Joining Lumo: Talking to Growers About Innovation that Pays

I grew up in King City surrounded by farms. Most of my family was in farming. Beans. Hay. Tomatoes and lettuce. That kind of thing.

But I knew from early on that I wanted to contribute to farming in a different way. I had a front row seat to the struggles, the difficult days and the poor financial returns, and I wanted to find better ways to help farms thrive. To make all the hard work pay. 

I was always excited about innovation, looking for ways to make things simpler or more cost effective.

In high school I was in Future Farmers of America and spent a lot of time tinkering in the shop. I built and sold portable bbq pits for a while. 

The thing that really took off was this aftermarket weedwacker blade I made called the WeedShark. 

I got started with that because I hated weed wacking. You’re always changing the string. You’re not getting the job done. It’s a nightmare. Ends up taking all freaking day. 

So I developed a blade that makes weed wacking way faster and more efficient, so you can go do something else that you need to do. You can actually still buy it today at Home Depot or Ace Hardware. 

Looking for new innovations, trying to see what’s going on, has continually pushed me to new places.

After high school I got into ag sales, selling trellis systems to greenhouses and vineyards. Posts and lines. I did that for five or six years until Covid, unfortunately, basically crushed that company.

So I moved into irrigation, and that was a whole different world. You’re so tied in with the customer. Your relationships are so tight because you’re supplying their number one budget material and getting it where it needs to be. Getting them to trust you is a big deal. It’s all about becoming a trusted advisor.

That also got me down the path into the agronomy side of things, talking to growers about their plant and soil health, and really becoming a part of their system.

And then with Lumo, it just felt like the natural next step. Now we can fully automate this situation and really help growers make more money.

Just having the ability to gather all this data, and not only gather it, but to put it in a way that farmers can actually understand the data and use it to make decisions. That’s what drew me to Lumo.

It puts the data in a perspective that makes sense for a ranch manager to then go and turn around and say, “This is why we have to update our filter station because we’re not getting any water to block three.” And that makes sense for the farm.

I mean, before Lumo there was no way for that ranch manager to go back to an owner and say, “I need $15,000 for this filter station.” Because of course the owner is always going to say, “Well, why?” And the ranch manager would have no ammo. 

Lumo supplies that ammo to the ranch managers to make their case and to become more efficient in their entire system. Because they’re battling their irrigation system every day. And who knows how many times they've probably tried to allocate money towards doing something and just not been able to. 

I've seen it so many times that a guy wants to do a filter station, needs to do a filter station, but doesn't get the okay. 

Lumo changes that. Now ranch managers can prove something’s wrong with their system’s performance and get the upgrade they need. And that’s just awesome. It’s been a huge eye opener for the ranch managers I’ve already spoken to about using Lumo. 

Coming to the table with something that's innovative and that strikes a nerve with the grower is awesome.

Another big reason I’m now working at Lumo is that it truly delivers on simplicity, cost effectiveness and precision. It’s something I can take to a grower and clearly explain how it’s different from what they’re used to. A different product and an entirely different approach to supporting the customer in the field than I’ve ever seen in ag before. 

In my role at Lumo, I’m responsible for helping customers maintain these systems in the field and I can tell you it’s a thousand times easier to fix a hardware issue with a Lumo smart valve than it is with the other controller-based systems I’ve worked with in the past. 

With some of those systems, I’ve spent days in the field and failed to get anything back online, all while charging the customer an hourly service rate. That’s something I never felt good about, but there was no other option. I often had no idea where to even start, waiting for hours to get support on the phone. You needed to be half an electrician to figure it all out, a hornet’s nest of wires running everywhere. It was a horrible time. And bad for the customer too. 

With Lumo, it’s typically swapping out a dome or a part. It’s way simpler, way easier, and I don’t have to hit the customer with a massive bill when I’m done. 

Other places I’ve worked or seen, it’s been far more about pushing product out the door and then making it someone else’s problem to make sure it works as advertised. 

Lumo takes the exact opposite approach. We want to follow the farmer down the road. Help them through the process. Review their irrigations to make sure things are running smoothly. Reach out when we see things that are off. Show them data that we think they can learn from and that will make a difference to what they’re doing in the field. 

It’s a different way to run a business. The smart valve gives the grower this control and new level of visibility into their system performance, and then we stay involved with them through that journey, evolving how they’re irrigating and helping them understand the data. 

We don’t just provide support. We make sure they see success in the field. It’s a totally different way to do automation than I've ever seen.

The Precision Opportunity in Berries

The other thing I’m doing at Lumo is talking to berry growers about adopting the system because I think the timing is right. 

It’s all about precision in berries these days. The agronomy is changing now that there are all these growers who are ten years out of college and moving into more senior roles where they can make decisions. 

The shift is toward more micro-dosing of nutrients. Shorter, more frequent irrigation sets that have been proven to help reduce water use while also increasing yields. The agronomy side is really pushing more precision. 

And that’s exactly what Lumo delivers. Tracking flow rates at a block level on every irrigation. Allowing them to irrigate based on volumes. Flagging leaks and clogs and other performance issues as they happen. Lumo is an incredible precision irrigation tool. 

To date, berry growers haven’t been big automation customers because the economics haven’t really made sense. Lots of them still run things all manually with ball valves. 

But many believe in the value of precision, and with berry prices as high as they are, lots of them are actually making decent money. The time is right to invest in a system like Lumo, to achieve higher levels of precision while also spending less time turning valves and checking the lines for leaks. 

You gotta strike while the iron’s hot.

In a nutshell, that’s why I joined Lumo. I saw how tough farm life and farm business was growing up. Long days and not nearly enough profit at the end of it all. 

My passion for innovation, for finding better ways to do things, pushed me here - to a place where I see a ton of opportunity to help growers get their irrigation dialed in and start making more money. 

Being a part of helping change that equation for growers, that’s what excites me. And driving my racecar on a nice open road course a couple times a year. But that’s a story for another day. 

If you're a grower looking to irrigate to plan across every block, every time, you can shoot us an email at [email protected], request a demo, or connect with Chris directly on LinkedIn.