Bayer has announced an efficiency boosting strategic partnership with Microsoft to build a new cloud-based set of digital tools and data science solutions for use in agriculture and adjacent industries. In a statement Bayer says the new collaboration will bring ‘new infrastructure and foundational capabilities to accelerate innovation, boost efficiency and support sustainability across value chains’. Specifically Bayer’s digital farming platform will be combined with Microsoft Azure to form the foundation for new digital solutions. Agriculture and agribusinesses already benefit from a wide range of digital tools and data-powered insights. Bayer’s own Climate FieldView™ platform is used today on more…
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.
Germany’s global technology powerhouse Siemens is no stranger to smart farming technologies for optimizing plant growing systems, animal health and food sustainability. Now the company has partnered with the UK’s animal footbath manufacturer Hoofcount to improve the health and welfare of cows. Together, the companies will use Siemens’ data capture and control technologies to help farmers make informed decisions to better tackle lameness, a major problem in dairy herds. Lameness is caused by bacteria picked up on the hoof which leads to restricted mobility, pain and behavioural changes in animals. This leads to a variety of outcomes including animal suffering,…
At COP26 this month, 105 countries including the US, Canada and Brazil promised to reduce their methane gas emissions by at least 30% within eight years. Methane traps eighty-four times more heat than carbon dioxide. The IPCC says that whilst being a short lived gas (12 years) and existing in small atmospheric quantities of only 2 parts per million, a cut in methane emissions has the greatest potential to slow climate warming over the next two decades. Agriculture contributes to 40-45% of these global methane emissions, largely arising from cattle and dairy farming. As a by-product of stomach fermentation in…
California-based Gridtractor has launched from stealth to develop charging technology, fleet electrification, and energy management services for electric tractors and heavy farming equipment. The US firm, a partial subsidiary of Polaris Energy Services, will help farmers seamlessly integrate electric charging and vehicle to grid (V2G) into their operations to strengthen the power grid with its smart energy platform. The folks at Gridtractor estimate farms can save 55-75% on fuel costs by going electric, and up to 90% by supplying stored power to irrigation pumps and to the grid. Electrifying one medium-sized tractor in California reduces carbon emissions by as much…
Building upon its minority investment stake in US electric autonomous tractor company – Monarch Tractor, CNH Industrial has entered into an exclusive, multi-year licensing agreement for electrification technologies. Headquartered in the US state of California, Monarch Tractor was founded in 2019, and is committed to elevating farming practices to enable clean, efficient, and economically viable solutions for farmers. In 2020 the firm introduced the world’s first fully electric, driver optional, smart tractor integrated on a single platform. CNH Industrial participated in the firm’s US$20 million Series A funding round in March 2021. The new license agreement furthers CNH Industrial’s ongoing…
New Holland Agriculture’s T6 Methane Power tractor has been awarded the prestigious title of ‘Sustainable Tractor of the Year 2022’ at the EIMA Agricultural Trade Show in Bologna, Italy. The award is determined by a jury of leading farm equipment journalists from Europe’s top agricultural publications. Farmers can grow energy crops and use agricultural waste to generate biomethane, and power their T6 Methane Power tractor with this sustainable fuel, achieving near-zero CO2 emissions. Livestock and dairy farmers can take this virtuous cycle even further by producing biomethane from manure, which subtracts CO2 from the environment, resulting in a carbon-negative footprint.…
Poor rains between March and May have had a devastating impact on farming in Kenya this year, with an estimated 2.1 million Kenyans facing starvation due to a drought ravaged harvest. In September, with crops failing, the country’s President Kenyatta declared a national disaster. Israeli smart irrigation company SupPlant has begun a project to help bring precision irrigation to Kenyan farmers and permanently alleviate the pressures of future droughts. SupPlant has begun work with around half a million, mostly female, smallholder maize farmers. Maize is the predominant crop in East Africa but it comes with some risks because whilst it…
Israel’s Blue White Robotics (BWR) has announced US$37M in Series B funding, taking the company to US$50M of investment since its inception in 2017 and only 7 months after the official release of its autonomous tractor kit. BWR says that by retrofitting existing infrastructure with intelligent autonomous algorithms, its robot tractors improve farm productivity, precision, and worker safety. The vehicle agnostic robot kit converts any existing tractor to a fully autonomous machine and integrates with BWR’s Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) platform. The platform collects and distributes data that creates new services to increase yields and reduce inputs for the growing autonomous operation.…
Ireland’s AgTechUCD Innovation Centre has announced the eight start-ups selected to participate in University College Dublin’s new accelerator programme for early-stage AgTech and FoodTech start-up companies. They include developers of livestock and crop monitoring solutions, a sustainable fodder production system and an autonomous poultry robot which collects eggs. Commencing this week, the inaugural 2021 ‘Agccelerator’ Programme (see what they did there) will run as an intensive 12-week virtual programme. The fast-track schedule will include dedicated business development workshops and investor readiness training, mentoring from AgTech and FoodTech experts and business advisors, guest speakers and include facilitated introductions to AgTechUCD’s venture…
EarthOptics, the US based carbon mapping technology firm, has closed its Series A investment round, raising an additional US$10.3 million in funding. The new investment will enable further growth and expansion of its patent-pending soil mapping and machine learning technologies across more farms. EarthOptics aims to give farmers the most accurate view of their soil’s health, compaction and carbon content by transforming soil measurement and analysis methods. The company claims its technology will provide farmers with a greater return on investment as well as promote more active participation in the carbon market whilst increasing farmers’ abilities to generate a climate-positive…
