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