Do you dream of accelerating the future of AgTech? Do visions of UAV’s and GPS-based crop apps dance in your head?
If so, you might want to start planning a trip to the Salinas Valley.
The merging of agriculture and technology will be soon be highlighted on a major public forum, as Forbes announced Wednesday morning that, in partnership with Silicon Valley Global (SVG) Partners and the Steinbeck Innovation Cluster, it will host the “Forbes Reinventing America: The AgTech Summit” in Salinas Valley, California, July 2015.
This announcement follows the success of last spring’s “Forbes Reinventing America Summit,” an invite-only conference based on Forbes magazine’s Reinventing America series, which focused on the changing landscape of America’s industrial heartland. Convening over 300 executives, entrepreneurs, academics, and elected officials, the summit opened up discussions about how new technologies could usher long-established industries into the 21st Century.
Following suit, the second edition to the summit series will draw hundreds the brightest minds from Silicon Valley and the Salinas Valley, the latter known as the de facto AgTech capital of the country. Both sides of the Ag industry will confront the core issues facing global agriculture and address the new advancements—from precision agriculture to big data—that could revolutionize how we produce food for an expanding population.
“The goal of the AgTech Summit is to find innovative solutions to some of the world’s most critical farming challenges,” said Mike Federle, Forbes Media Chief Operating Officer, “and there’s no better place for this event than in the Salinas Valley, where tech entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and experts from the global hub of agriculture intersect.”
In addition to talks with industry leaders, “The AgTech Summit” will feature winners of the Thrive Accelerator —a mentorship and investment program created by SVG Partners that aims to connect the best precision Ag-geared innovators with top agriculture companies in the Salinas Valley. The competitive eight-week program will grant ten startups with the “Thrive AgTech” award, as well as an opportunity to network, collaborate, and field new ideas.
Applications are now available at thriveaccelerator.com.
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FEATURED IMAGE: nachans/Flickr
