After four years in business, Autonomous Tractor was experiencing steady growth – just not quite in the region it expected.
According to the company's CEO, Kraig Schulz, the high-tech farming equipment startup based in St. Michael found that the majority of its customers and contacts were located outside its home state in places like Colorado, Houston and Detroit. Why wasn't the business flourishing in its agriculturally-strong hometown?
"The Midwest is a different startup scene entirely," Schulz explained. "And AgTech is a hard sector to be in, even though it's the bread and butter of the upper Midwest."
Autonomous Tractor participated in Village Capital's agriculture accelerator last year. Schulz said that the experience helped them gain national contacts and exposure, but the the team felt there was undeveloped potential for their business in the upper Midwest.
This led Autonomous Tractor to sign up to compete in the Minnesota Cup's Food/Agriculture/Beverage division, which they recently won. The company received $30,000 for its division win, and will compete against other division winners for a $50,000 grand prize during Twin Cities Startup Week.
Schulz started the company with Terry Anderson, a local serial entrepreneur, and the "crazy mad scientist" behind Autonomous Tractor's tech. The company builds electric tractor parts like generators and wheel motors to help farmers increase equipment efficiency and cut back on fuel and replacement costs.
"Farmers are not venture investors," Schulz explained. "They already have their hands full of risk every day, and they don't want to add more risk on top of that."
Contrary to its name, Autonomous Tractor does not currently sell a fully autonomous tractor. They offer an electric crop sprayer and collection of electric tractor parts. The benefit of going electronic, according to Schulz, is an increase in efficiency, control and maintenance, as well as a decrease of cost and fuel over time.
Schulz hopes that one day the company will be the "Tesla for Tractors." But that doesn't mean they're looking to build self-driving tractors. The farming industry has had that tech for nearly two decades. Achieving true autonomy, functioning without human interaction, is the real challenge, according to Schulz.
"We don't have a computer than can replace farmers yet," he said. "We have to make sure that whatever that the machine is doing in the field is the same thing that a farmer would do. And the list of challenges to that is pages long."
The company is currently developing digital and autonomous tech for small and large tractors, but Schulz said it may be some time before it's commercialized.
The division that Autonomous Tractor won in this year's Minnesota Cup was added to the competition four years ago. Much like the division, the agricultural technology industry itself is somewhat new to Minnesota. Schulz estimates that it's less than a decade old. Over time he hopes to see Minnesota embrace its potential as a hub for AgTech.
"There are groups in the industry that are doing things here, but they're not super visible," he said. "Agriculture is something the upper Midwest knows well, and we should be doing more to embrace that."
