The World Bank has laid out the problems society faces in some pretty stark terms. Farmers need to produce 50% more food to feed the 9 billion people who are projected to inhabit the earth by 2050. And, increasingly, these farmers are facing a deck that’s stacked against them.
While farmers need to produce more, they’re actually being given fewer resources to work with. Dual crises surrounding water and the availability and price of arable land are forcing the industry to rethink how it does business.
It’s against this backdrop that venture capitalists are investing in companies like FarmLogs, whose Chief Executive Jesse Vollmar will join us onstage at SF Disrupt 2015 to explain how tech has the tools to help.
The co-founder and chief executive of FarmLogs, Vollmar knows a thing-or-three about growing crops. The 26-year-old tech exec and Y Combinator alum spent his formative years on the Michigan farm that has been in his family for five generations.
After graduating from Saginaw State University with a BS in Computer Information Systems, Vollmar made his way to California with the seed of the idea that would become FarmLogs.
Now based in Ann Arbor, Mich., FarmLogs has grown to be one of the powerhouses in the emerging ag-tech sector. The company has $20 billion in crops under management and over 25% of U.S. row crop farms utilize FarmLogs to make real-time, field-level decisions.
And Vollmar won’t be the only deep thinker on the future of food and the farm to take the stage at SF Disrupt 2015. Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, and a man with a big appetite for food and agtech deals, will also be dropping some wisdom alongside Y Combinator’s current president (and FarmLogs investor) Sam Altman.
Disrupt SF runs from September 21 – 23 at San Francisco’s amazing Pier 70, and if you haven’t bought your tickets to the big show, there’s still time to grab them at early bird prices (til September 7th) here.
Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact our sponsorship team at sponsors@beta.techcrunch.com.