Founded in 2018, US-based Manolin is a software and data analytics company that builds disease detection models to improve sustainability in aquaculture. This week the company announced breakthrough progress with its machine learning software that detects the risk of disease on aquaculture farms, with a claim of more than 93% accuracy. Historically, despite the existence of some academic models for predicting aquaculture disease, Norwegian farmers have had to rely on visual signs or simple intuition to make decisions on the farm. With a prediction level of more than 93% accuracy, Manolin’s software now helps to make better decisions than any previous…
Author: Matt Peskett
Matt Peskett
Matt has worked in digital publishing and media for over two decades across the science, technology, food and agricultural sectors. With a lifelong passion for growing his own food, Matt also produces 300kg giant pumpkins for exhibition and volunteers with the Royal Horticultural Society. He has a sizeable horticultural social media presence and has been a finalist in the Garden Media Guild's blog of the year and social media awards. Matt also dabbles in start-up investment with companies like Small Robot Company, Drone Ag and RootWave.
Farmers and orchard growers rely on both honey bees and wild bees for pollination of their crops. The UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) reports that 90% of the world’s food comes from 100 core crops, 70 of those pollinated by bees. Whilst all bees and insect pollinators are facing challenges to their health and survival, the numbers suggest managed honey bee colonies are actually thriving. Despite this, numerous artificial pollination solutions are being developed to address agriculture’s demand for crop pollination, rather unexpectedly they may well help to safeguard the future of wild pollinators. Managed pollinators…
Global agricultural machinery and precision agtech solutions provider AGCO Corporation released its 2020 Sustainability Report this week. It includes a range of goals and commitments, such as its target of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions across its manufacturing operations by the end of 2026. With its portfolio including core brands like Challenger®, Fendt®, GSI®, Massey Ferguson® and Valtra®, AGCO’s sustainability focus includes: Soil health and soil-carbon sequestration Reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentration by capturing carbon in agricultural soils is an important AGCO objective. With a pledge to develop new sensors and other technologies to improve soil health, many of AGCO’s…
With New Holland’s MyPLM® Connect Farm platform farmers can already remotely manage their planting, spraying and harvesting, analyse the status of in-field machinery and view critical performance analytics on every field and farm activity undertaken. Continuing with New Holland’s vision of expanding the MyPLM Connect Farm feature set to further optimise farm performance and productivity, new features have been announced. Following the new updates to the MyPLM Connect Farm app farmers can now also access: support for prescriptions, tillage and large square balers new layer visualisations machine utilisation maps “At New Holland, we are providing our customers with the most…
Since its foundation in 2010, US-based IoT specialist Monnit has developed over eighty IoT Sensors which provide remote monitoring solutions for a wide range of industry applications. Adding to its existing monitoring sensors for greenhouses (to measure light, humidity, CO2 and temperature) and for livestock (for measuring indoor air flow), the company has launched the ALTA® Soil Moisture Sensor. The ALTA Soil Moisture Sensor alerts farmers, horticulturists and agronomists direct to their mobile device or computer about how much, when, and where to water their plants or crops. This new Monnit IoT Sensor provides a solution to instantly improve irrigation scheduling…
You could be forgiven for thinking that sales of Corona beer had plummeted over the past 12 months of Coronavirus madness, social media certainly suggested this would be the case at the start of the pandemic. However, due to the large scale closure of the hospitality industry quite the opposite is true – off-trade sales of Corona increased by £68m to £237m by September 2020. Now Corona has revealed a new sustainable packaging made using barley. The new sustainable packaging solution was developed over three years in the Global Innovation and Technology Center (GITEC) of Corona’s parent company AB InBev.…
With World Water Day only a week away, a new easy-to-use and affordable method of monitoring soil moisture has been announced by researchers working at the University of South Australia (UniSA) and Baghdad’s Middle Technical University. The solution they have developed uses a standard RGB digital camera to accurately monitor soil moisture under a wide range of conditions. With buried sensors susceptible to salts in the substrate, current methods for sensing soil moisture are often problematic – requiring specialised hardware for connections. Thermal imaging cameras can be compromised by climatic conditions such as sunlight intensity, fog, and clouds. Associated costs…
AAK, (formerly AarhusKarlshamn), is a Swedish-Danish company and producer of vegetable oils and fats, the company has over 3,800 employees and global revenues of around USD$3.3 billion. In an effort to make further gains on its sustainability goals, the company is partnering with market-leading technology companies Earthqualizer and Satelligence to better monitor the environmental impact of palm oil growth in its supply chain. Palm oil and deforestation Palm oil is a very versatile oil, a semi-solid state at room temperature makes it spreadable and it is also stable at high temperatures to help give fried foods a crispy texture. The…
German company Solorrow GmbH provides European farmers with field biomass information by utilising long term satellite imagery. Visual information is gathered from the previous five years and processed to identify potential areas for targeted fertiliser application. Now the information from Solorrow is easily sent to the John Deere Operations Center where it can be relayed to specific machines to carry out recommended dose applications. Field boundaries and maps Software and app developments are becoming increasingly important in precision farming. Solorrow’s satellite imagery analysis technology is able to generate automatic field boundaries in 22 European countries, saving time for farmers on…
Israeli tech company Consumer Physics has a handy bit of kit that scans and analyses harvested crops in real-time to provide quality reports on the spot. Their patented SCiO Cup uses miniaturized Near Infrared Spectrometer technology to scan its contents before sending lab quality results through the cloud to a mobile phone in seconds. Today Driscoll’s, the leading US fresh berry consumer brand, announced that SCiO Cup technology will become part of its quality measurement process. Berry sweetness is measured in ‘Brix’, now by utilising the SCiO Cup, Driscoll’s will be able to measure the Brix quantity more effectively. This…
