Her Fluorescent Crops Give a Voice to Plants—and Power to Farmers |
Her Fluorescent Crops Give a Voice to Plants—and Power to Farmers
Shely Aronov’s InnerPlant has raised $53 million and partnered with John Deere to help plants alert farmers to pests and disease.
BY CHLOE AIELLO, REPORTER @CHLOBO_ILO
It’s the year 2030 in the middle of a field in Perry, Iowa. At 85 degrees, it’s unseasonably hot for early May. Already, there are soybeans breaking through the soil in farmland as far as the eye can see. The plants are maturing under the watchful gaze of an unseen satellite miles above the Earth. It has detected a problem in the field. A farmer dispatches a drone, which zooms over to inspect a plant that looks just like any other. The drone knows otherwise, and emits a stream of fungicide, successfully staving off an infection that could have devastated acres of crops.
In actuality, it’s 2025 and about as perfect a day as you can expect for August in Iowa. There are roughly 50 people gathered in a shed, where InnerPlant co-founder and CEO Shely Aronov has just finished giving a presentation for one of the company’s many Field Days, when farmers and industry insiders gather to showcase new technologies, machinery, research, and growing techniques. This one’s focus is a futuristic depiction of what might be possible in five years if her company, Davis, California-based InnerPlant, has anything to say about it.
“Farmers obviously want to do the right thing for their plants. They want to treat only diseased plants, and we want them to use the least amount of products in their fields,” Aronov tells Inc. of her broader vision for InnerPlant. “It’s better for the environment. And really, there are no losers in this—except if you sell chemicals.”
With long hair and a hint of an Israeli accent, the 43-year-old Aronov is not the master of ceremonies you might expect to see in the middle of an Iowa soybean field, but then again, some of her guests seem out of place as well. Among the “check shirt farmers” are investors from as far away as New York and London, including George Darrah, a general partner at London-based Systemiq Capital.
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“It was a vibe. All these farmers with big caps on, ruddy red faces, asking questions about this amazing technology, and being quite psyched about applying it to their food,” says Darrah.
On paper, Aronov, a serial entrepreneur who grew up outside of Tel Aviv and earned an MBA from Stanford, has more in common with VC types than with the farmers who make up her core customers. But since she founded InnerPlant in 2018, Aronov has taken great pains to include farmers in the company’s journey by creating its Croptastic podcast to keep them clued in and engaged, and its “InnerCircle” community, a group of farmers given front-row seats to the technology’s development in exchange for real-time feedback. Plus, InnerPlant’s $30 million Series B was led by an alliance of North American farmers.
“It’s a little bit surprising that this Israeli woman, who’s not a Midwesterner and lives in San Francisco, connects so well with these farmers. But she’s really honest,” says Aronov’s co-founder, InnerPlant chief science officer Rod Kumimoto. “She doesn’t tell them that we’re going to change your world entirely—I mean, she does a little bit.”