Saiwa at UGA Grand Farm Field Day 2026

On August 13, 2026, Saiwa.ai participated in the UGA Grand Farm Field Day in Perry, Georgia, with Dr. Kate Withers Hess representing the Saiwa team. Organized by the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) and Grand Farm, the event brought together researchers, growers, agricultural technology companies, startups, and industry professionals to experience technologies being tested under real farming conditions. Through field tours, technology demonstrations, presentations, and conversations with researchers and industry partners, the event offered a valuable view of how artificial intelligence, precision agriculture, robotics, automation, biological technologies, and data-driven farming are increasingly coming together to address practical agricultural challenges. The 2026 Field Day also highlighted work connected with the USDA National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech, an initiative designed to evaluate agricultural technologies in real-world production environments.

From a New Partnership to a Growing AgTech Innovation Hub

The story behind UGA Grand Farm extends beyond the 2026 Field Day. Grand Farm originated as an agricultural innovation initiative in North Dakota, with roots that reach back to 2019. The partnership between the University of Georgia and Grand Farm was formally announced in June 2024, with the goal of creating a regional agricultural innovation ecosystem focused on the needs of Georgia and the broader Southeast. The 250-acre UGA Grand Farm site in Perry officially broke ground in May 2025, and its first field projects were deployed during the 2025 growing season. 

The first UGA Grand Farm Field Day was held in October 2025, opening the farm to growers, researchers, Extension agents, students, partners, and other stakeholders interested in seeing agricultural innovation in action. By 2026, the Perry site had developed rapidly into a full-scale testing environment for agricultural technology, automation, robotics, precision agriculture, and data-driven farming. 

Connecting With Researchers and AgTech Innovators

For the Saiwa team, UGA Grand Farm Field Day was also an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with people working across different parts of the agricultural innovation ecosystem. Kate connected with members of the UGA Grand Farm community, including Dr. Lenín Rodríguez, Director of UGA Grand Farm, and Dr. Luan Pereira de Oliveira, UGA Assistant Professor and Precision Agriculture Extension Specialist for vegetables and specialty crops. Dr. Oliveira's research focuses on evaluating precision agriculture technologies and agricultural machinery, including technologies applicable to specialty crop production. The event also brought together specialists such as Dr. Lauren Lazaro, UGA Extension Precision Agriculture Specialist, and Kaytlyn (Malia) Cobb, Regional Assistant Director of UGA Grand Farm, who were among those helping make the event and the broader innovation ecosystem possible.

Another important part of the Field Day was the opportunity to learn directly from companies developing technologies for modern agriculture. Dr. Travis Frey, Chief Technology Officer at Pivot Bio, attended the event and presented the company's work and solutions.  Kate also had the opportunity to connect with Jackson Stansell, Founder and CEO of Sentinel Ag, another company participating in the UGA Grand Farm innovation ecosystem. These interactions provided a valuable opportunity to exchange perspectives with companies approaching agricultural productivity and sustainability from different technological directions.

Agricultural robotics was another visible part of the innovation landscape. Among the technologies present was Solinftec's Solix agricultural robot, demonstrating how robotics, sensing, automation, and digital agriculture can increasingly be integrated into field operations. Solix has also previously been demonstrated at UGA Grand Farm as part of the University of Georgia Precision Horticulture Laboratory's work with advanced agricultural systems. Seeing technologies such as Solix operating alongside other solutions reinforced an important theme of the event: the future of precision agriculture will depend not on a single technology, but on the integration of machines, sensors, imagery, data, artificial intelligence, and agronomic knowledge.

From Agricultural Images to Actionable Intelligence With Sairone

Kate's participation also gave Saiwa an opportunity to discuss the role that Sairone and AI-powered image analysis can play in this rapidly developing agricultural technology ecosystem. Farms, drone service providers, researchers, agronomists, and agricultural technology companies can collect enormous amounts of visual information through drones, aerial platforms, cameras, and other imaging systems. However, collecting images is only the first step. The greater challenge is transforming those images into accurate, structured and actionable information that can support decisions in the field.

This is where Sairone is contributing to the evolution of digital and precision agriculture. By applying artificial intelligence and computer vision to agricultural imagery, Sairone can help automate demanding image-analysis tasks such as plant and stand counting, weed detection and mapping, crop monitoring, tree and seedling identification and counting, and other object-detection and segmentation applications. Instead of requiring teams to manually inspect large image datasets, AI-based analysis can help turn imagery into geospatial information that can support more targeted and scalable agricultural operations. For Saiwa, conversations at UGA Grand Farm Field Day provided an opportunity to explain how this layer of image intelligence can complement drones, autonomous agricultural equipment, precision application systems, and other technologies being developed across the AgTech sector.

Collaboration Is Shaping the Future of Agriculture

The Field Day also provided valuable opportunities to engage with people helping build the wider Grand Farm ecosystem, including Amanda Pfaffe, Ecosystem Program Manager at Grand Farm, and Prabhat Poudyal, Grand Farm Startup Coordinator. Their roles reflect one of Grand Farm's defining characteristics: creating connections between startups, researchers, growers, technology developers, and industry partners rather than developing agricultural innovation in isolation. Grand Farm describes itself as a network that brings growers, technologists, corporations, startups, educators, policymakers, researchers, and investors together around applied agricultural technology.

The event also featured Dr. Steven Mirsky, Director of Digital Agriculture at the USDA Agricultural Research Service, who discussed the USDA National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech. The initiative is particularly relevant to the future of agricultural technology commercialization because it is designed to test and validate emerging and existing technologies under real-world farming and ranching conditions. Grand Farm serves as the National Program Manager for the network, with land-grant universities participating as research and testing partners. For companies developing AI, robotics, sensing, automation, and other agricultural technologies, this focus on field validation represents an important bridge between promising innovation and technologies that growers can confidently evaluate and adopt.

Saiwa and Sairone in the Future of Precision Agriculture

Participating in UGA Grand Farm Field Day 2026 reinforced our belief that the next generation of agriculture will be built through collaboration between people who understand farming and organizations developing new capabilities in AI, robotics, automation, biological innovation, sensing, remote imagery, and precision agriculture. We were excited not only to see demonstrations and learn from other innovators, but also to share our own perspective on how artificial intelligence can fundamentally improve the way agricultural images are processed and converted into useful information.

We would like to thank the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and Grand Farm for organizing the event, as well as Kaytlyn Cobb and Lauren Lazaro for their work supporting the event and agricultural innovation community. We also appreciated the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas with Dr. Lenín Rodríguez, Dr. Travis Frey, Dr. Steven Mirsky, Dr. Luan Pereira de Oliveira, Jackson Stansell, Amanda Pfaffe, Prabhat Poudyal, and many other researchers, growers and AgTech professionals who participated in the Field Day.

For Saiwa.ai, events such as UGA Grand Farm Field Day are more than opportunities to showcase technology. They allow us to better understand how growers, researchers, equipment developers, drone service providers, and agricultural technology companies are approaching real-world challenges and where Sairone's AI-powered image analysis can create the greatest value. As agricultural data becomes increasingly visual, geospatial, and machine-generated, we believe the ability to quickly transform imagery into actionable intelligence will become an increasingly important part of the precision agriculture technology stack.