SKAGIT COUNTY, Wash. — Connor and David Wallace are brothers from the Skagit Valley who grew up on a potato farm, watching the highs and lows of the farming industry.
One problem the industry faces is ongoing and getting worse through the years.
“Water was really at the forefront of the problems we were dealing with and that’s what led us to start this company,” said David.
Potatoes need up to a quarter of 1 inch of water per day during the bulking season. With recent drastic swings in the weather, it’s made irrigating crops more challenging, so the brothers created a solution.
David got a Ph.D. in chemistry and worked at Amazon as a data scientist and engineer. Connor spent 10 years working as a programmer in California’s Silicon Valley. Their father asked them to use those tech skills to help the problem on their family farm.
“It was dad saying hey we had tons of problems with fields flooding last year, can you figure out something to solve this problem,” said David.
So, they started FarmHQ. They spent the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in their parents’ garage, finalizing prototypes and testing the tool.
They ended up creating a device that bolts onto the side of irrigation equipment and has an embedded GPS, pressure and motion sensor.
This sends real-time alerts to your phone if an irrigation system stops, preventing flooding. Historically, farmers have to drive around and visually survey their fields to ensure equipment is working properly. These irrigation systems move slowly, though, so it’s hard to tell if any have stopped.
Plus, that method requires nonstop eyes on the fields.
“One of the reasons we were motivated to do stuff with water is that coming out here you have to drive around and look at all the things that are running, and it’s a really tough job,” said Connor.
“When things do go wrong in the middle of the night, if somebody is not there to see it, you wake up in the morning to a massive lake in the middle of your potato field. And that entire half acre to an acre is now flooded out and ruined,” added David.
With this technology, if an irrigation tool, like a hose reel, breaks, the user can shut the water off immediately from their phone.
“Anything goes wrong with this hose reel or just when it finishes it’s run, it can automatically communicate to that pump to shut down,” said David.
Since they started using the product themselves, they realized other farmers have similar needs. Now, nearly 30 farmers in Skagit and Whatcom counties use the FarmHQ technology. Plus, the tool is used in four countries and in 32 states and provinces.
“I didn’t really expect to be starting a company out of this honestly but when we had farms that were asking for it, it became clear that that’s what we needed to do,” said David.
The brothers say this has been a game changer for the farmers. They’ve conducted data from more than 10,000 hose reel irrigation runs and discovered that accidental stoppage happens one in eight times.
When half an acre of potato fields flood, the lost crop can be worth anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000.
They add that this is an important tool with changing weather, especially with such water-reliant crops.
“I feel like it’s not just increased demand for water, it’s less predictable. So year to year, you could have heat waves, or you could have tons of rain,” said Connor.
This started for their own family farm, but is now helping farmers across the world.
“From my perspective, the number one thing we wanted to do was make farmers' lives easier. Make their work easier,” said Connor.
