Episode description

Find out how Calgary is leading the agribusiness revolution: www.CalgaryAgbusiness.com

Soiltech Wireless: https://www.soiltechwireless.com/

Today’s episode features Soiltech Wireless founder and CEO Ehsan Soltan. To try to summarize, Soiltech Wireless builds sensors and platforms that helps farmers and downstream partners produce more with less by optimizing inputs, organizing manpower, and collecting data from the farm and beyond more seamlessly. Ok, what does that mean? Their flagship product is a small round device that appears indestructible - that’s my claim not their’s - but it’s meant to either be buried in soil or to be placed anywhere else that the data it collects can be useful such as a developing crop or a warehoused harvest. Soiltech has its own app for cell phones and tablets and its own web browser application for farmers to interact with the data, but they and have also integrated with other parties as well to make sure customers can access the data wherever makes the most sense for them

I really enjoyed this interview in which Ehsan will share about the technology and the company, how they’ve relied on early farmer customers to really guide the development of the product and even become early investors, and some of his thoughts on agtech more generally. Coincidentally, I found out after reaching out to him for an interview that he and I live in the same town, so that was kind of a cool connection as well. 

Before Soiltech, Ehsan was living Taiwan and working in the telecommunications device manufacturing industry. But his wife was from Southern Idaho and her mother works for a potato packing house, so she was really the genesis for the whole venture to get started and off the ground.

Special thanks to Jim Cupples for the guest recommendation.