354. TerraForce’s Mike Jacob on farmer-led innovation, solving for the labor gap + jobs to be done

The Economic Policy Institute estimates there are 2.4 million employees in U.S. agriculture and Purdue finds that 40% of new ag jobs go unfilled. One entrepreneur is turning to computer vision, artificial intelligence and robotics – maybe a little autonomy – to try to address these challenges facing farmers. Mike Jacob, founder and CEO of TerraForce, joins to talk farmer-led innovation, solving for the labor gap and jobs to be done. We get into:  The overview of the farm labor market, its challenges and where TerraForce specifically focuses right now in the specialty melon crop market What challenges face melon producers when it comes to harvest How Mike sees this new era of AI and computer vision shaping precision in agbioscience innovation What TerraForce does, solving labor challenges and how they plan to tackle a real problem facing farmers Mike gets into seeing his first melon harvest, identifying the problem to be solved and innovating from there The criticality of melons – yes melons – to make an impact on his community as an entrepreneur Where the TerraForce product sits today and how regional producers are the critical testbed to the company’s success TerraForce’s recent fundraise and what it will enable them to do Mike’s take on the ag’s jobs to be done: ag becoming less optimized and finding ways to become more resilient to big changes