Guardian Agriculture Nets $20m Series A
- Guardian Agriculture has raised a $20 million Series A round led by Fall Line Capital to expand its autonomous drone technology to farms across the US and ramp-up manufacturing of its SC1 aircraft. The raise brings Guardian’s cumulative funding to $35 million.
- Founded in 2017 with a focus on large-scale agriculture, the Woburn, Massachusetts-based company has more than $100 million in pre-orders and will begin commercial operations to support customer (and investor) Wilbur-Ellis in Salinas Valley, California, this summer.
- The first Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) company with Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) approval to operate commercially nationwide, Guardian Agriculture has “taken a practical approach to building and deploying our technology that puts us well ahead of other eVTOL developers,” claims founder and CEO Adam Bercu.
- “Customers, investors, and regulators recognize that there’s no better application of electric, fully-autonomous aircraft than in commercial farming. This funding will allow us to begin and quickly expand commercial operations on real farms with paying customers sooner as we continue to strengthen our team and ramp up aircraft production.”
What does the future of spraying look like? Drone or ground rig?
Both? Or something else?
I alluded to this above regarding potentially tethering together a drone with a ground sprayer to spray the inefficient areas (around sloughs, power poles etc). However, there are other visions for what the
future holds—consider the Solinftec Solix unit. This on-the-ground, solar-powered, autonomous unit can “see and spray” and eradicate insects with UV light. Or we could consider the likes of SwarmFarm in here as well.
In Built to Last, Jim Collins talks about “The Tyranny of the Or” vs. “The Greatness of the And.” In short, his concept is that when we consider a decision and position it as an “or” proposition (we must choose A or B), we are confining ourselves to only one of two choices— and they are usually at opposite ends of the spectrum. Black or white. Yes or no. Right or wrong. When we substitute “and” in place of “or” we open up our range of choices or solutions to an infinite number of options between A and B. In most instances, there is a sweet spot in the middle that does a pretty good job of meeting the needs of both sides and delivering a superior outcome.
In The Opposable Mind, Roger Martin proposes integrative thinking as the process for innovation and success. This approach is a discipline of considering two opposing ideas simultaneously and producing a synthesis that is superior to both or a new concept altogether. Martin states this as “the ability to face the tension of opposing ideas
constructively and, instead of choosing one at the expense of the other, generate a creative resolution of the tension in the form of a new idea that contains elements of the opposing ideas but is superior to both.”
An opposable mind in the ag industry must identify the best possible routes to superior outcomes by combining disparate ideologies. If we apply this thinking to the North American market, we can see the potential of drones in the short term.
Spray technology will likely look different in various geographies — permanent specialty crops in California and Washington (e.g., apples and almonds) offer a great entry point for drone spraying as a stand-alone. Western Canada, with 320+ac fields and oil pump jacks in fields, presents an opportunity for a tethered approach with both. The mid-west USA may offer an exciting combination where Solix can work in tandem with a spray drone. Without commercial offerings of some of these concepts, it isn’t easy to assess their viability. Still, we can see how autonomous drones with high payload capacity and acceptable regulations present unique opportunities.
Guardian getting FAA approval is a great step to illustrating what a commercial offering in conjunction with market access (Wilbur-Ellis) can bring to the industry.
Source: AgFunder News