Growers are taking notice of tech in the fields.

Katie Rodriguez here, fresh off a full day spent in the field learning about drones, robots, lasers and AI in the world of ag tech. Yesterday, Aug. 6, I, along with roughly 230 others, attended the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Innovate initiative’s field day at Sabor Farms near San Juan Bautista. 

The demo event off Highway 156 was a futuristic, sensory overload. The participants, including two delegations from Hungary and Brazil consisting of visiting researchers meeting with the university and farms to learn about ag tech, were broken up into large groups and funneled through a dirt road flanked by (mostly) lettuce fields. 

Agricultural robots were scattered across the fields doing tasks ranging from precision fertigation and irrigation to zapping weeds, some tech promising to reduce water consumption and pesticide use by 20 and 30 percent, respectively. I later learned that the toasted smell wafting through the air was dirt being zapped by lasers.

Different kinds of drones buzzed overhead. A smaller one emitted loud hawk calls to scare off birds—a common problem during planting season when growers have to protect freshly planted seeds. Another drone, weighing around 100 pounds, served as a flying sprayer, its blades whipping through the air as it swept across the fields during a demonstration.

Every so often, a large blast went off and a spout of steam would erupt in front of a group of attendees. This machine was from a company called High Degree, where, simply using steam, they’re able to eradicate a number of soilborne diseases that infect crops (right now, they’re focused on strawberries). 

The event was a place to get a pulse on the tech that is actually being used by a number of growers.

Take Niqo Robotics, for example. The Indian company, which hit U.S. markets in August 2025, is already working with eight growers just in the Salinas Valley at farms ranging in size from about 20,000 to 800,000 acres. The agricultural robot does precision spraying, weeding and thinning, using AI cameras to tell weeds from plants and going through 20-30 acres a day.

“It's just not as efficient as it used to be to do this by hand, and the cost [of labor] has made it so much the margins really aren't there,” says Chris Lauritzen, field technician with Niqo.

UC ANR Innovate is an initiative that really got going around three years ago with the goal to connect researchers, new tech, growers and policymakers. Researchers with UC Davis first vet the startups to assess what technology shows promise in providing solutions to issues growers are experiencing here and regionally. If it sounds similar, it may be because you’ve read or heard about The Reservoir, an ag tech incubator we’ve reported on in the past, that does something similar.

The program is a part of the California AgTech Alliance, which received $15.1 million from the California Jobs First Regional Investment Initiative. It was, at the time, the largest single grant made under that program. Eighteen farming operations were represented at the event, which I find telling as it shows an actual interest from growers in seeing these demonstrations.

"We’ve worked with nearly 50 companies since the program launched in 2024," says Hanif Houston of UC ANR Innovate. "Every company we bring out to a demo day is vetted by industry to make sure its technology addresses a real need identified by California farmers. What's different about us is that we are publicly funded and have deep relationships with growers across all 58 counties."