FarmSolutions Technician Justin Gormly assembles a remotecontrolled airplane with a built in camera, used to monitor farms. (Nik Blaskovich / Business Times photo)
With California in the midst of some of its driest months on record, the statewide drought is far from over, and one Westlake Village firm is looking to bring farmers some solutions.
Aptly named FarmSolutions, the firm provides a software system for managing agricultural operations and has deployed hundreds of units throughout California since launching in January of this year. The FarmSolutions software system, which starts at $499, operates through towers installed on the growing site and an accompanying Webbased platform that provides maps of the operation and can send text alerts to growers and their employees. The system can be used for irrigation management, measuring soil moisture levels and analyzing plant tissues and nutrient levels, among other functions.
“We have different competitors in each of the features, but no one has put it all together like we have,” said Katharine Rosser, sales engineer at the company. “We’re trying to serve that market that’s been underserved: your midlevel farming operations. Many of them know the technology is there but have just been kind of priced out of it.”
