to explain that based on the other types of metrics, right? We want our crop to be absorbing sunlight and breathing in breathing in CO2, so that it can continue to function and grow. And when we can show that that stops because of a certain thing that’s happening in the immediate environment around it, that becomes something that they can actually work to change.

So, are high fertilizer prices driving any changes in wanting to use this technology more?

I think that growers are realizing that there are alternatives to the nitrogen, like the typical NPK that they’ve been applying – living biology. There’s plenty of nitrogen in the atmosphere, and living biology can help take that nitrogen, turn it into an inorganic form that’s plant available.

Can you unpack that just a little bit more?

Yes. So the soil microbiome, as it’s living and and dying, a lot of these microbial bodies will have nitrogen available in their bodies, and and when that biology, when this soil life turns into microbial necromass - the dead bodies - that nitrogen is then plant available. You don’t get that in dead soils that are just have synthetic nitrogen applied, and this is beyond just using legumes and fixed nitrogen.

Living biology can help bridge that and can take nitrogen that would be not available for the plant, and then make it and then turn it into a inorganic form that the plant is is able to take up.

So, what kinds of farms and growers are benefiting, or are the first on board to adopt this technology and understand how powerful it can be for them?

It’s all types of growers.

We work with a lot of conventional corn and soy growers in the Midwest that are trialing new biology, and it’s not just younger growers. I think it’s a lot of growers that have been in the field for 20 and 30 years, seeing that what they have been doing isn’t working anymore.

They’re seeing their neighbors [benefit]. …I think one of our customers in in Nebraska just got five inches of rain, and a lot of these crops are struggling, and some of them that have been using no-till techniques - planting their corn directly into an alfalfa field - are seeing that their fields can absorb and take on that water without without destroying their crop.

So, do you think it’s led more people to adopt cover crops, or what other measures?

That’s definitely one of the levers that that people are using. Cover cropping can be incredible, and then also working toward no-till farming, if that’s something that works for your site. We work with growers that, especially in vineyards, that that are transitioning to no-till or just shallower tilling,

We see that sometimes there can be lower soil moisture in these no-till blocks. But what’s interesting is that the vine roots go down so deep that they’re able to pull from soil moisture from from down below, and they are continuing to photosynthesize even though they have lower soil moisture. That cover crop can start to transpire some of that water, so that it’s not available to the vine, but there’s still plenty of water for the vine to to draw upon.

So, what are agronomists thinking about this technology, and are they the ones making the decision usually to use?

It’s brand new. The onboarding calls that I’ve done so far, we’ve had just incredible response on it.

They’re really looking forward to starting to use some o this data this winter to go over the previous season’s data.

[In the new AI app] You can ask kind of these questions like “was my irrigation strategy proactive or reactive?” And it can start to draw upon all the soil health metrics in this previous season, and then it’s also logging the weather events and it’s also logging all of the stress events.

And then it’s comparing different blocks. I just worked with one grower, and two of the blocks were very proactive, and one that had rockier soils just was categorized as more reactive. So there were big stress events that happened, and then there was a three day lag between the next irrigation. So that irrigation really should have happened four days prior, and then that stress event would not have impacted the vine so much.

So back to the fertilizer question: Is that playing a role? When you said people are finding that they want that rising price of products, what products are you thinking of?

Typically, like the more synthetic nitrogen and synthetic products, we have been working with a number of organic input companies that are trying to validate their products, so they’re wanting to see how their product affects soil health…

We’re working on a trial on a farm, and they’ll apply their standard application, they’ll apply half the application, and then they’ll use it on a control. And then we can look at all of the soil health and plant health data, and then couple that with yield.

I think eventually we’ll be able to get to a point where we’ll be able to forecast yield, depending on the soil health metrics and plant health metrics that we’re seeing.

Yeah, the holy grail.

So I’m just kind of curious. What is happening re El Niño? How might people be able to respond using this technology?

I would say there is a lot in the news about El Nino and the amount of water that California in particular is going to be receiving.

So a lot of our customers are [changing cover crop practices]… Instead of just planting cover crop every other row, they’re planting cover crop every row.

They’re selecting different types of cover crop, maybe putting in more grasses out there for their ability to hold on to soil at that more shallow level with more fibrous roots instead of deep tap roots.

Yeah, there’s so much to think about here.

We work with some blueberry growers and some tomato growers in the Central Valley, trialing different fertilizers. We also can measure nitrous oxide, and that’s been pretty well received in the Central Valley, because nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more detrimental than CO2.

So a lot of growers are using smaller [amounts of] nitrogen or trying to be a little more precise on their nitrogen applications, because we can measure what just gets volatilized and doesn’t even make it to the crop. So that’s just money that’s literally volatilizing into thin air.

Are they being monitored for nitrous oxide emissions?

Not yet, to my knowledge. I know that there is with nitrogen runoff. I think this is a really good way for growers to get ahead of that to be able to show how efficient they are being with with their nitrogen.

Is anyone doing that?

We are working with a couple of growers that are doing that.

That’s a very interesting point about the nitrogen holding, or being able to document that you’re not offloading.

A lot of irrigation cutbacks are coming the Central Valley…

Water is incredibly interesting, and it’s one of the metrics that we measure.

We’re not just a soil moisture probe, but we can show the soil moisture levels at which the crop shuts down.

So even if your soil moisture probe is saying, “Oh, you’re you know at 15% volumetric water content,” and that might appear low to someone, and they might put water on, but we can show what that stress threshold is. Maybe that crop doesn’t shut down until 11% ,so you have another few days of watering. You’re not just watering to raise the water level in the soil. You’re trying to feed that soil microbiome.

So if we’re trialing three blocks for, sometimes, an amendment additive. If you’re adding soil biology or you’re adding biochar, you can lower that stress threshold so that that crop, that potato crop, can still photosynthesize, or those grapes can still photosynthesize all the way down to 11% volumetric content. And then we can calculate at what moisture level the crop starts experiencing stress.

It’s not going to be the same in each block. And if you have really uneven terrain, maybe in these lower areas, you can water once a week, and the ones up top on the ridge top, you have to water three times a week. So we can really save growers money on irrigation as well.

I’m sort of curious because there’s so much about precision irrigation, right? And there’s actually more and more new AI stuff coming out with precision irrigation, and you’re wonder so what’s really new about this? It’s such a big concern that so many companies have worked on this. How is this solution unique or different or better?

Well, we’re not just measuring moisture, right? We’re measuring the crop response in real time, like every 30 minutes, we’re taking measurements.

So, where does it really pencil out for growers? Because you know, I’m sure most growers go like, “I ain’t spending money on nothing,” but they must be changing their tune?

It takes a grower that really wants to pay attention and to dial in their operation. I’ve farmed for many years, and I’m a firm believer in the old adage, “The best fertilizer is the footprints of the farmer.” Like we don’t replace that. We can just tell you where to put your attention, how to prioritize your day, or what blocks really should require your attention.

Right. It seems like a pretty revolutionary thing to be able to do. It is kind of “eyes inside” or something.

Yeah.

And I haven’t really come across other companies doing this.

We work with some of the most talented growers in the country, and they already know how to farm really well. But what they’ve lacked is that really trustworthy ground truth data.

Right. So you mentioned working with some organic products companies. What about regenerative product companies, and what about biodynamic practices or sub or preps?

Yeah, we work with growers practicing biodynamics as well. That’s something really interesting to me, too, because you’re you’re working with the invisible, right?

We’re measuring this invisible response, which is gas flux. It’s how this is breathing - living, and breathing. It’s kind of like a a Fitbit for your farm or for your block to see what its health is. Like, is it stressed? Or is it operating with excess? Is there excess vigor?

We work with a diversified grower in the Central Valley.

We not done like a side by side organic - biodynamic trial, but I would love to do that, working with with Demeter or someone like that - seeing how a horn manure spray and the horn silica spray increase respiration and the rooting mechanisms and and the response to sunlight.

Is the company expanding?

Next year we’re hoping to be international, so we will be working in New Zealand and Australia, and then shortly thereafter working in Europe.

END OF INTERVIEW

NOTE

In addition to helping farmers and growers, CPG companies are finding Agrology’s sensors, data and reporting useful for Scope 3 emissions reporting and more.

To learn more about Agrology, dig deeper on their website or Instagram posts. (Be sure to go to agrology.ag as there is another company at agrology.com)

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