Joining Lumo: On Bridging the Gap Between Growers and AgTech

As I sit down to write this, I’m a little worried the snowstorm outside might delay my flight. I’m preparing to travel across the country back home to Napa to start my new role as a Senior Customer Success Manager at Lumo next week. I remember it being a whole lot hotter the day my AgTech journey began. 

We stood there, anxiously anticipating their arrival—this would be my first experience interacting with a cutting-edge AgTech team. Soon, the jostling of tires bouncing off the rocky soil and the jet stream of dust following their truck signaled their approach.

Greetings were exchanged. Introductions made. But the mood soured quickly as their lead engineer analyzed our California Sprawl training system with a confused look on his face. After a long pause, he turned to the Viticulturist and asked an unthinkable question, “Can we remove all the leaves around the fruit?”

Horrified by the thought of watching valuable grapes burn in the summer heat, the Viticulturist responded bluntly, “No.” 

Their team seemed stumped by the resistance, as their lack of research into vineyard management operations quickly became obvious. Their product had promise, but given the training system, terrain, and layout of the site that had been selected, the pilot was doomed from the start. 

Unfortunately, that was the first of many similar experiences. 

Over my years working as a Vineyard Tech and Viticulturist for leading wineries in Napa, I routinely observed similar interactions between growers and AgTech teams. 

I attended countless sales pitches that fell flat as technologists failed to grasp the material realities of vineyard work. And, because companies didn’t really understand the challenges growers were facing, they often had misguided notions about the value their technology could provide. Their story never hit home. 

Even so, I participated in numerous trials in the name of precision agriculture, as the term gradually evolved from a buzzword to an imperative. But few projects, if any, ever managed to gain real traction or widespread adoption–even the ones that appeared to provide some initial benefit. 

As AgTech startups went away just as quickly as they arrived, growers were reluctant to invest in earnest. Sometimes due to budget constraints and slim operating margins. Sometimes due to (often well-founded) trust issues. But also simply because farmers aren’t paid to take risks. It’s a culture of risk mitigation. You don’t bet the farm on unproven tech. 

And yet, even as I endured bad pitches and witnessed sputtering trials, the need for new technologies to help wine grape growers optimize their operations became more and more clear. 

With ESG initiatives, AB 1066, an aging labor force, and fierce competition in the marketplace, it seemed obvious to me that any vineyard hoping to survive and thrive in the decades to come was going to need to get smarter about the technology underpinning their operations. 

For a decade or more, AgTech had overpromised and underdelivered, but that’s because it was early, not because it was the wrong direction to go. There is no other direction to go if we’re going to get the productivity and efficiency gains we need to meet the demands of the twenty-first century. 

And so, even though I loved growing wine grapes in my hometown and following in my dad’s footsteps, I felt compelled to take a more active role in solving these issues, to help bridge the gap I saw between AgTech teams and the growers they hoped to serve. 

As someone who understood both technology and farming practices, I felt like I was in a unique position to bring these two worlds together, to help tech companies design and implement better products, and to help growers get the most out of the tools available today. 

After discussing this with a tech industry friend, I discovered there’s a name for this sort of thing: Customer Success.

It wasn’t long after that I landed a CS role with Arable and began helping growers integrate their systems, consolidate data streams, and expedite agronomic insights. Luckily, it proved just as rewarding as I had first hoped. 

From Arable and the East Coast to Lumo Back in Napa

Seven months after transitioning from ag worker to AgTech enabler, Lumo launched. I read the LinkedIn announcement with a mix of cynicism and curiosity. As I looked over their website, I recalled the many vineyards I had walked through with abandoned wiring dangling from solenoids, the last remnants of failed attempts to automate in the past. Hadn’t AgTech already tried and failed to do this? 

And then I read about a feature that could change everything: volume-based irrigation tracking. It turned out that instead of focusing solely on automation, Lumo had actually listened to a few wise vineyard managers who explained that the real issue was one of visibility, and as a result, they had invented smart valves that all came equipped with built-in flow meters. 

My mind raced with possibilities. Would vineyard managers finally know exactly how much water they were applying to each block? Could this mark the beginning of understanding the irrigation black box, diagnosing irrigation system performance issues in real time, and dialling in precision to a degree that was previously thought to be cost-prohibitive, if not practically impossible?

For months, I monitored the project from afar. New features appeared like identifying leaks, smart baseline tools for real-time system calibration, and 4’’ valves for bigger blocks. New partnerships were announced with well known names like Central Valley, Treasury Wine Estates, and Clos du Val. Each release addressed customer issues and followed a product development process that seemed deeply rooted in customer needs. Their depth of understanding of the problems growers are facing today seemed uncharacteristic of many of the AgTech startups I had interacted with in the past. 

And then at Unified last year, I ran into Devon, Lumo’s CEO, and Ernie, Lumo’s Sales Manager, who shared more about Lumo’s focus on delivering value to vineyards in Napa and Sonoma. Though they had only been in business for less than two years, they talked about dozens of customers by name. I knew that rate of adoption wasn’t common, especially given the lack of trust in AgTech in general, and irrigation automation in particular, that had crystallized over the years. It signalled to me that the hype was real, and a few brief conversations with family and friends still in the industry confirmed as much.  

But even more than that, there was something about their commitment and enthusiasm for what they were doing that reignited my own passion for solving the irrigation enigma. Though I knew it would require relocating across the country, I felt a deep desire to solve the challenges I had experienced firsthand in my hometown all those years ago. 

Looking at my packed bags and anticipating the coming months, I can honestly say I feel thrilled to return home and contribute to this mission. I owe so much to the vineyards of Napa and Sonoma where I grew up and where I first cut my teeth in the industry. It’s a debt I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to truly repay. But playing some small part in ensuring they continue to succeed in the years to come seems like a decent place to start. 

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