Under a midday summer sun in California’s Sacramento Valley, rice farmer Peter Rystrom walks across a dusty, barren plot of land, parched soil crunching beneath each step.

In the current fresh produce marketplace where success does not simply rest on a good balance between supply and demand and healthy prices, the presence of a strong and well-established brand has become the game-changer.

The latest round of agriculture and technology companies looking to tackle pervasive industry problems have been selected by the F3 Tech Accelerator program.

Weather and logistical issues are a common theme across the global onion market, affecting quality and price in multiple countries.

Vineyards that constantly emerged along roads in southwestern tip of South Africa were almost bare at this time of September, the first month of spring here, though opposite to those in winemaking countries in the Northern Hemisphere, South African wine estates expect their grapevines to start off the annual growth cycle with bud break in the month and harvest them around February.

Dr Lynette Abbott in Perth is an expert in the field of soil health. Farmers in Australia are improving their practices, she says. “But managing the soil organisms is a little bit tricky. It is not necessarily the focus of growers.”