Martha Montoya Founder and CEO, Ag Tools

Martha MontoyaMartha Montoya is the founder and CEO of www.ag.tools, a web – SaaS solution allowing farmers and everyone on the food supply chain to make better decisions, increase profits, avoid waste and impact climate change.

Martha has a keen insight on the challenges of both the farmer as well as the retailer.  Agtools is a genesis of Viva Produce a company shipping fruits and vegetables across USA and the globe to retailers such as Walmart, Kroger, Sysco and many more. AgTools’ objectives include assisting to decrease the significant food waste in the supply chain by providing succinct, timely, and valuable information regarding distribution, production, and pricing, to all stakeholders.

Martha’s career in the agricultural industry started over 25 years ago while sourcing berries from the Americas to New Zealand, Australia and Thailand which provided her with the knowledge of the product from the source to delivery. Traveling throughout many countries and USA doing business taught Martha cultural sensitivity, business practices and negotiating skills while delivering projects beneficial for the supplier and customer in 4 continents. Martha has learned to adapt and be patient while delivering results. These projects have encompassed setting up a production line for lettuce for the Netherlands from Mexico via USA, new crop of Asparagus in Ica, Peru for France’s marketplace; Mangos from India to England or Paita, Peru for the U.S. marketplace, US Cantaloupes for Mexico and many more.

In addition to new crop/commodity projects she has worked on various projects that have made more of a social impact in the regions where they were created such as government finance programs for berry growers in Mexico to empower women owned farms; low interest credit program in California for small strawberry growers with a financial institution from the CRA (community reinvestment act – a law in USA for banks to invest in social challenged regions) program to utilize for production and labor costs

Martha has won the Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence Microsoft award and IBM Entrepreneurship program among several for the creation of a Agtools a SaaS product (software as a service) to address the need of on time information through proprietary algorithms addressing several industries besides supply chain such as banking, insurance, logistics as they look to streamline losses. Martha has initiated a research study with UC Irvine Sociology and Anthropology departments to address understanding technology and farmers as we all join this globalization of agtech.

With over 25 years of worldwide agricultural experience, appointed to the California Board of Agriculture and Food, National Latino Food Industry, she has served on the advisory worldwide board of Women for Walmart and Executive Board of United States Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.

A child to educators for working and rural families, Martha began her professional career as a teacher of Chemistry, Biology and English in her native Colombia. Besides Martha’s formal education in Colombia she has done post graduate courses at University of Chicago, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Stanford Entrepreneurial on Scalability and UC Davis Food, Ag & Health Entrepreneurship.