Upstream Ag Professional - August 6th 2023
Upstream Ag Professional - August 6th 2023
Essential research and analysis for agribusiness leaders
Welcome to the 3rd Edition of Upstream Ag Professional!
Q2 earnings releases got into full swing this week. Next week I will share the highlights from the major publicly traded agribusinesses. As a quick summary: things were less rosy on a relative basis compared to the last few quarters across agribusinesses!
Index for the week:
Integration of Engineering, Software, and Artificial Intelligence in Precision Spraying: A Follow-up Through the Lens of Greeneye Technologies
Can Microbes Replace Synthetic Fertilizer?
Lindsay Announces Acquisition of FieldWise
ZoomAgri lands $6m from GrainCorp and others to expand AI-powered grain inspection system.
Cloud Computing: Reshaping the Ag Industry
AgMeta — New crop protection and seed data-driven platform that enables commercial teams to plan better, target, and track sales
The Right Net Means the Right Price: The Challenge for Enterprise Scale Ag
Todd-conversations with Walt Duflock on AgTech
The Evolution of Gene-Edited Crops
Thank you for your continued support!
1. Integration of Engineering, Software, and Artificial Intelligence in Precision Spraying: A Follow-up Through the Lens of Greeneye Technologies - Upstream Ag Professional
Key Takeaways:
Tech stacks are crucial to delivering differentiated outcomes in agtech, specifically precision spraying.
There are crucial components of a sprayer that contribute to the performance and cost reduction of precision spraying, such as nozzle type, boom height, and nozzle spacing.
Farmer psychology will play into the dynamics of how much “savings” there will be.
A teaser video of Solinftec’s Solix autonomous platform.
The term “Tech Stack” originated in the software development community as a set of technologies an organization uses to build a web or mobile application. It is a combination of programming languages, frameworks, libraries, patterns, servers, UI/UX solutions, software, and tools its developers use.
It has progressed to be a set of technologies an organization uses to build differentiation in its company or products.
In Winning in the Ag Machinery Space: Integrated Tech Stacks and Precision Technology, I touched on the advantages in equipment and precision agriculture of having a fully integrated tech stack to deliver differentiated performance and outcomes at the field level:
This integrated line of thinking was reinforced as I read about Greeneye this week and what they are doing to achieve better outcomes. While Greeneye does not make machines, making them modular in terms of fitting onto various brands of sprayers— their system itself is highly integrated, and it becomes apparent how this integration is essential to deliver better outcomes with precision spraying.
The emphasis is always on cost savings for precision sprayers or spray reduction, which is one component. Still, I believe other important considerations lead to the total performance of precision spraying, such as:
Resistance management
Total weed control (efficacy)
Crop stress management
The integrated nature influences all of these, and I was reminded of that in reading Greeneye Makes Impressive Debut from world-renowned spray expert Tom Wolf.
This week I go through how the integration of various parts on a sprayer work to deliver cost savings and performance in the realm of precision spraying.