The Innovators: This agriculture start up brings water where plants need it most
About this episode
Arthur Chen discusses Verdi Agriculture's innovative approach to automating farm irrigation systems.
Arthur Chen is trying to do something boring on purpose. Chen is the co founder and CEO of Verdi Agriculture , and he describes the company as “physical AI for farm infrastructure,” starting with irrigation. The pitch is not about tractors or drones. It is about the pipes, valves, pumps, and filter stations that farms rely on every day, and that most farms still run by hand. Chen says about 95 percent of farms still operate this stuff manually, with workers walking fields to check equipment and turn things on and off. Verdi’s approach is retrofit. Instead of asking a farm to rip out infrastructure and install a bespoke automation system, Chen says Verdi builds modular devices that sit on top of what is already there and make it “smart.” The same core idea can be applied across equipment, from pipes and valves to filter stations and even sulfur burners. The benefit is not just efficiency. It is reducing repetitive field work that eats time and labor. I asked what makes this hard, because the parts sound like commodity hardware. Chen’s answer was that the hardware is only half the story. The real complexity is in the software and firmware that lets devices act as a fleet…
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