181–190 of 205 posts
http://www.bluerivertechnology.com/ Now owned by John Deere. Goal is 10x reduction in chemicals while doubling yields. We’re deep in ml & robotics and our creations scale across the deere fleet touching most of the arable land in the world.
I worked for The Climate Corporation when it was acquired by Monsanto (now Bayer) for $1B. There is certainly plenty of potential for innovative tech in agriculture, but it’s a really tough space. Machine learning and big data are not magic bullets. The level of noise in experimental measurements is very high, which makes it difficult to prove the effectiveness of almost any intervention. Climate Corp did (and still…
Well..hold my beer! Field view collected so much data that the farmer doesn’t need(aka can’t use). And paid for it.
There is so much data in the field that is worth more than the crop that is being sold. So..no..the farmer doesn’t get to monetize it. Farmers shouldn’t have to pay for any data collected that isn’t used by him but can be commoditized.
In fact farmers should be PAID for allowing companies to extract data. They are mining data from our fields and making US pay for it. It’s like how Tom Sawyer painted his fence!
Definitely want to take the time to throw out a huge recommendation for FBN (Farmers Business Network), a KPCB/Google Ventures backed startup that's doing really cool work in data analysis + aggregation + insights for farmers. For the sake of clarity, I was an intern there, but I objectively think that their approach is very insightful and hits a lot of key points that many ag startups get wrong. Two of my biggest pe…
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> I'm still not sure why this tech isn't more commonplace It's the same story with DFM probes (artificial root that measures water content). I think the (one) reason is that it's quicker to get in your bakkie (pick-up) or quad bike and go to the block yourself than trying to figure out on your computer why the probe says you had applied water throughout the whole night (i.e., 15 times too much). Turns out someone wal…
Indeed. By the way, our product uses probes like DFM's. We don't have any users using that brand (from what I can see it doesn't support being connected to 3rd-party data-loggers) but other brands like Aquacheck (also from South Africa), Sentek and EnviroPro (both Australia) can connect to any data logger that supports the SDI-12 protocol. We have several users running EnviroPro and Aquacheck probes. It's noteworthy…
I'm doing some work for a startup that wants to automate greenhouse climate control. The software automatically manages lighting, climate, irrigation based on long term growth strategies, real time sensor data and energy prices. This saves time spent manually managing greenhouse climate, and money due to improved crop and energy management. We're hiring! Looking for a data scientist with a mind for optimization probl…
Tule helps farmers make irrigation decisions. We install a proprietary research-based sensor in farmers' fields. The sensor measures the water use and water stress of the plants in an entire field. Tule uses the field-scale plant data, as well as cutting-edge artificial intelligence models, to provide farmers with irrigation recommendations. Our customers span from the winemakers who farm California's most prized vin…
Hey Tom — nice to see you around. Dan from InnoVint here.
It's an electronic device that sits underneath your beehives and weighs the amount of honey in the hive, sending data back via satellite modem (because beehives are often remote, so cellular doesn't always work). It also measures a bunch of other important stuff important for bee health: temperature, humidity, bee activity.
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Oh of course, and to be quite honest, I really hope you folks can succeed in your mission. But, I still found that at least locally (in southern Ontario), the unit costs of importing from California still make sense compared to growing locally because of the cost of artificial lighting and the difficulties growing year round. The big greenhouse operations locally grow a premium product that can command a much higher…
California’s lettuce production alone is a 3 billion dollar industry. Entire Ag income in Netherlands is around 3 billion dollars. California lettuce farms have a year round growing season and we move from Salinas to Yuma in winter. We grow organic lettuce with cover cropping and crop rotation. Glass houses are NOT more efficient than how we grow in CA. We have water shortage and a labour problem. The main problem is…
I am the founder of Optimal: http://optimal.ag . We are a team of engineers and scientists from DeepMind, Palantir, Oxford and MIT. Our mission is to grow safer, healthier food by deploying fully autonomous greenhouses outside every city on earth. We are backed by leading deep technology funds, including Founders Fund. We believe that high-tech greenhouses will be an important part of our agricultural future, for imp…
What an exciting thread! I've seen really cool projects here