Business Bites: CES proves that ‘desperation fuels adoption’ in food and agtechBusiness Bites: CES proves that ‘desperation fuels adoption’ in food and agtech
In this special CES edition of Business Bites, SupplySide Food & Beverage Journal spotlights the most groundbreaking food and agricultural technologies, driven by urgent global challenges like climate change and labor shortages.

At a Glance
- With U.S. farmers facing labor shortages, companies like Agtonomy are creating innovative agtech solutions to help.
- The Rocket 2.0 Smart Irrigation system reduces water usage by 30% through AI-powered data integration.
- Shiru uses AI to discover sustainable, functional proteins, potentially revolutionizing packaged food development.
Attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) feels a bit like falling down a tech-fantasy rabbit hole. Huge, curved screens cluttered the show floor, glowing down at the attendees from every angle, and exhibitors lugged advanced robotics to and fro like luggage. (Charging stations, however, were strangely few and far between.)
With so much new tech on display, you might think this event is unanimously hopeful for the future, but a darker theme permeated the proceedings, spoken aloud by panelist Sarah Evanega, VP of business development at Okanagan Specialty Fruits, during the AgTech Summit hosted by The Spoon: When it comes to food technology — and especially agricultural tech — "desperation fuels adoption."
“That’s what we’re seeing all around the world,” Evanega said during the “AI or Die” panel. “Countries are realizing, ‘Wow, we’ve got a huge challenge ahead of us with climate change. We’ve got to be able to produce food sustainably, and the only way we’re going to be able to do that is if we embrace new tools.’”
With the effects of climate change rapidly reducing our ability to produce, manufacture, transport and dispose of food, we need solutions that optimize efficiency and resiliency within the complex, global systems that make it all possible. In short, humanity is getting desperate, and that anxiety will be the deciding factor in whether each new piece of food tech finds its niche in a crowded marketplace.
But CES also proves that the brightest minds in the world are working on solutions to these problems. From artificially intelligent irrigation systems to lab-grown organs used to test new pesticides, this special CES edition of Business Bites highlights just a few of the products and ideas that are going to change the way the whole world eats.

CEO Thibault Honegger shows off Netri's tech.
Artificial organs allow food manufacturers to test chemical safety
Imagine putting reprogrammed human stem cells into a device that can grow miniature organs, which can in turn be used to screen new chemicals for safety, eliminating the need for animal testing and speeding up approval processes.
You don’t have to imagine anymore. It’s real. France-based company Netri is doing it, but even better, they’re working directly with manufacturers to ensure each new chemical concoction is nontoxic before it ends up in products.
“We use neurons, which are natural sensors in your body,” Thibault Honegger, co-founder and CEO of Netri, said. “We use these natural biosensors … to sense the effect of the chemical compound. And we’ve decoded how the neurons tell us whether it’s good or bad, toxic or nontoxic.”
Basically, you expose these neurons to a chemical, be it a preservative or a pesticide, then place them inside Netri’s device. A small box, the size of an envelope, contains the samples, and you insert that box into a tabletop machine, which cross-references the neurons’ electrical activity against Netri’s existing databases.
They can even do this with neurons from your gut, as those will be the first cells exposed to a new chemical in or on your food.
Despite advancements in automation, labor will shape the future of food
Farming in the U.S. has a long, vitally important history for obvious reasons. But today, our farms are struggling — with shortages not related to tech, but to labor.
"Farmers are getting older,” Tim Bucher, CEO at Agtonomy and a lifelong farmer, said. “The average age is 58, and guess what? Those farmers are working 12 to 18 hours a day, and I can attest to that. And … the next generation is not going into it. So, they’re desperate for these kinds of solutions.”
But the people designing the tools must also consider the users — the human beings working on the farm, who will be using this technology to improve their lives and livelihoods.
M. Brett McMickell, chief technology officer at Kubota North America, shared some of the feedback his team received on their autonomous tractor design. Several farmers reportedly said, “I like to drive my tractor; you’re taking that away from me.”
So, for CES 2025, they added manual controls.

The AI or Die panel, from left to right: Michael Wolf, Jacqueline Heard, Sarah Schinckel, Tim Bucher.
Gamers could be the farmers of the future
Workforces determine not only what technology is needed to do a job but also how that tech functions to complete certain tasks. But something to keep in mind if you’re designing agtech is that the workforce is changing, drawing upon an unexpected demographic.
“One of our customers had so many openings for tractor drivers that they couldn’t fill,” Bucher said. “And they said, ‘Hey, maybe I don’t have to put an ad in the paper or online for a tractor driver. Maybe I can make it an agtech operator, and as the requirement in terms of experience, I’m going to put video game experience.’ And their resume flow exploded. They hired agtech operators who’d never had their butt in a tractor seat, operating tractors and getting incredible work done.”
A key part of appealing to a broader labor pool is making this tech more accessible to everyone, which Jacqueline Heard, CEO of Enko, called a “democratization of the data.”
“Food production is facing a lot of challenges,” Heard said. “And one of the things I think about data or AI software is that maybe it will help more technology be more accessible to farmers around the globe … In developing countries, 75% of people make their livelihoods from farming, and they don’t have the same access to technology.”

CEO Ray Lok demonstrates the Rocket 2.0 system.
How AI, robotics are revolutionizing farms
Traditional irrigation systems operate on a fixed schedule, but Full Nature Farms’ Rocket 2.0 Smart Irrigation system (which just took home a CES Innovation Award) uses data instead. Climate data, soil data and crop data are all filtered through AI for analysis to create dynamic, daily watering schedules. In Honk Kong pilot projects, this amounted to a 30% reduction in water usage.
“This is the whole Rocket system … it’s two meters tall, so it’s pretty tall,” Ray Lok, CEO of Full Nature Farms, said during a live tech demo. “The majority of the body is covered by a solar panel, so it’s self-powered, and inside is a battery and a controller to connect to the weather station, the soil sensors and the irrigation devices.”
Full Nature Farms is even working on a sensor that can plug directly into the stem of a crop, providing incredibly precise information about the plant’s respiration and water needs.
They’re revolutionizing CPGs, too
All this new tech is transforming the food system, but not just on the farm.
In another panel, “FoodGPT: How to Build an AI-Powered Food Company,” Jasmine Hume, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Shiru, said that AI is giving us an opportunity to “innovate from inside the package.”
Shiru uses an AI discovery engine called Flourish to create “the next generation of sustainable ingredients,” according to the company’s LinkedIn page. What that means is Shiru uses AI to pinpoint highly functional, natural proteins to create dynamic and valuable new ingredients — and to reduce the time it takes to do so (by literal years).
“Really, all the consumer sees is that the labels are cleaner, the nutrition profiles are better and it’s still accessible, in terms of accessing the product where you need it and for the cost you need,” Hume said. “And AI is doing that already.”
SupplySide Connect New Jersey
Living on the East Coast and missed CES this year? Make up lost ground at SupplySide Connect New Jersey, an annual event with thousands of exhibitors and even more attendees from the natural products industry. Taking place April 8-9, this SupplySide event is also packed with educational content, from how to get creative in the drink aisle to the latest innovations in precision fermentation. Miss it, miss out.
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