When it comes to irrigating crops, repeated timing errors, equipment failures and communication miscues have been the bane of farmers for centuries. The result: Too little, too much or no water at all on crops.
It certainly was an irritation for the Wallace family in Skagit Valley. David and Connor Wallace grew up on a potato farm in Skagit Valley, where adjusting the amount of water in the fields was a continual process of trial and error. Farming obviously gets in one’s blood. After successful careers in science and technology. The two returned home and launched CODA Farm Technologies in 2020.
With $4 million in venture capital and an additional $750,000 in seed money, the company, which is now FarmHQ, has set out to scale its irrigation hardware and software solution to a broader audience. The product line, which works with existing irrigation systems, allows farmers to monitor and control irrigation from nearly anywhere using FarmHQ’s dashboard app.
In tests on 40,000 acres of customer farms, including the family farm, FarmHQ’s devices have saved approximately 365,000 gallons of water that otherwise would have gone to waste through leaks and overwatering.
Since the rollout of its new product line, the company has tripled the number of farm accounts, and revenue has gone up fourfold. Customers are located in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Australia, which served as FarmHQ’s pilot.
“Anything that grows in the soil outside, we are helping irrigate,” said David Wallace. Cops include potatoes, strawberries, dairy operations, sod, almonds and hazelnuts.
Skagit Seed Services in Mount Vernon is one of the company’s satisfied customers. A fourth-generation spinach, beet, and cabbage grower, the farm faced strong winds during the day, preventing consistently even irrigation. Owner Jack Hulbert started to irrigate at night, but labor costs increased. The addition of a FarmHQ pump, two reels and a hydrant valve allows him to let the app monitor watering at night, reducing shift labor from five days a week to zero. Every drop of water is monitored, and the system can turned off remotely from the phone.