Agtech (technology for the Agricultural sector) is growing rapidly in Australia. It is more than robots picking oranges (but they are being developed, I will save that for a future edition), it is how to use data to better manage farms and production. The old saying “they aren’t making any more land” is true. Agricultural gains are made from better management and therefore yield of the hectares under management. This is where Agtech comes in.
Agtech is growing in Australia. According to Sarah Nolet (founder of Agthentic, an advisory firm in this space) over 400 Agtech startups have been created in Australia during the last 3 years. There has been some success with AgriWebb (livestock management software) raising $14.5m, AgriDigital (commodity management platform) raising $5.5m and FluroSat (satellite data for precision agriculture) raising $4.6m. This week I will look at a few of the newer entrants into the Agtech space.
Bitwise
Bitwise integrates a series of emerging technologies with AI to help viticulturists improve their wineries. They use IoT sensors to capture data such as vine and soil moisture, air humidity, soil temperature, changing weather conditions, UV and smoke levels. This helps to predict and prevent disease and vine stress. Their Infrared sensors activate as soon as the temperature drops, to monitor surface temperature of plants during weather events to allow early frost mitigation interventions.
Their autonomous robot patrols the vineyard collecting imagery of grapevines allowing it to identify changes in the crop and to report vine disease as soon as it appears. Their swarm of micro drones can be deployed to work in unison to keep birds away from vineyards to remove the need for costly netting. These drones can also be used for imaging.
Bioscout
BioScout is a monitoring platform that allows growers, agronomists and researchers to track and monitor disease spread in their fields. Using a combination of air sampling, mapping and data analytics they provide growers with detailed data-driven disease maps. With predictive modeling they are able to see potential disease spread and other threats. Growers are able to see where, when, and what is endangering their crops. BioScout currently services a range of crops including Bananas, Avocados, Blueberries, Strawberries, Macadamias, Grapes and Almonds.
In collaboration with iMapPESTS, BioScout has released The Sentinel, a disease and pest monitoring device. Supported by the Australian and South Australian governments, The Sentinel combines specialised air sampling equipment and automation technology in a single high-tech mobile surveillance unit. It is a key element in a national project to provide greater data to producers to combat pests and diseases.
Lleaf
Lleaf aims to increase crop yield by using the power of sunlight. Sunlight is a key factor in photosynthesis, the process that allows plants to convert light to energy for growth. Lleaf has developed a greenhouse film technology that boosts natural sunlight to increase food yield production and assist the growth of non-native crops in greenhouses. It does this by absorbing the parts of the light spectrum that are less useful to plants and re-emiting the light at wavelengths that plants can more readily use. Lleaf claims a 15%+ increase in yield for some crops.
Agriprove
Agriprove aims to help farmers to build up soil carbon in their topsoils thus improving grazing feed yields whilst accessing Carbon Credits from the Australian Government’s, Emissions Reduction Fund. To access the carbon credits, a new mechanism to build soil carbon must be implemented on the farm. Many techniques can be used to achieve this. To date, the most effective method to produce soil carbon credits has been the Soilkee system.
Soilkee sows annual crops into perennial pastures providing multi-species seeding that combines cultivation, aeration and mulching. It improves grazing systems, filling summer and winter feed gaps, and kick starts positive feedback loops. The system prepares narrow seed beds in existing pasture and then plants a diverse range of forage crops. Less than 20% of the pasture is disturbed.
Initial soil carbon measurements are taken with follow up measurements every two years. Increases in soil carbon can be converted into carbon credits. Agriprove’s results after their second year of testing showed carbon sequestration rates that can deliver 10 carbon credits per hectare per annum, providing additional revenue of approximately $100 per hectare to farmers.
Agriculture is a major carbon emitter. Soil carbon enables farming regions to evolve from carbon sources to sinks – from being part of the problem to part of the solution.
Tenacious Ventures
Sarah Nolet and Matthew Pryor have recently founded Tenacious Ventures to help fund the next generation of Australian Agtech startups. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Grok Ventures (private investment fund of Atlasssian founder Michael Cannon-Bookes) provided the initial funding. Their investment thesis is broad in the Agtech space. They are interested in processing, packaging, novel foods, personalized nutrition, being able to connect the demands of consumers- whether it’s land use transformation, or new business models- to be implemented in the supply chain. An interview with Sarah on the launch of Tenacious can be found here.
Agtechfinder
Finally if you are looking to release your inner farmer, and find the latest in Agtech, try out agtechfinder. It lists over 250 Agtech products and services.
Paying it Forward
If you have a start-up or know of a start-up that has a product ready for market please let me know. I would be happy to have a look and feature the startup in this newsletter. Also if any startups need introductions please get in touch and I will help where I can.
If you have any questions or comments please email me via my website craigcarlyon.com
I would also appreciate it if you could forward this newsletter to anyone that you think might be interested.
Till next week.