By ZEV STUB , Jerusalem Post, OCTOBER 7, 2021
Corn (photo credit: Courtesy)
Some 500,000 smallholder maize farmers – mostly women living in
Bungoma and Busia – received access Wednesday to Israeli-developed
technology that can help them avoid crop failures.
Afula-based SupPlant’s new sensor-less technology
collects and analyzes hyper-local climatic, plant and irrigation data
to offer extremely low-cost Irrigation recommendations, weather forecast
and crop stress alerts, as well as AI-enabled agronomic guidance to
make smallholders more resilient to climate change.
SupPlant partnered with PlantVillage, which is part of Penn State
University, to reach these farmers who represent a portion of the nearly
half a billion farmers worldwide who grow on less than two hectares
(five acres). PlanetVillage is working with partners in Kenya reaching
nine million farmers each week.
A MODERN-DAY farmer inspects the condition of his cherry tomatoes in
Kadesh Barnea – where the Bible indicates the spies were sent from.
(credit: GILI YAARI/FLASH90)
While most AgriTech companies only target 2% of the world’s growers
and ignore the 450m. smallholder farmers worldwide, SupPlant grew by
1200% over the past 18 months by serving the traditional AgriTech market
of corporate growers, the company said. It recently raised $10 million
of growth capital to continue this growth.
“Supplant’s
unique dataset, agronomical expertise, and proprietary algorithms offer
a very interesting step change for farmers facing the threat of
drought," said David Hughes, founder of PlantVillage. "Our initial
pilots are successful and we want to see accelerated delivery at scale,
and hope to see tremendous results during the upcoming harvest season.”
By 2022, Supplant intends to serve at least two million smallholders across Africa and India.
While
most agritech companies only target 2% of the world’s growers, and
ignore the 450 million smallholder farmers worldwide, SupPlant grew by
1,200% over the past 18 months by serving the traditional agritech
market of corporate growers, the company said. It recently raised $10
million of growth capital to continue this growth.
“SupPlant’s unique dataset, agronomic expertise and proprietary
algorithms offer a very interesting step change for farmers facing the
threat of drought,” said David Hughes, founder of PlantVillage. “Our
initial pilots are successful and we want to see accelerated delivery at
scale, and hope to see tremendous results during the upcoming harvest
season.”
THIS PAGE WAS POSTED BY SPUTNIK ONE OF THE SPUTNIKS ORBIT BLOG
PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS PAGE AND FOLLOW US AT:
No comments:
Post a Comment