On a bright sunny day in the Central Valley city of Selma, farmer Drew Ketelson was out with his crews harvesting nectarines.
Ketelson, vice president of HMC Farms, grows stone fruit – nectarines, plums, peaches, apricots and table grapes. In recent years, he’s experimented with different technologies to ease the workflow on his crops.
“We’re using moisture sensors, we’re using aerial drones, we’re using AI tools to help us analyze the weather and make better irrigation decisions,” Ketelson said. “I forget how much stuff we have until I look at the list and I go, ‘oh my goodness, we do have a lot of technology out here.’”
Ketelson is just one of many farmers in the region who have had to adapt and modernize their farm operations to maintain and increase their production.
California’s Central Valley produces more than a quarter of the nation’s food. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 250 different crops are grown in the Valley with an estimated worth of $17 billion a year.
Researchers at the United Nations estimate the world’s population will reach about 10 billion people by 2050. To feed the population, USDA estimates that agricultural production needs to increase by at least 47%.
To help in that effort, the ag-tech nonprofit F3 Innovate, or F3I, is launching a supercomputer at Fresno State – the first-of-its-kind in the region – to help farmers use AI to solve daily problems, and bring resources and technological support to Valley researchers and students.
“Agriculture is facing enormous pressures and meeting those challenges is going to require faster insights, better tools, stronger partnerships and the ability to innovate at the speed of precise minute-by-minute decisions,” said Priscilla Koepke, CEO of F3I.
Ketelson, who is on the F3I board of directors, firmly believes the supercomputer and new technologies are critical for the future of agriculture.
“I think if you’re not jumping into AI and utilizing these tools, you could be missing out on being able to maintain a margin,” he said.
‘Agriculture is facing enormous pressures’
Supercomputers are specialized machines built to process massive amounts of data at high speeds. The technology is often used by government agencies and scientists to simulate models for climate change solutions, medical research – and now agriculture.
F3I’s supercomputer operates out of Fresno State and taps into the same data resources as UC San Diego’s Supercomputing Center. However, it’s not a new building – it works as a cloud service that users can utilize on their own.
The nonprofit is also providing hands-on technical support to help growers, researchers and students use the technology to create solutions that fit their needs.
“The center exists in the Valley so that we can help build and benefit from the AI economy rather than watch it develop elsewhere,” Koepke said.
Fresno State President Saúl Jiménez-Sandoval said he’s looking forward to the possibilities of what the supercomputer could bring to his university.
His hope is for the school to be a leader for the Valley for AI. In the fall, Fresno State students can take a minor in artificial intelligence.
“What we’re speaking about right now is going from like black and white television – not only to color – but to this fully immersed environment in which you are actually part of the movie,” Jiménez-Sandoval said.“It’s a huge jump from being dependent on a system like ChatGPT to being the architects of real profound change that’s going to be focused on specific issues in the Valley.”
Some farmers ‘cautiously optimistic’
Ketelson is already using the supercomputer on his farm. Most recently, he used it to track his farm vehicle performances and find out when he should replace older trucks. He also used it to obtain strategies for how to most efficiently use his fleets.
“It took me three minutes to build a whole fleet management program,” Ketelson said. “It was something that was really tangible and hands-on that just really changed my operation overnight.”
One prominent Valley farmer says he’s “cautiously optimistic” about new technology.
“There’s a lot of technology there and AI has a great deal of potential,” Westside farmer Joe Del Bosque said. “What we’re lacking right now is trying to figure out what that can do for us on the farm.”
While Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms has been using and shopping around for new technologies to use on his ranch, he said that he’s careful and verifies how it’s operating on his crops.
“I go out and walk the fields and my eyes can tell me a lot too,” Del Bosque said. “My eyes have a lot more experience than AI…[it’s] only as good as the information that it has to work with.”
While technological advances and AI continue to surge in his industry, Del Bosque said he’s hopeful for what it could do for farmers and farm laborers.
“It’s going to be a long time before we’re able to get technology to replace human hands, but we need to find ways to make it easier for these human hands to do what they have to do.”
