There’s no getting around the fact that livestock farming adds greenhouse gasses (GHG) to mankind’s burgeoning output. Estimates put the livestock attributable number at between 14% and 16% of all GHG emissions. Methane is a particular problem, the gas has a warming effect 25-28 times higher than carbon dioxide. With around 10% of the world’s cattle, the USA has a key role to play in limiting cattle produced emissions. California’s manure methane digesters In California it is estimated that their 1.4 million dairy cows are the largest source of methane in the entire state. Typically manure methane digesters are the…
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.
UMITRON is a Singapore and Japan based deeptech company which aims to solve worldwide food and environmental problems by empowering aquaculture through technology. In late July the company launched Pulse – a digital service for aquaculture farmers to provide a high-resolution ocean map of critical environmental parameters such as water temperature, chlorophyll, dissolved oxygen, salinity, and wave height. New Pulse mobile application for Android This week UMITRON made it even easier to access their ocean environmental data with the release of the Pulse mobile application for Android. An iOS application is also in development. Pulse uses a combination of IoT, satellite remote…
Orbia (formerly Mexichem), a global multinational petrochemical company, has announced the first investment of its corporate venture fund ‘Orbia Ventures’. The Orbia Ventures fund is dedicated to supporting start-ups that develop technology solutions for smart cities, agriculture, improved sustainability and regeneration. The fund has invested US$3 million in Israeli company SeeTree, a provider of agtech solutions for the permanent-crop sector. An intelligence network for trees SeeTree offers farmers an end-to-end digital service to manage and optimize the health and productivity of fruit trees. Utilising high-resolution, multi-dimensional sensing imagery technology, military grade drones, as well as microsensors and samples collected on…
Chinese agricultural drone company Guangzhou Jifei Technology Co., Ltd (known as ‘XAG’) has announced the completion of a new round of funding worth 1.2 billion Chinese Yuan (US$182 million). As XAG transitions from a purely agri-drone focused business to a provider of all-round smart farming technology, the new funding will increase the pace of change within the company. XAG already provides farmers with precision mapping systems, land-based IoT devices and application software to obtain meteorological and soil readings. This finance round is the largest commercial ag-tech investment ever seen in China. It was led by Baidu Capital and Softbank Vision…
With a market share of between 70% and 80% in the worldwide commercial drone sector, DJI is the global leader in developing and manufacturing civilian drones and aerial imaging technology. Today the company announced the launch of its new AGRAS T20 drone (available for pre-order in select countries). The T20 offers an improved precision spraying solution to farmers, be that for herbicides and pesticides or the novel broadcasting of seeds and fertilisers (where a uniform application rate has been achieved). A maximum payload of 20 litres/kg for extended flight time The T20 drone can carry up to 20 litres (20kg) per…
The REAP (Realising Economic Agricultural Potential) Conference is the flagship annual event of Agri-TechE. The conference brings together farmers, technologists, scientists and advisors to discuss options for the future of agriculture and how innovation can help deliver them. A number of companies were selected to present in the ‘Start-Up Showcase’ at #REAP20, one of them was Willand Group. The Willand Intelligent Livestock System (WIL System) Most people will have seen the large air supported structures already used to provide undercover all-weather sports facilities. Willand Group has taken the same concept and applied it to livestock farming. The Willand Intelligent Livestock…
The REAP (Realising Economic Agricultural Potential) Conference is the flagship annual event of Agri-TechE. The conference brings together farmers, technologists, scientists and advisors to discuss options for the future of agriculture and how innovation can help deliver them. A number of companies were selected to present in the ‘Start-Up Showcase’ at #REAP20, one of them was BeeSecure. BeeSecure – happy healthy hives Honeybees are a key component of the food chain, their wellbeing is critical. Fruit growers worldwide are dependent upon rented beehives to perform pollination duties across fields and orchards. How do they know if the bees are happy,…
After raising $2.9M earlier this year, Canadian Agtech start-up Lucent BioSciences has now announced positive results from field trials of its new fertilizer. Created using patented technology, Soileos is a cellulose-based micronutrient fertilizer available as a granule, seed coating, soil amendment or NPK granule coating. Soileos binds micronutrients such as manganese, copper, iron and boron with organic agricultural waste such as rice hulls, lentil hulls & fibre, wheat straw, barley straw, and coconut fibre. With no risk of toxicity the resulting fertilizer is organic and water insoluble, this means it remains in the soil close to crop roots, where it…
Vegetable pickers are in short supply, some of the larger English growers have been chartering planes to fly labour in from Eastern Europe. It’s a challenge mirrored across the world’s developed countries. To address this shortage a number of firms have developed crop specific robotic pickers. One such company, Fieldwork Robotics, a spin off company from the UK’s University of Plymouth, has been addressing cauliflower picking. Working with Bonduelle Group through until 2023, Fieldwork Robotics will create a prototype cauliflower picking robot that will be ready for commercial manufacture. Fieldwork will initially work on the detection and soft robotics technology…
For livestock farmers empty feed bins are a far from ideal situation, animals need a reliable and constant supply of food. Climbing up a feed bin to check levels manually is not terribly reliable or without risk. Remembering to place timely feed mill orders is another task on the long list of duties associated with being a busy farmer. Last minute feed orders place a strain on the feed mill companies, causing inefficiencies in their delivery routes. Enter BinSentry, a company founded in Ontario, Canada, which has created a technical solution. BinSentry’s LIDAR driven sensors are easily installed inside feed…
