Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in agriculture and technology but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Max Safai, Founder, and CEO of M8 Systems, located in San Juan Capistrano, CA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

M8 Systems was founded to promote sustainable agriculture while increasing profits. M8 Systems combines local environmental sensors, weather forecasts, and satellite crop imagery in a single intuitive graphical dashboard. With this dashboard, users can monitor their crop health and control their irrigation system while minimizing both their water use and labor costs. User-defined rules will suggest changes to their irrigation schedule, and historical trend analysis will provide useful insights to improve yield while lowering costs.

The M8 Systems’ FarmLink Universal IoT controller is hardware agnostic and easily connects to all the popular valve pumps and is capable of ingesting various sensor data to leverage the existing farm infrastructure and minimize the installation cost.

M8 Systems products do not need farmers to bring power, gateways, etc. We are solar-powered and have dual cellular connectivity. Our product can get a farm connected to the cloud in a matter of hours.
Key features of the M8 System:

• Significant Labor savings through automation
• Significant irrigation cost reduction through:
o Immediate Leak detection
o Connecting soil moisture to the irrigation decision to eliminate excess irrigation
• Control fertigation & flush cycle
• Control and monitoring of existing irrigation systems.
o Volumetric irrigation
• Automatic leak and clog detection with alerts
• Real-Time monitoring of irrigation costs
• Crop yield optimization through Ag Intelligence Platform

Tell us about yourself

I know a few local Avocado and Citrus farmers in San Diego County. One of them went out of business and lost their farm as they were not able to afford the rising cost of irrigation, especially as they could not detect leaks on time. Water is becoming more expensive every year as we are in a constant drought. I decided to design with my team a proof of concept that allows farmers to irrigate by time and by volume while always monitoring for possible leaks. The concept was tested for over one year, and the result on orchard irrigation was an average cost reduction of 8% while, in some cases, as much as 12%. In row crop farming (carrots as an example), M8 Systems was particularly effective in reducing irrigation labor costs through automation by 50% +.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

We successfully completed the evaluation process at the largest carrot producer in the world and have become an approved vendor. So far, our products have been on several farms and have been operating without failures. We are present on several citrus farms and several avocado farms. We are happy we are making a difference, and the list of our customers is growing simply through word of mouth.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

There were many obstacles in the beginning. It was very difficult to convince farm owners to ‘test’ the system on an operating farm where crops are growing. We were met with a lot of caution from the farmers as they considered us a bit of a risk. It was also extremely difficult to raise money for M8 Systems as agriculture does not represent a huge focus for most of them.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

My advice is simple, be clear on the actual problem you are solving and how it adds value for your potential customers. I usually try to identify a sizable benefit for most customers as opposed to a huge benefit for only a few customers! Then identify the obtainable market and a ‘beach head’ (where to start). For M8 Systems, we need to be present in the central valley, and in our first phase of commercialization, we will focus on row crop farms where we can significantly reduce their OpEx.

  1. Identify the value you are bringing to your customers.
  2. Identify the obtainable market.
  3. Identify your beachhead!

Is there anything else you'd like to share?

As worrisome as it appears, food scarcity in our future is possible. California has been in a megadrought for the past several years; the climate is changing, the population is increasing, and water is becoming more and more expensive. What is happening in California is now happening elsewhere; Colorado has put in place water restrictions for Southern California, Nevada, and Arizona. Idaho has started water restrictions as well.

M8 systems approach is to make every drop count by eliminating excessive irrigation. With our Ag intelligence platform, we connect the soil conditions to the irrigation decision-making process. Once the right soil moisture level is achieved, the system will automatically alert the farmer and will present the option of terminating the irrigation session using our mobile app. Our System is also capable of immediately detecting leaks, alerting farmers, and automatically executing a proper shutdown sequence. Finally, through automation, our system allows the farmer to achieve significant irrigation labor cost reduction, especially when it comes to row crops.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.m8systems.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/M8Systems/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/m8systems/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/joinm8systems
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/m8systems/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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