August 26, 2024

By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media

After seven years at data and technology platform Farmers Business Network (FBN), Devin Lammers has taken the helm of TerraClear, a Bellevue, Washington-based robotics company specializing in automated rock removal on U.S. farms. Lammers, who was named CEO a few weeks ago, joins to lead TerraClear and its rock-clearing solutions to a new era of growth and innovation. After raising over $53 million since its inception in 2017, TerraClear is well capitalized for now. However, with further innovation, growth and expansion on the roadmap, Lammers expects to revisit the capital raising environment in the forseeable future.

TerraClear has developed a service that changes how farmers manage rocks, using advanced technologies like AI and robotics to deliver detailed maps of a farm displaying the precise location and size of each hidden rock. Farmers can then assess the length of time it will take to clear each field, thereby saving on time and labor while preventing damage to equipment.

Rock removal is a major issue for North America’s 200 million-plus acres of cultivated land due to a common thread dating back tens of thousands of years. During the end of the last Ice Age, the massive bursting of a dam in Northern Idaho’s Glacial Lake Missoula caused the Ice Age Floods. As ice sheets barreled toward the Pacific Ocean, they ripped up bedrock and reshaped the Pacific Northwest’s terrain, leaving healthy soils but also rocks in their wake. As that land was cultivated, rocks resurfaced and continue to do so year after, leaving growers to pick through them while costing them time and wear and tear on farming equipment.

That’s where TerraClear comes in, freeing farmers from what it describes as “one of the worst jobs on the farm.” The company uses a trifecta of computer vision, AI and robotics to automate rock removal on the farm. But there’s more to the technology than meets the eye. TerraClear’s newly minted CEO Devin Lammers spent some time with GAI News to discuss his vision for near-term and long-term growth.

1.) GAI News: What was behind your move from FBN to TerraClear?

Lammers: I spent seven years at FBN, a top-tier tech agribusiness. They were well-capitalized, and we had the ability to explore the market using the lens of technology in numerous ways. After departing FBN, I was looking for a company with a good core technology and tech team but also a product that worked, one with an interesting entry point to the marketplace. That was TerraClear all the way through. Agtech is the intersection of technology meeting the physical world. Delivering automation through core technology is extremely important for the economy over the long term. We’re at the very early stages of that.

2.) GAI News: What is your vision for TerraClear?

Lammers: Our ambitions are substantial. We’re looking to grow this concept into something much bigger than it is today. It will take time, capital and lots of ingenuity. We’re still at the front end of the story. We have three core priorities. 1.) Driving commercial adoption. Our products became commercial in the last 12 months and are just hitting the market. We plan to continue to grow acres and to continue to validate the product. 2.) Second is continuing to develop partnerships. TerraClear is really good at the machine vision, robotics and software side of the equation. But we’re not an equipment manufacturer. We’ll be looking to build partnerships and have some developing today, matching our capabilities with theirs. OEMs need to transition from manufacturers to technology companies. We’re here to help catalyze that transition in the ag economy. 3.) Continue to develop the R&D pipeline in terms of a fully automated product for our core application and capabilities that can be extended to other adjacent markets in the ag industry.

3.) GAI News: Can you tell me about these new applications?

Lammers: Conceptually, yes. We’ve got a few core products. First is image capture and mapping. Fundamentally, we’re capturing images at a very high resolution on a farm. Today, we run analytics and capture information from those images to identify rocks. But there are several applications beyond rocks. Plant health is toward the top of the list – stand counts, weeds, pest pressure, nutrition, etc. We can capture that from an imagery perspective and will continue to develop capabilities to turn those images into action. That’s likely the most relevant and adjacent capability.

4.) GAI News: How would you characterize demand for the TerraClear solution and how do you quantify results?

Lammers: It’s early days. We’re actively getting to the commercial market. From a market saturation standpoint, we are just at the entry point with lots of runway left [based on] market demand as we see it today just in our backyard, the U.S. market. We plan to focus on that opportunity before looking overseas.

On ROI, it’s often binary. Many farmers simply have to clear fields, otherwise there’s a risk to the equipment and the costs they incur. The current methods are labor intensive, involving someone on the team spending time to simply look for and pick rocks by hand. Initial studies show this approach often misses 60-plus percent of the rocks because they’re difficult to see with the naked eye. Using high-resolution imagery, we can identify more rocks in the field and do so in an automated way.

And there’s equipment savings. So, if you’re running a combine harvester and picking up big rocks, that could be damaging to those very expensive pieces of equipment. Changing how you’re harvesting and trying to miss rocks could impact how much yield you’re capturing or damage equipment.

5.) GAI News: TerraClear has raised just over $53 million so far, correct? What are your future fundraising plans?

Lammers: Yes, in that ballpark. That’s allowed us to develop this complex and fundamental technology that we brought into production in the commercialized marketplace. We have a good runway and it’s a comfortable place to be. We’ll be looking at fundraising at some point, probably in the latter half of 2025. We’ve got enough capital for at least the next 18 months and plenty of room to operate through the next big selling season. Spring is a big season for us.

6.) GAI News: Considering TerraClear’s current focus on farms in Minnesota and Iowa, are there any plans to expand the company’s footprint?

Lammers: The challenge is to make sure we’re making proper headway in our core markets before eyeing future expansion opportunities. The core market for us today is the United States. Canada is an easily adjacent market for us, so we’re also looking there. We receive interest from other countries all the time, from Brazil to Australia to the European markets. Those are relevant markets for us, but it’s more important for us to focus on the core market at the moment, the U.S. market.

7.) GAI News: How do farms hear about TerraClear’s rock-clearing service?

Lammers: Our demand generation these days is omnichannel. Trade shows and boots on the ground still have a heavy influence in the ag world, but we also have digital marketing and awareness campaigns. In short, we use both traditional and more modern marketing channels. On the digital side, farmers are people too and live a lot of their lives online. That’s a very relevant place to capture attention as well.

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