Lumo

I’ve recently been attending wine industry events as part of my new sales role at Lumo, and I’m starting to get the lay of the land. Here are three trends I keep seeing: 1. It’s a tough time to be a winegrape grower. Demand remains soft and California is overplanted. Water is scarce. Regulations keep coming. And labor is getting way more expensive and harder to find. A grower at a PRWCA event the other day said his labor costs went up by 4X over the past two years alone! In his words, “This is not sustainable in a down market, so we need to make adjustments.” 2. Growers are resourceful and resilient. Despite the tough times, I hear optimism everywhere I go. Growers aren’t just going to sit around and complain. They’re going to find solutions. At a recent event, @ Matt Merrill from @ Mesa Vineyard Management said, “My team is using more automation, which is helping us do more with less.” When I talk to growers about Lumo’s automation and block-level precision, they lean in. With labor and water regulation top of mind, everyone is looking for ways to bring technology into the vineyard and help them run their operation more efficiently. 3. Everyone is focused on sustainability. The challenges are so severe right now that everyone is thinking hard about sustainability. Not just environmentally, but holistically. How can I make sure this winery, this vineyard, this business remains viable for decades to come? And that has people thinking about how to better manage their water resources and use what they have more efficiently. It has them thinking about how to help the labor they already have get more done each day. And it has them seriously considering what investments they need to make today to put their vineyard in a position to be successful and profitable over the long run. The wine business isn’t going anywhere. And winegrape growers are going to fight to survive the current downturn and emerge even stronger, with a leaner, more efficient, more productive operation. Obviously I’m biased, but I really do believe Lumo is uniquely positioned to help growers meet the current challenges head on, and I’m optimistic by the early conversations I’ve been having with the folks I’ve met along the way.?

It's gotten harder to be a farmer over the past two years. Input costs have risen. Regulation's increased. Labor’s harder to find. And that’s putting a ton of pressure on farmers to find new technologies, new techniques and new teams to partner up with. To find ways to operate with greater efficiency and make the most of the resources they have. Our team at Lumo moves with urgency every day because we know how critical this industry is to the future of this country and the future of humanity, and we know that with the right technology and the right people, we can find ways to make farming easier, more viable, more sustainable, and ultimately, more profitable in the long run. We have to turn the tide. And we will.

More awareness isn’t the answer to accelerating agtech adoption. That’s the theme of Sarah Nolet's latest Tenacious Ventures post on lessons for effectively getting technology into the field. It dovetails nicely with an insight from Clay Mitchell, the co-founder of Fall Line Capital. His hot take on a recent episode of The Modern Acre was that “most companies in agtech that fail, fail because the products don’t work.” And then continued, “This is not why the boards think they fail. Generally the board is led to believe the products work, and it’s because of marketing and sales and other factors.” And that dovetails nicely with a Ben Palone post from a few months back about a conversation he had with a grower who said, “If your tech works, I’ll buy it.” But the crux of the issue is that what works on paper can often be a mile away from what works in the field. That’s how you get this pervasive myth about how the tech’s good but adoption’s slow, so it must be an awareness or marketing issue. Ben’s post goes on to explain that what it means to work in practice is a high standard on the farm. It means the tech does the intended job better than the current way. More efficiently, more effectively, or ideally both. That the tech is robust and reliable. That it holds up on the farm and can quickly and easily be maintained. It means the tech seamlessly slots into their existing operation and can be used by the workforce they have. And finally, it means the tech provides a return on investment ALL things considered, taking the whole system into account. All of this dovetails with my experience at Lumo. When I talk to winegrape growers in California, they know irrigation automation tools exist—they just don’t think they’re good enough. Too unreliable and prone to failure. Too complex. Too cumbersome. Too expensive. It’s not an awareness problem. It’s a product problem. It’s genuinely hard to make agtech that works, in the fullest, most demanding sense of the word. And somehow, despite the agtech failures, the difficulty is still underestimated today. It’s easier to chalk it up to an awareness problem. Easier, but misguided. Because when you make a product that actually works in the field, as intended, in a commercial setting. When you make a product that makes life easier, instead of harder. That saves time and doesn’t cause a ton of headaches and hardship. That pays for itself by reducing costs and increasing revenue... Growers adopt that technology. And they tell their neighbors. And you can scale to over 75 vineyards and counting in just two growing seasons, like we have at Lumo. We got our name out there, sure. But the adoption? The expansion to new ranches and regions? The word-of-mouth? That’s driven by results in the field. That’s what happens when you build a product that works.

Pressure monitoring has officially been integrated into our precision irrigation system at Lumo. For the upcoming season, growers will be able to monitor pressure side-by-side with flow at a block level. That means: - Faster troubleshooting - More efficient set planning - Greater ability to protect critical, high-value infrastructure - More holistic understanding of the health and performance of your irrigation system I’m excited about what pressure monitoring will unlock for the growers we serve, but honestly, I’m even more excited about what comes next. - More integrations with soil moisture sensors and weather stations - Safe, efficient, end-to-end pump automation - More data for our system to ingest and surface only the most relevant and practical insights to growers Smart valves are a powerful platform. We’re building the future of precision irrigation on that platform. Monitoring pressure is a big step forward. But it’s also just the first of many more to come. https://lnkd.in/gaD-2w-V

Block-level pressure monitoring is officially available and fully integrated into our precision irrigation system! The addition of pressure monitoring allows growers to better understand the health and performance of their irrigation system, more quickly diagnose issues in the field, engage in preventative maintenance on pumps and other irrigation infrastructure, and figure out which vineyard blocks to irrigate at the same time to maximize efficiency. “Monitoring pressure is essential for gaining a holistic view of your irrigation system,” said Devon Wright, Lumo’s CEO. “When combined with the block-level flow data from our smart valves, growers are able to clearly understand how their system is performing, quickly figure out the root cause of any problem that pops up, and optimize their irrigation sets to maximize the output of their pump.” Pressure data is complementary to flow data. When you can see both measurements at the same time, you’re able to determine whether the issue with your system is upstream or downstream and you’re able to more quickly discern between leaks, clogs, pump problems, and so on. “Having pressure sensors was extremely helpful for better understanding the irrigation system and some of the issues we were encountering with irrigation,” said Megan Coy, the Viticulturist at Regusci VM who manages the irrigation for Clos du Val’s Hirondelle North ranch where Lumo’s smart valves and pressure monitoring sensors are now installed. “First we diagnosed an issue with clogged sand filters that needed to be flushed that were leading to sudden drops in pressure. And then we all of a sudden had pressure that was way too high and we needed to relearn the system. Over the season, we learned more about where water was really going, which blocks could be irrigated together without causing issues, and the right way to go about opening and closing the system to achieve optimal performance.” With a more complete picture of your system’s performance, you’re in a better position to optimize how you schedule your irrigation sets and how to operate your system most efficiently. “Having flow and pressure data helped us understand that our system was not functioning as well as we thought. We identified some leaks, some low pressure situations that were caused by irrigating certain block combinations together, and some situations where the top of certain blocks were struggling to get enough water,” said Andrew Oliver, Vineyard Manager at Antinori where they’re putting Lumo’s pressure monitoring integration to good use. “For the first time, I can say that these blocks were sufficiently irrigated, and last year’s canopy and crop proved that.”

I was talking to a couple winegrowers over dinner recently about how this time of year in the vineyard can kind of, well, suck. A lot of prep work in the office. Pruning shoots. Getting ready for the season ahead. It’s not the part of the season that most growers love or live for. It’s not all the growth and the harvest. It’s a lot of unsexy stuff with no immediate payoff. And it really got me thinking about a lot of the work we’re doing at Lumo right now to get ready for irrigation season. Running our new firmware through its paces. Testing, testing, testing in the field. Training new partners. Prepping for some big installations. Getting some new deals over the finish line. It’s good and important work. But it’s not the part that we love or live for. It’s not helping our customers succeed in the field. It's not closed won deals yet (budgets are still in approval!) It’s a lot of office work with no immediate payoff or tangible outcome. When I asked the two winegrowers at dinner how they make it through this part of the season, they both said the same thing. "I think about how awesome all the growth was last year! I focus on how amazing this season is going to be. And most of all, remind yourself that everything you’re doing today is necessary to have a healthy crop and a productive vineyard tomorrow!" So much of what happens in September is determined by what you do in February. Good work takes time to pay off. But eventually, you do reap what you sow.

Lumo helps growers achieve better business outcomes through precision irrigation. And we deliver that precision in a much simpler and more affordable way by being the world’s first and only all-in-one smart valve for agriculture. Block-level precision and accountability. Ease of use, installation and maintenance. These things have all been kept in mind and built into the product from day one. And it shows in the results that we’re able to deliver to the growers we work with.

Trump's promise of mass deportations looms over California's wine industry: https://lnkd.in/gsutRxZb This line is frightening: "A recent U.S. Department of Labor survey estimates that undocumented immigrants make up 51 percent of the state’s agricultural workforce. At a time when wine sales are lagging, experts agree that mass deportations would have a devastating impact on the industry." Labor was getting more expensive and harder to find even before the new immigration regime. There’s a lot of fear in the market right now that it's about to get a lot worse. And farm labor just got a lot more valuable. That’s a message we’ve heard loud and clear at Lumo.? And that's why our patented Smart Valves can deliver precision irrigation to every block. Whether it's turning on your pump, opening the valve, detecting leaks or reporting on flow. We get the jobs done so your labor can focus on more important things. It’s a critical time and I’m glad Lumo’s in a position to help.

For the first two years of the business, we’ve been very focused on vineyards in Napa and Sonoma. One crop. One region. One core group of growers. And over that time, we’ve gotten really close to our customers and learned a lot about what it takes to support them in the field and to be successful with our system. This year, we’re finally giving ourselves permission to open the aperture a bit and expand into the Central Coast and up into the Okanagan in Canada. We’re building out a knowledge base to empower irrigation teams, doubling down on providing the growers we work with the tools they need to be successful in the field, and empowering local partners in those regions to help us continue to deliver hands-on support. It’s gonna be a fun year.?

A bunch of the Lumo squad was in Sacramento for Unified last week. Thought we'd share a couple of our key takeaways from the show.