What If Every Plant Was a Sensor? with Gary Schaefer

What if crops could tell you when they were sick, before you could see the symptoms?

Gary Schaefer leads the commercial organization at InnerPlant, a company with a radically different approach to crop monitoring: engineering plants to communicate when they are under stress.

InnerPlant’s technology enables plants to emit a fluorescent signal within hours of infection by specific diseases, potentially giving farmers access to real-time information about what is happening in their crops. Their first commercial product, CropVoice, uses strategically placed “sentinel” plants to provide localized information about fungal disease risk in soybeans.

But like all things in agtech, technology is only part of the story.

In discussion with Dr Madeline Mitchell, Gary shares what InnerPlant has learned about bringing a new category of agtech to market. If plants can tell us what’s happening before we can see it, what else might that change about agriculture?

Gary and Maddie discuss:

• What detecting disease before visible symptoms appear changes about crop protection
• The shift from maximizing yield to maximizing efficiency
• What InnerPlant learned by starting small and working closely with farmers.
• What it takes to move from scientific innovation to commercialization.
• Why strategic investment can be more valuable than capital alone.
• How farmer investors can help shape an agtech company's path to market.
• What the future could look like when every plant becomes a sensor.

Useful Links:

• Ag Startup InnerPlant Develops New Crop Technology Alerting Farmers of Plant Stress
• VCs should still chase agtech Cinderellas - Fast Company
• Breaking Barriers in Crop Innovation (3 part series)

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