F3i Announces Innovation Grant Recipients

F3i (F3Innovate.org) has selected its second cohort of Innovation Grant recipients. These seven companies are working on the problems that define agriculture in the Central Valley: water, soil health, methane, labor, and crop disease. 

Grants were awarded from $20,000 to $50,000 (totaling $250,000 across seven companies), sized to fund what moves each technology forward — field validation, customer testing, and real deployment with growers. 

"Great ideas alone don't change agriculture. What moves innovation forward is giving entrepreneurs the resources, field environments, and industry partners they need to prove their technology works at scale." — Priscilla Koepke

AcreLink: Buried soil-moisture sensor networks that replace manual field probing with continuous irrigation intelligence and water-use records.

MyLand Agriculture, A Soil Health Company: On-farm microalgae systems that amplify native soil biology through existing irrigation to improve soil function, nutrient cycling, and water-use efficiency.

Gilly: Low-cost microbial feed additive for dairy cattle that improves fiber digestibility to convert lower-quality feed into higher-value milk production.

Quanturi Oy: Wireless hay probes and predictive analytics that convert stored forage conditions into feed-quality data for more precise dairy ration decisions.

Hyperspectral Crop Intelligence: Aerial hyperspectral imaging that converts non-visible plant stress into actionable field maps for earlier disease, water, and nutrient management.

Evolve Genomix: Portable DNA-based diagnostics that convert unknown crop disease risk into sub-hour pathogen identification and faster field decisions.

Neuralzome Cybernetics: Autonomous field robots for critical farm operations across steep, rugged, and GPS-constrained terrain.