Innov8.ag Acquires 2nd Sight, Delivers Harvest Labor and Inventory Tracking for Growers, Agri-Food Businesses
Innov8.ag, an agtech company enabling actionable data solutions for farms and agribusinesses, announced today the cash and stock acquisition of 2nd Sight Bioscience, an agricultural labor tracking and inventory systems provider.
Integrating 2nd Sight’s all-in-one labor, yield tracking and produce traceability capabilities with innov8.ag’s already established ecosystem of agronomic and yield management technologies will help specialty crop growers and food companies plan smarter, act faster and optimize their decision-making process with end-to-end data integration.
With growers and food companies facing rapidly mounting pressure from labor shortages, climate change impacts, food safety and traceability demands, and trade and tariff disruptions, integrating and unlocking data capabilities is essential to maintaining operational profitability, said Steve Mantle, Innov8.ag founder and CEO. Across the U.S., farm bankruptcies started ticking upwards in 2024, surging by 70% in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, with more closures looming.
“Bringing 2nd Sight under the innov8.ag umbrella gives growers and agribusiness CFOs a powerful response to what’s keeping them up at night when it comes to staying profitable,” Mantle said. “It’s about bringing together the right people, equipment and processes that turn data into clarity — in the field, in the packhouse and on the grocery shelf — at a time when agriculture simply can’t wait any longer for big ideas to turn into actionable solutions.”
2nd Sight Acquisition Expands Labor Efficiencies Across the Innov8.ag Ecosystem
With the 2nd Sight acquisition, Innov8.ag levels up their ability to integrate and layer data across day-to-day agricultural tasks in ways that help growers better manage their labor efficiency. Innov8.ag’s technology ecosystem already includes data-enabled solutions for soil management, production practices and yield forecasting.
Labor shortages and costs are a particularly keen pain point facing growers today, especially for specialty crop producers growing highly labor-intensive crops such as berries, fruits, tree nuts and vegetables. Specialty crop growers in California, who supply one-third of U.S. vegetables and three-quarters of its fruit and nuts, have seen their labor costs grow by a factor of eight over the last 12 years, according to Walt Duflock, VP of Innovation at Western Growers and a specialty crop grower himself.
With labor a common concern amongst domestic and international growers, harnessing AI to unlock new data insights from 2nd Sight’s labor-focused software and hardware solutions are critical to growers’ profitability.
“At 2nd Sight, we’ve always wanted to not just save growers money, but make them money. Combining our expertise in labor and inventory tracking with the work Innov8.ag has already put in to make data actionable for growers at the agronomic, yield and production practices level unveils a whole new level of insights that can quickly be turned into daily gains,” said Kevin Oldenburg, 2nd Sight founder and CEO.
2nd Sight’s well-known FairPick and FairTrak systems automate harvest tracking by weight, by hour and by piece rates, using employee-assigned RFID cards and a rugged, tamper-proof, legal-for-trade harvest scale system to capture weighed crops, such as blueberries, or scan per-unit or per-task data, such as a bushel of tomatoes or a row of apple trees pruned. Both systems generate receipts for farm laborers for accountability and automatically upload records at the end of the day for real-time daily harvest and task management.
FairPick and FairTrak systems are currently deployed across hundreds of fruit and vegetable farms in the U.S. and internationally, with seamless support in multiple languages and both imperial and metric measurements.
The 2nd Sight technology platform also includes automated inventory management systems for counting and tracking nursery stock, tissue cultures and produce, using RFIDs, barcodes and a handheld scanning device to count and track inventory, from the lab, the nursery floor, harvest and to the grocer.
With the acquisition deal, Innov8.ag acquires all of 2nd Sight’s assets, including their intellectual property, inventory and customer base, and will retain their experienced staff, combining 2nd Sight’s and Innov8.ag’s daily operations. Oldenburg will step down from his day-to-day role but take over as Innov8.ag’s board chair.
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