Animal deterrent systems with Mike DeSa

Shay: Welcome back everyone to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. Today you have Shay Foulk and Mike Dessa. How are you today, Mike?

Mike

DeSa: I'm good, Shay. Thanks for having me, man.

Shay: Yeah, this is, uh, kind of a chance encounter we had through a mutual connection, uh, Ben Gordon from Fractal. Many of the users would know Ben. Uh, how'd you meet Ben? I guess I never even asked you guys that.

Mike

DeSa: Oh my gosh, uh, I want to say it was on LinkedIn just sort of because of the military and agricultural background. And then he was a guest on the podcast that I host as well. Man, it's been at least a year, maybe more, but he was probably within the first 20, 25 folks. And so just got to learn. He was just, just starting Fractal, or maybe it was just an idea at that point, but that's how we originally crossed paths.

Shay: Well, we won't say too many bad things about him because that's right. He's a good egg. Yeah. But no, man, I'm excited to have you on. You know, some of your background there, you were in the Marines. You know, I noticed it said former Marine on your thing. I was looking at your link. Former Marine. I didn't think there was such a thing.

Mike

DeSa: Yeah, well, the, the sort of nomenclature centers around ex-military or ex-Marine or not. Right. So the thought is always once a Marine, always a Marine. I see. And so it's whether you're not ever not, you just aren't right now. So that's kind of why they say former instead of ex. The kids give me a hard time. Ex-Marine. I'm like, no, no, no. No, no, guys, it's former. Oh, it's the same thing, Dad.

Shay: Those are fighting words, guys.

Mike

DeSa: They are fighting words.

Shay: So, uh, what was that? Is it 2010 or what kind of time period? What led you into the military? Give me a little bit of background there.

Mike

DeSa: So I joined in 2007. I had actually always wanted to be a Marine since I was 12, 11, 12. I actually wrote— when they still did letters— I wrote a letter to the Marine Corps, handwritten letter, I can't even remember how I found out where to write it to and who, but I penned a letter. They sent something back, actually. It was typed. You could tell, like typewriter signature. And they sent a poster back, one of those kind of moto posters with the guy in camo paint and the dark background and the gun coming out of the water. Uh, and you know, said something like, you know, we really appreciate your enthusiasm. You can't join until you're 17, but, uh, yeah. You know, take this poster and just kind of keep following your dreams kind of thing. And so I hung it on the wall and I had it on the wall until I left for college in 2003, 2004.

And so I was actually on a scholarship with the Marine Corps. So I was in a JROTC program, a Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program in high school. And one of the kind of leaders of that program was a retired Master Sergeant. And so at that point I was like, it's all done. Like, there's, there's no changing course at this point. So he was a huge mentor for me. Um, this was sort of right around the time that the initial first invasion of Iraq happened in 2003. Uh, and I was sort of on this college officer path already. And, uh, you know, when that happened, it was a tough decision as to whether or not to stop that path or go the enlisted route.

Shay: But.

Mike

DeSa: I had some good mentors, including the Master Sergeant and my parents and some other folks that said, just stay the course you're on and keep going. And so, um, yeah, I graduated high school in 2003, 2004, and then went to Texas A&M on a Marine Corps scholarship and studied agricultural engineering. So I owed them, they paid for school, I owed them time and service afterwards, but it was always just a you know, I had always wanted to join and I planned to spend 20 years in. And so went to, gosh, OCS in one of the summers between junior and sophomore year, I think.

Shay: And then that's Officer Candidate School for those who don't know.

Mike

DeSa: Yes. Thank you.

Shay: Yep.

Mike

DeSa: In, in lovely Quantico, Virginia, about an hour south of Washington, D.C. So I did the kind of basic stuff there. And then got commissioned, uh, and then went to what we call the basic school, which is a 6-month course also in Quantico where every new Marine officer goes regardless of what their job will be. And so the idea is that you teach anywhere from pilots, logisticians, supply officers, what the infantry does and how it works so that you can better support. Um, so all. New officers go through this 6-month course. Depending on how you finish, uh, determines in some cases what your MOS or your military occupational specialty, your job, will be.

And I knew that at that point I wanted to be in the infantry, and so I tried to do really, really well through that school and was able to land within where I needed to land in the top part of the class to get the first choice on the infantry side.

Shay: That's the top 75% of the class, right?

Mike

DeSa: Yeah, something like that. Yeah, something like that.

Shay: Well, I was on the infantry side too, so, you know, it's, uh, I'm not throwing any shade at you, just kind of funny.

Mike

DeSa: So the, they, the way they do it is through a quality spread. So they break the class into thirds. So the top of the top third generally gets their first choice or two. Top of the second third, top of the bottom third. The idea is that you don't have all the top finishers in the class going to one or two of the primary MOSs, and then everybody else kind of gets the, gets what's left. So, um, there were guys that would try to like time it or, uh, you know, maybe do a little worse on this test in order to end up in the top of the second third. It never really worked out, but, uh, you can't stop guys from trying. Yeah. And then spent, so that was 6 months and then spent 3 months at the Infantry Officer Course, literally right across the street. And then, uh, went to my first duty station in Camp Lejeune or Camp Lejeune, depending on how you say it, in North Carolina.

Shay: And this is 2007 timeframe.

Mike

DeSa: This was, yeah. So end of '07 into '08 was most of the training. And then end of '08 into '09 was when, um, when I ended up in North Carolina, spent about 2 years there, maybe 3, close, probably closer to 3. 2 deployments. My first deployment was with the 24th MEU, Marine Expeditionary Unit, on a ship. Uh, did some work in Haiti actually doing some disaster relief right after the big earthquake. Uh, and then went across the Atlantic and spent some time off the coast of Eastern Africa in Djibouti. Did some training there with the French Foreign Legion and a few other folks, which was a really unique experience. Did some time in Jordan with some of the Jordanian forces, and then spent a whole lot of time on the USS Nassau, which was one of the oldest LHDs, I think, at the time. It was commissioned in 1975. So this deployment was its last deployment.

You can imagine the state of the ship at the time. It was the reason I don't go on cruises today because I have had more than a lifetime's share of time on boat, but, um, needless to say, tried to extract as much good value from that as I could.

Shay: Yeah.

Mike

DeSa: And then, uh, was home for, uh, maybe less than a year and then deployed to Afghanistan in 2010 into 2011. Um, got home from that, fortunate enough to bring everybody home and then went actually up back to Quantico. To teach again. So taught at the basic school, same place I spent 6 months, you know, a few years prior, and then got picked up to teach at the Infantry Officer Course another year or two, and then left the active duty service in 2014.

Shay: Yeah, now that's an awesome, awesome, what do the kids call it these days, arc.

Mike

DeSa: Arc.

Shay: Awesome timeline you got there. So Tell me on that MEU with the 24th, how long was that?

Mike

DeSa: 7 months.

Shay: 7 months.

Mike

DeSa: Yeah, both deployments were about 7 months.

Shay: Yeah. The, you know, just kind of a whole different world there. I think people don't understand the amount of movement and time away and just a lot of interesting and different time too. You know, I mean, 2008, 2009, different time period than deployments today or even 10 years ago.

Mike

DeSa: So. Yeah. You know, can't, can't put perspective on, you know, the timeline that you went through, but for ours, you know, there was still Marjah, the invasion of Marjah in Afghanistan had just happened. Gosh, we were on that ship when the Marines went into Marjah, which was a big push for the Marines at the time. Where we were in a couple of years later was just to the battle area or the area of operation to the east of that. And so our kind of primary mission was build. It was kind of affectionately called the Green Zone. Like the, um, main Helmand River ran right down the center. And so all of the agricultural, all of the township in that area was right on either side. So, uh, we were partnered with, uh, the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police.

And we basically took our company of 250 Marines and split them into 15 partnered positions across a 350 square kilometer battle space. Huge battle space. They were partnered down to the squad level. Uh, these partner positions had both Army and police and gosh, maybe 8 to 12 Marines and a corpsman to the extent that we could at each of these positions across this huge battle space. Had a company headquarters. And then a few kilometers down the road had a battalion headquarters, but the primary job was hold that area and build up the, the local forces. So I think you had said you'd done some partner training before, so you can relate to both the shenanigans, the struggles and the dangers with that sort of relationship.

Shay: Yeah. Yeah. And, and some good out of that too. But yeah, hard to, hard to describe if you're not there.

Mike

DeSa: It's, it's tough. I think they, they struggled. The Marines struggled a lot with some of the big cultural differences around homosexuality and how they treated young kids. That was, that was, uh, that was a tough one to kind of get, get past.

Shay: Yeah. So I want to back up a little bit. Texas A&M, ag engineering. Did you grow up in the ag space or what, what kind of led you to that?

Mike

DeSa: Not at all. I grew up in the suburbs in San Antonio. Okay. We had a farm, backyard garden, but that was it. I started at A&M in mechanical engineering and did sort of the first year and a half, 2 years in mechanical engineering, and said, man, this just doesn't feel as hands-on as I thought it would be. I didn't really at the time have an appreciation for how strong of an agricultural or mechanical university A&M was, I know ignorant on my part, but, uh, I was there a lot for the Corps of Cadets. I was there for kind of the military aspect of it. And the ag piece just wasn't really on my radar then. Um, however, realizing that I was going to go to the Marines and at that time thinking it was going to be a career, I sort of had a thought in my mind of, I just don't see myself doing the things a mechanical engineer would do.

So why am I going to go through the struggles of going through that educational pathway when I'm going to be a Marine and this is all I'm going to do for the next 20 years? And so I started to look around for different majors that were maybe more hands-on oriented, that were more grassroots based, that were more outdoors. And lo and behold, agricultural mechanic, uh, agricultural engineering. And so I think I switched at the end of my sophomore year. And then loved every minute of it through graduation.

Shay: So one of the last questions, just so I don't get too far away from it. Sure. Going back here a little bit, why did you decide to get out in 2014? Because you mentioned there again, you thought it was going to be a 20-year career. And I know life changes, things change, military changes, family, whatever else. But what was kind of the reasoning there?

Mike

DeSa: It's a longer story, but I'll give you the condensed version. Because I had wanted to do that for so long, I had built up in my mind what I thought it was going to be. And that it was this organization of, you couldn't, you could do no wrong. Infallible. Infallible. Thank you for the word. And they were both the tip of the professional spear, but also the tip of the moral spear.. And, uh, I, I realized that that wasn't the case. Uh, and so what I thought at the end of my first, uh, tour with the 1st Battalion, 9th Marines was the infantry battalion I was with in North Carolina, uh, that maybe what I was seeing was command related. Maybe it was geographically related. Maybe it just, uh, you know, maybe it just didn't sit right with me at the time. And so I thought, okay, well, let me try to go to the best place that I can.

At that point, I was a young first lieutenant kind of coming up on captain, uh, that I can to see if, if I can get to a place that is sort of regarded across the Marine Corps for young captains as one of the, the kind of top places that you can end up teaching at these two schools. Um, and they, they only really send one lieutenant. Per infantry battalion every year. And so you've got to kind of work, work at it getting selected, but I knew that's where I wanted to go. And so I was fortunate enough to get selected there. Uh, and then, you know, that was part of God's plan, I think, was to end up there. And, um, what I found after a couple of years there, uh, was also the, the, the staff, the cadre, wonderfully tactically proficient. Just outstanding professional group of folks.

But some of the challenges I was seeing with leading from kind of a moral example as well, just wasn't where I thought that it could be. And at that point I had two sons and my wife Katie was pregnant with our third. And just said, I think for the accumulation of all these reasons, it's time to go do something different.

Shay: Yeah, and, and when it's time, it's time. Um, you know, having leaders that stay in the position for reasons other than the best intentions is detrimental to the organization. Um, so I appreciate your transparency there. And, you know, just for some— not to speak to your story, but just for some context there, uh, talking with a lot of mentors as I went through the military too is That 2010 to 2014 time period was really weird for the military because now you've been engaged in combat for 7 to 8 years. You have, uh, low— you have low retention. You have, uh, you're hard up for getting new recruits, so you're maybe letting in some lower quality recruits as part of the system. Uh, you have burnout, fatigue, um, PTSD, depression, alcohol and substance abuse.

I mean, it was across the organization, across the military outlook, and still tons of great things happening, but also significant, like you said, moral impacts that I think stuck with the organization for a long time. And I kind of came in at the back end, kind of our timing didn't overlap. I came in right beyond that. And I think there started to be a bit of what I perceived as like a recovery from that of like, hey, this is the wrong direction. So we're going to knee-jerk the other reaction or, you know, the other way. And even though different branches, different services is more so like a military trajectory. And so I just want to provide that as a little context for people that there was a lot of hard decisions in that time period.

Mike

DeSa: It's wonderful context. And I won't belabor the wonderful point you made, but some of the other things were at that time, um, there was that big scandal in Afghanistan where those Marines were, they had urinated on those corpses.

Shay: Mm-hmm.

Mike

DeSa: Uh, Eddie Gallagher had done what he did. Um, and you, to your point, you had this cumulation of collective combat for decades, or at that point, close to a decade. And there was fatigue, there was, uh, moral indecision or a lack of kind of a moral compass in these areas. And so, I mean, that was a lot of where you saw good talent leaving. The other piece was that folks that had joined that were talented and wanted to experience combat or go to Afghanistan in some cases had arguably done that. So you had this drop-off of quality talent at the junior officer level that had kind of, for lack of a better phrase, went there and did that, got out and wanted to do something different at the time. And so you had this drop-off of talent at the same time. You also had in the combat arms space, um, women coming into, uh, combat arms.

And right when I was leaving the Infantry Officer Course, which had historically been an all-male school, um, were experimenting with how women were going to come through the course. And there was all sorts of concerns that in order to facilitate the, um, requirements, air quotes, of the state legislatures or the civilian body that oversees the military to see more women in, that the standards for it were going to suffer. And so that was just another big struggle as well at the time across the service of how do we meet the requirements of the civilians that we serve while still maintaining what they're asking us to do from a combat readiness standpoint. And oftentimes those two were not aligned.

Shay: Well, and you were being asked a lot too. I mean, just across the service at the time. Yeah, lots of changes. Um, okay, well, thank you for the clarity on that. I appreciate kind of backtracking there. So Ag Engineering, Texas A&M. I gotta ask, have you ever heard of, uh, the TPAP program out of Texas A&M? So it's—

Mike

DeSa: tell me what the acronym is.

Shay: It's the Executive Producers in Agriculture program. Uh, Chris and I have spoken there, and we highly recommend it to farm operations. So it's this, uh, it's like this 5 or 6 day intensive course of drinking through a fire hose that Texas A&M Ag professors put on So Mark Welch has been the lead of it for a long time. And, you know, essentially they bring in anywhere from 60 to 100 farm operations in two different courses. They have Unit 1, Unit 2. So you go do Unit 1 one year and then come back and do Unit 2 the next year. And it's everything from basic, like in-depth but basic managerial accounting, decision-making, how to properly run the business farm operation. I think you would actually get a lot of value out of it. But just also to kind of reiterate to our listeners, it's one of the top premier programs that Texas A&M puts on and would highly recommend it to anybody.

Mike

DeSa: Wonderful. Oh, thanks for that. I wasn't tracking it.

Shay: Yep. So, all right. So let's fast forward 2014. You come back into the space. You've done some consulting work. You've been co-founder of some businesses. Take me from 2014, high-level version, to where you're at today. And then we'll get into the meat and potatoes of today's discussion.

Mike

DeSa: Yeah. So left the active duty service in 2014. Uh, at the time, a year or so prior, we knew that the end was coming, my wife Katie and I, and, um, wanted to start to think about what was next. I had always sort of had an entrepreneurial bone and, um, you know, knew that this was probably a space I was going to want to end up in, but I had no idea at the time what that entrepreneurial scope was going to look like. In about 2010, 2011, uh, kind of completely unrelated, our, our family had actually invested in a small development project in Ecuador, kind of raw land to small parcels to develop. So we had spent some time down there over the previous years and fell in love with the country, the people, the place. And in— when we were thinking about what this entrepreneurial spirit was going to look like after service, we said, you know, we had some success there. We loved the place.

We loved the agricultural part of it, what if we started to go see other places in that same region that were ag-oriented? And so prior to getting out in the summer of '14, we spent the better part of 18 months putting together this diligence trip, a 6-month due diligence trip to 6 different countries in

Latin

America: Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and Panama. And it was really kind of a two or threefold purpose trip, look for investment opportunities in ag outside the US, see what sorts of things were available so that when we came back, we could build a farmland diligence investment consulting practice around it, put some time back in the family bank, if you will, and show our kids who were pretty young at the time, 4, 2, and 6 months, that there was more to the world than what they were experiencing in just the US. And, uh, in February of 2015, packed everything else up we had and took some backpacks and spent 6 months with the kids in 6 different countries, looked at over 100 different ag assets for investment, everything from coffee in Ecuador to cattle in Panama. Ended up investing in a small mixed ag project in Mendoza Province in Argentina.

Grapes, alfalfa, pears that we still sort of manage and run today remotely through a farm operator there. But that really set the groundwork for the first consulting company, AGD Consulting, that I started in 2016 when we got back, which was helping investors understand the same sorts of opportunities in Latin America in farmland that we had and, and experienced. And then also tried to put together some trips to bring investors down and kind of show them through what was there. The trip part didn't really pan out. Tried to do one in Colombia as well. So we set that side, set that part aside, and then spent the kind of really focused on the diligence aspect for the investor community. Worked that for, you know, a couple of years, got some really good learning experiences, met some wonderful mentors, but then also stumbled across this thing called agtech.

And having an ag engineering background, I said, what is this? And fell in love and have been in agtech since probably 2017 when I started to put my toes in the water and then quickly thereafter jumped into all manners of it that I possibly could.

Shay: So I want to ask you real quick before we get too far on the agtech path, people listening to this, probably have the same reaction to me of like, well, how do you have the connections to get into that? So you mentioned like the Ecuadorian development side. Was that, was that family, like through parents, or how did you have connection on the investment side? Did you just go out and build it? You know, what was the genesis for that?

Mike

DeSa: I'm trying to remember how we found it. Was, um, for lack of a better word, it was kind of a local developer or local real estate person they're different down there. So they had kind of started to put the pieces of this together. And we had done some— my wife's parents and Katie and I had started to kind of do some research through a publication called International Living and started to look at, you know, what some of these opportunities were in Latin America and started to kind of build a network through these sorts of publications. Went down on a discovery trip, met these folks, looked at the properties, uh, and then sort of built the network and grew it kind of from there. But that was sort of really only oriented at the time in Ecuador. I didn't really have anything in, uh, Argentina or Chile or Peru.

So a lot of what, what my wife Katie and I were doing prior to leaving the service was starting to lay those foundations, starting to build those networks. Laying out where the trips were going to be and where we were going to stay and what we were going to see and who we were going to coordinate with at the time so that when we left, we weren't trying, we weren't spending a whole lot of time and subsequently money, um, building those relationships on the fly. And, um, so that's sort of how we stumbled across it and then how we kind of built it prior to going so that we were trying to be as efficient as possible.

Shay: Yeah, that's amazing. So 2017, AgTech, you're all in, man. Uh, what's going on in the space at the time and what really piqued your interest?

Mike

DeSa: It was just the— it was the fact that it was relatively early. It was, uh, a diversified take on the kinds of technologies that were in the industry. Um, they, you know, drones were still— and still are— but drones were starting to be more ubiquitously used. Autonomous operation was still, you know, a few years away, but the beginnings of it were starting to come into fruition. Cameras in various aspects were being used for different forms of intelligence. The use of artificial intelligence in agriculture wasn't really certainly where it is today, but they were starting to gather some of that foundational data and seeing if there were ways that they can make decisions based on it. And so a couple of things occurred through that 2017-2022 timeframe, both from a military standpoint, but also from an agtech standpoint.

On the ag and tech side, what I started to realize was that there were all of these great ideas that inventors, universities, research institutes, farmers had for how to implement technology and software in the space. But they were struggling to see it all the way through the commercialization pathway. Not because the ideas were bad, but just because you, you need in a lot of cases a holistic skillset to get from idea to commercial product. And oftentimes, you know, you need a team around you to do that, or the individual that's the inventor is not always the folks or the, the group to build the, the product. And so you were having all these great ideas and technology fall along the wayside.. And I said, I think that we can help bridge this gap between idea and commercialization through a platform company.

And so in 2021, myself and a few partners started AgSensor Solutions, which is a service-providing platform company that works exclusively in plant and animal ag to help sensor creators and inventors bring their ideas from, bring their technologies or their ideas from early, early all the way through commercialization pathway. So whether that's hardware, software engineering, prototype development, whether that's intellectual property transfer, whether that's all the things you need to build a business around it, market analysis, strategic communications. And then if you need capital to do all of those things, we were able at that point through some of the partners and myself had built a relationship and a network of capital providers. To be able to help match the right technologies to the right investors.

And so started that platform company in 2021, but then also realized that veterans, military veterans were really uniquely positioned to solve a lot of these entrepreneurial-oriented transfer challenges. The environments between the two places are just so similar. They're decentralized. They're— they require a local face. They're often affected by conditions outside of their control. They require grit and determination. Uh, they require an entrepreneurial spirit. And a lot of military veterans possess these things, these intangible skills that fit in these same environments. And the things that were being communicated to them around the opportunities that were available were They were myopic, they were small. They were, if you can do the same thing in agriculture that you did in the service, or you can farm or do some homesteading stuff, but that's it.

And I just couldn't lose the thought that there was so much more than what was being communicated to them. And I said, I think given this kind of odd, unique amalgamation of skills that I've got, that I can help this conversation. And so then started a podcast called Vets in Ag in 2021, 2022, to try to tell the stories of military veterans and supporters who have paved the way themselves to help be a beacon, for lack of a better word, for vets who want to understand agriculture and be a part of it.

Shay: And so you were gracious enough to have me on that here a week or so ago, episode number 87, Vets in Ag. None of these people want to go listen to me, but I think the point is that you give people a platform. And one of my take-home messages from that conversation, to your point, is people in ag are so well— or people that are veterans interested in agriculture are so well positioned because it's so easy to stand out, to have the diligence, to have the training, the discipline, the focus on that entrepreneurial spirit, like you said, from a decentralized command outlook. Man, there's tremendous opportunities. So, uh, you know, kudos to you for, for leaning into that. And you've had some really excellent guests, really excellent conversations. So, uh, for those that are interested, definitely check out the Vets in Ag podcast. You've done a really good job there.

Mike

DeSa: I appreciate that. It's, it's a passion project at this point. I wish I could do it more regularly, but I absolutely love learning about what veterans have done. Every transition story is different. Every set of experiences shaped them up to do the thing that they're doing now in different ways. And then I think the more times veterans can hear the diversity of the things that they're doing in this particular space, the more their minds are open to what's possible.

Shay: Yeah, that's amazing. So '22 to 2026, as we record here today, a lot going on in the last 4 years. Let's hone in on kind of, you know, one of the major projects you're working on now, or if there's anything else that you think is real relevant in that time period, I'd love to hear it.

Mike

DeSa: Sure. So out of our work with AgSensor Solutions, we were, we were working on a technology that was using cameras and artificial intelligence to do animal deterrent type technologies and products. And after a couple of years of working on that internally, realized that it was something that probably needed to be a standalone entity. And so spun that out in 2023, a company called Animal Deterrent Solutions that again uses, uh, cameras and artificial intelligence in a single unit to recognize at this stage flocking birds and apply in a very targeted, humane, and safe way, a laser, a green laser in particular, to move those flocking birds off of unwanted areas.

High-value crops, berries, these kinds of things, aquaculture, golf courses, beef and dairy operations where you've got open feed, and then kind of parks and recreational areas are really sort of the 5 places that we're intending to start. We're in the middle of work around a new laser system. And, um, hope to start doing some field testing here in the next couple months.

Shay: So, all right, people hear lasers and I'm, I'm pulling up Dr. Evil, like, where's my freaking laser beams? You know, laser beams that are like, they're smoking these birds and then you got Fried Crow sitting out there. That's not what this is. Can you talk a little bit about, uh, what the lasers do? And then I, I don't know if you want to correlate that back to like the military side, but, you know, tell me a little bit about that.

Mike

DeSa: Yeah, it's a good question. So no, the, the lasers are not smoking birds as they're coming inbound, so to speak. Green lasers in particular, there's lots of good research that dates back to Nature, actually, from the late 1970s that show the efficacy of green lasers on flocking birds. Green is the brightest spectrum most of these birds can see. And so it creates an uncertainty in their environment. The only sort of example I think I can relate it to is a very bright flashlight at us, right? It's just uncomfortable. It's disorienting. And they get up and leave the area. And we've found that you don't need to, and in many cases it works better if you're not targeting the bird itself, or obviously the face or the eyes. You're targeting their feet or you're targeting the ground in front of them and you're approaching them with the laser.

If it's down below and down, you know, where they can see it, then they start to perceive it more as a threat rather than pinging their body or their center mass, if you will, with it. And so the base software is being designed in such a way that in future iterations, we can leg in additional nuisance animal species. So we've had lots of questions around how does this work for deer browsing? Could you do anything with elk in, you know, places like Washington around crops like that? Can you work in coyotes? Can you work in wolves? Can you work in black vultures? Can you work in wild hogs or feral hogs? Can you work in snakes or eagles or electrical generation stations? The short answer is sure, right? The system is such that the more images you feed it of whatever it is that you're trying to deter, the smarter it becomes.

The second part of that challenge becomes what's the right deterrent for it. We know there's good data for lasers, green lasers with flocking birds. We don't yet know what the right deterrent is for deer, coyotes, wolves, hogs, et cetera. So more to follow on that front, but we're trying to be as focused as possible at this stage of flocking birds in these market segments. With this kind of laser and control system. Let's gain some early traction. Let's prove that we can do what we say we're going to do in the field with this next prototype. And then we'll expand from there. There are absolutely military applications to this. Um, drone deterrence with armor tanks, armored personnel carriers. Those are certainly places that we could potentially end up.

We're not down that road yet because we're, again, we've got limited resources and we're trying to be as thoughtful as we can in the ag space right now.

Shay: Well, and this might be a misunderstanding on my end. So also when I think about the level of deterrent solutions and I guess you would call it like the use of force or, you know, essentially as you kind of walk through that, you know, like with a dog, you got a collar on, you got beep, you got vibrate, you got shock. Yep. Um, so from like a laser system, uh, obviously there are military systems out there, you know, like Dazzlers or, you know, Sparklers that essentially you point the laser at someone and their, their skin starts to tingle, or, you know, crank it up and it starts to really tingle or get quite uncomfortable, you know, from an area deterrent type thing.

Um, is any of that currently part of the system, or, you know, part of the process as you think about what, what would this look like moving forward to match the appropriate deterrent, or maybe I'm speaking out of turn here.

Mike

DeSa: So— No, I, I think I understand what you're saying. Uh, we have thought about tiered deterrent systems from, uh, maybe light to sound to laser to some kind of projectile, not a lethal projectile, some sort of non-lethal projectile. We're not currently building any of those into this prototype system. But it's certainly possible. There's also a way that, you know, if we can integrate with existing security system infrastructure, right, then our software rides on the back of existing technology, and then we become the deterrent arm of an already existing security system infrastructure. The problem— not the problem. The thing that we have tried to be most thoughtful about with this particular technology is that it's applicable in so many different places and so many different forms for so many different use cases. It's never been a struggle of, well, where else is this applicable?

It's always been, doggone, it's applicable in so many places. Where do you start and how do you start and whom and what deterrent method and what deterrent, uh, what are you trying to deter? And so that's really been where we've been trying to be most thoughtful is let's start very intentionally, very specifically, and very focused, and then expand on, on from there. Whether that eventually overlaps with tiered deterrent systems for military or crowd control applications, the sky's the limit. Sure, I'd love for it to end up there, but it's not currently kind of on the development radar.

Shay: And, and I guess, you know, I was more so thinking at like a basic level. So let's start with the Flock deterrent system. Birds are smart. They realize, hey, the lasers are no longer a threat. Okay, now we go to a static or something that's going to physically deter them, or then you go to a projectile or noise or combination or any of all of them. That's kind of where my mind went is like, as stupid as birds are, they're pretty smart actually.

Mike

DeSa: And it's a great point. And it's one that comes up often in conversation around habituation. So most of the lasers that are on the market today, are using kind of an always-on system. They're like pattern-based, or they move between different waypoints, and birds begin to learn those waypoints or the patterns. They move through them, they move around them. Our strategy for preventing that kind of habituation is a couple of fold. The first is we're only turning it on when the image system detects what it is that it's trying to target. All right, so it's not always on, it only comes on when it detects. The other way is that because we're using a vision system and an image recognition algorithm, we can specifically target, right? So in much the same, in much the way that these other lasers are, they're random, they're not targeted, they're always on.

We're only turning it on when it detects and we're specifically targeting it at what it is that we want to target. Mm-hmm. Because we're, I won't say too much about this, but because we're doing something unique with the vision system, We've got the ability to figure out where a target is within a given target area, which means the third point here is that we can follow that target or nuisance animal through a particular target area.

Shay: Yeah.

Mike

DeSa: Right. So those are some of the ways we're thinking about staving off habituation. We're also thinking about it through a mobile platform, putting this thing on a mobile platform and moving it around in a way that they're not always gonna see the laser come from the same place and in the same orientation. Uh, there's a few other ways we're thinking about staving off habituation, which I'll save for, um, a different conversation. But, uh, yeah, it's absolutely something that's always in the forefront of our mind and it's a very perceptive question.

Shay: What else do you want the, uh, audience here to kind of understand about the system? You know, what are you excited about? Do you have any preliminary timelines here? Cuz I, I think there's so many practical applications for this audience, uh, you know, people in agriculture. You mentioned birds, hogs, deer. I mean, that— those are the 3 big ones that come up when I think of like our customer base. So what else, what else should the listeners know, and, and what are you thinking on how this progresses from '26 to '29?

Mike

DeSa: We are always open to having conversations with producers or growers that have that have a real problem. And let's say that problem right now should probably center around flocking or even predatory birds. If you've got something that is an incredible nuisance on your own farm or causes you to— it consumes your product in the case of aquaculture, it has potential for disease transmission in the case of birds in beef or dairy operations, They're consuming your product in, um, also in high-value crops. Those are the kinds of producers and growers we're trying to have conversations with now. Learn more about how complicated the problem is for you. Learn what an economic loss or damage that these flocking birds or predatory birds cause.

And if you're interested in trying, trialing this thing when it is ready in the next, we're anticipating, couple of months, then I'd love to have that conversation. What we're trying to avoid is, man, it would be cool if it could do this, or I've got this thing over here that's kind of this. Could we adapt it for something like that in the future?

Shay: Sure.

Mike

DeSa: But right now, the, the, our conversations are, are trying to stay centered on you've got a real problem. It's causing you real damage or loss. You've tried other things that are ineffectual, short-term, not appropriate, and you're looking for something different and more intelligent. Those are the kinds of conversations that we're having right now.

Shay: And what's the best place for people to kind of connect on this then if they are interested and do have those, you know, specific and actionable items?

Mike

DeSa: Yeah, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. That's probably a great way, Michael Dessaix, to find out what we're doing and to, to get in touch. You can learn more about some of the other work we're doing at AgSensor Solutions through agsensor-solutions.com. We're still building the Animal Deterrent Solutions website. There's a contact form on there. You can reach out and it'll, it'll get you in touch with me, so you can do that as well. Those are probably the best ways to reach out or learn more. And then we're always— I'm always on the hunt for Military veterans who are in ag have unique stories to tell. You can check out the Vets in Ag podcast wherever you get your podcasts. There's also episodes on the AgSensor Solutions website. You can thumb through them there as well. But that would be the sort of primary means.

Shay: Sounds good. Any closing thoughts here as you think about agtech in the future and what you're most excited about as we record in April of 2026?

Mike

DeSa: It's a good question. Lots, but I will, I'll maybe center it on, on one. I think we're at this weird precipice now, at least in mechanized agriculture, where one school of thought and one route to to development is bigger, it's more mechanized, it's more autonomous. I mean, John Deere's route with the new tillage, autonomous tillage tractor that just came out. That's one path, right? I think the other path you're seeing is more, they're smaller, they're more autonomous, or at least they're autonomous as well. They're working in an integrated way. And I just don't know which way that scale is going to tip at this stage. My intuition is telling me it's probably going to tip towards swarm-type farm operations. Planting is still very, very difficult to do autonomously. Tillage is largely— it's relatively simple in some respects, right, which is probably why they started there.

But I think that that particular part of mechanized agriculture will be a really interesting one to watch in the next 12 to 24 months. What sorts of adoptions are you going to see with some of these things? And will there ever be a formal tipping point? I don't know, but I think you'll start to see enough movement in one way or the other. And then how regenerative practices overlay on top of both of these pathways is also anyone's guess at this point.

Shay: We're at an exciting precipice. I like that word.

Mike

DeSa: It's a good precipice.

Shay: Yep. Well, hey, brother, I appreciate your time. Uh, would love to have you back on kind of once, uh, ADS is up and running and you have the functionality. Uh, thank you for what you do for the Vets in Ag podcast. Thank you for your work in this area. And, uh, yeah, just appreciate the conversation today.

Mike

DeSa: My pleasure, Shay. Thanks so much for having me.

Shay: And thank you everyone for listening to another episode of the Ag View Pitch. We will catch you next time.