From Farms to Incubators: The Book

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““I am very enthusiastic about holding up these stories to inspire others, especially the next generation of women using their STEM backgrounds to make positive impacts in our communities and our world. Women have always been an important part of agriculture but often not in visible leadership roles. That has changed dramatically in recent years and I am excited about a future that has women in agtech leading change to make a difference for families across the globe.””

— Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture

Learn about women making a difference in the world of AgTech in the trailer for the Farms to Incubators: Women Innovators Revolutionizing How our Food is Grown.

From Farms to Incubators: Women Innovators Revolutionizing How Our Food Is Grown

Article by Tom Leyde

The feminine touch is changing the landscape of agriculture worldwide. Women in agtech are helping farmers meet enormous challenges head-on. From water and labor shortages to climate change, barriers to growing food more efficiently and abundantly have never been greater. It is estimated that farmers will need to feed 10 billion people by 2050. So agtech needs all the support it can get. Women, including many women of color, are stepping up to meet that need, with grit, determination, intelligence, and innovation.

Their stories are recorded in “From Farms to Incubators.” It is a collection of visual and written portraits by award-winning journalist Amy Wu. Wu found that agriculture and agtech, had been dominated by men. But something was changing. Women were making major inroads in the field, and this was not being widely reported. She wrote a story profiling a woman who founded an agtech company, while working as a reporter at The Salinas Californian newspaper in Salinas, CA., then another and another. Her stories eventually became a series printed in newspapers throughout the U.S. The project evolved into an award-winning documentary and then a virtual reality traveling exhibition, starting at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas in the fall of 2020.

“From Farms to Incubators” will be published in book form in April 2021. The photo-centric book will feature Wu’s profiles of women leading the way in agtech.

“The book strives to document a time in history that captures an intersection when agriculture and technology and the workforce behind it began a shift that will be of value years, decades, and generations from now,” Wu writes in the book. The women behind that shift are visionaries who are changing the world for the better one innovation at a time. Not all of them started in agriculture or agtech. But they found their way there and committed to the field. A number of these women are in California, where farming and ranching are a $50 billion a year industry. But others are working in Australia and Latin American. However, the innovations the women have launched and are launching have worldwide applications.

In the book, the documentary and the virtual exhibition, you will meet such women as Mariana Vasconcelos of Brazil, Ros Harvey of Australia and Ellie Symes of Bloomington, Indiana. They are among those making history in agtech.

Symes founded The Bee Corp. It introduces sensor monitoring and data-analytics to the beekeeping community through decision-support software — providing beekeepers with a service to monitor hive health in real-time, gain insights on hive management methods and optimize operational efficiency.

Harvey worked labor-related groups in Australia and Indonesia before turning to agtech. She is the co-founder and managing director of The Yield. The company offers a variety of technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) to help agriculture companies solve such challenges as limited water, land availability, and climate change. She found that agriculture had one of the lowest levels of digitization compared to other industries.

Vasconcelos launched Agrosmart in 2014 as co-founder and CEO. The company monitors crops and provides farmers and the entire food supply chain with agronomic and traceability insights.

New software and hardware developed by Agrosmart include drones, artificial intelligence, sensors, data analytics, and robotics. It’s a brave new world in agriculture this century. And the work women in the industry are doing will carry ag productivity into the next century.

Tom Leyde is a journalist, having worked for newspapers on Californian’s Central Coast for more than 40 years. He is a freelance writer living in Marana, AZ.

Q & A with AMY WU, the Author

Q: Why is this book important?

A: The project started out with me in 2016 as a reporter at The Salinas California. I was assigned to cover government and agriculture in the Salinas Valley. The Valley has a $9 billion industry. The industry is significant in terms of providing leafy greens to the rest of the country. But I noticed there were not a lot of women in the field in terms of leadership positions and decision-making in traditional agriculture. But in turn, there was a growing sector called agtech five years ago, and the city of Salinas and surrounding cities really wanted that sector to grow as a part of developing their local economy. I noticed there appeared to be a shortage of women in agriculture and agtech. Yet I believed that there were women in the industry. So, I started to ask the question: Are there any minority women entrepreneurs in agtech? Can I tell their stories? It was a goal of uplifting their voices. So, from there I did a documentary and I shared some of their stories and their profiles. And we had maybe about half a dozen women in the beginning and a lot of it was word of mouth. I found their stories interesting. I found a lot of them had commonalities, such as really wanting to take on big changes. And a lot of them came from strong agricultural backgrounds. I could have stopped there with the documentary and the series in The Californian. But as time went on more and more stories were unearthed. Someone would call me and say, “Have you talked with this woman or that woman? Have you called this company or that company run by a woman?” And it turned out there were dozens of inspiring stories of women founders or leaders in the area of agtech. There were too many stories to ignore, so in 2018 I decided to put it in the form of a book. I think the book is important because it’s really a piece of history. Their stories, I think, will inspire, hopefully, young people to consider careers in agriculture and see that agriculture is more than just tractors and overalls. There’s a lot of opportunity in agriculture in terms of marketing, in terms of big data as well. I think in general the bigger picture in this challenging time, I think people in business who face challenges and find solutions and find successes are often inspiring. So the bigger picture would be leadership.

Q: Who will the book benefit?

A: There are dozens of women who have shared their stories of professional talents and opportunities for this book. They’re not just from California. They’re from Salinas Valley, they’re global and from across the country. So who would benefit would be, first of all, those growers, investors, policymakers, anybody who is interested in learning more about agtech and agriculture would benefit. Anybody who wants to connect with these women would benefit and anybody who cares about where your food comes from and who’s growing it. The women I am profiling are creating innovations and technology to help farmers be more subsistent and basically grow better, quote-unquote. They’re saving money because farming is an expensive industry. They’re also feeding the world. There’s a forecast that by 2050 the population will be close to 10 billion people and growers internationally are being faced with pressures to feed the world.

Q: What is the future impact of the book?

A: One of the big impacts of this book was to inspire a new generation who will consider future opportunities in food and farming. And this could be anything from future farming to being one of the people creating innovations for the farmers. The question might be why did I spend so much time writing the stories and writing the book because right now I think there are a change and a potential opportunity for a paradigm shift. The demographics of the country have been changing. It’s a lot more diverse. But on the other hand, traditional farming is a bit at risk, because the older generation of farmers are retiring and their sons and daughters are not necessarily interested in farming. So this leads to who is going to take over the helm or the opportunities to get into the industry.

There’s an opportunity there for people of all different backgrounds and all different genders and races and stories and experiences. So the message I’m trying to send across is food and farming and innovation are open to anybody and it’s changing.

Hopefully, young people will read the stories and say, “That could be me.” Seeing people who look like them, I think, would often help. That’s why I decided to focus on female founders, especially females of color. It’s a real mix, though. We have women who are children of immigrants and we have another woman who is a ninth-generation farmer herself. We have a woman who was a field worker who had dreams of owning her own farm. So it’s really a spectrum of stories, and I wanted it to be that way.

From Farms to Incubators book became available in April 2021. You can order the book from Barnes & Noble, Quill Driver Books or Amazon. If you live in Hudson Valley region of New York and want to support our local bookstores, please find the book at Rough Draft Bar + Books in Kingston, NY, or at Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, NY.