Upstream Ag Professional - March 3rd 2024

Essential news and analysis for agribusiness leaders

Shane Thomas

Mar 03, 2024

∙ Paid

Index for the week:

Solinftec: Living in the Field
Indigo Ag Announces Record-Setting Third Carbon Crop
Meristem BIO-CAPSULE TECHNOLOGY™ "...could make liquid seed treatment obsolete."
Compass Regulatory Comes Out of Stealth
Interview with Farmers Edge CEO Vibhore Arora
Digital Solutions for the Largest Ag Retailer in Latin America With Alex Wimbush
Opportunities for LLM's Today in Ag: 4 -Leaf Clover Strategy
Search Functionality
Warren Buffett 2023 Annual Letter to Shareholders

1. Solinftec: Living in the Field

Key Takeaways

Solinftec's Solix platform represents a a unique approach to precision agriculture that includes a solar-powered, autonomous solution that “lives in the field” 24/7. This approach enables continuous, real-time monitoring and management of crops, potentially transforming how agronomic decisions are made and executed, from disease and pest control to nutrient management, and in the future, the potential for more, such as soil testing. Its ability to operate continuously without significant labor or operational costs presents a new model for optimizing agronomic outcomes and farm profitability.
The Solix platform embodies the first principles thinking in agriculture by creating a closed-loop system that bridges the gap between sensing, diagnosing, and acting.

This week, I saw two notable posts from Solinftec on Linkedin.

The first was images from the manufacturing facility of Solinftec’s solar powered, autonomous platform, the Solix, in Indiana where what looks like dozens of units were pictured— presumably most of which will end up in mid-western United States fields in 2024:

Next was a post from Solinftec CEO Britaldo Hernandez on Linkedin: Living in the Field (emphasis mine)

The vast majority of major agricultural problems such as diseases, pests, etc. within a crop start small and grow. Large-scale chemical applications exist because there is a farming operation incapable of keeping up with the cycle of these problems.
When Solix was designed, we thought of a multi-purpose robotic platform where an AI would be tasked with tracking the biological cycles and the applications would go from anticipating the problem to correcting it in its early stages. This is what we call "living in the field".

The emphasized points from Britaldo are what have had me rethink precision agriculture. I was fortunate to spend time with Britaldo last year where he shared those specific insights with me.

I think the concept is worth considering:

Solinftec and the Solix Autonomous Platform: Reimagining Farming from First Principles - Upstream Ag Professional

The promises of digital agriculture have been immense. From traceable food to fully autonomous equipment, de-commoditized grains and reduced fertilizer costs, there is no shortage of potential with digital technologies powering agriculture.

Yet, despite all of this digital technology, yields have gone up at about the same 1.3% annually as they have for decades and the profitability of the farmer sways based on the commodity cycle and interest rates.

Much like the famous Peter Thiel line describing a slowdown of innovation and societal progress, “We wanted flying cars and all we got was 140 characters, the digital agriculture equivalent could be “We wanted traceable food and autonomous farms, but all we got was siloed data, hoards of colorful NDVI images and press releases about carbon farming.”

There is satire in that line, but also truth.

There has been a gap between what farmers and the industry have wanted and what has been delivered through digital agriculture.

The current expectation to reality gap stems from many reasons, including:

farm internet connectivity
lack of technology interoperability
localized nature of farming
poor incentive structures

But two other big ones are often ignored:

cost-effectiveness of insights/actions and timeliness of actions.

Given the commoditized nature of large-scale farming, along with the already significant expenses of farms and the influence of fast-changing weather and quick-moving insects and disease, cost-effective and timely actions are critical.

Digital agriculture began with sensing. This started as basic as weather information, to soil sampling, then progressing to things like NDVI satellite imagery and drones or tractors with cameras on them.

Then we moved to diagnoses. This is synthesizing or interpreting data from the sensors to recognize an issue— a disease on the crop, an insect outbreak, or hail damage, for example.

Sensing and diagnosing have been where 99% of agtech has stopped. There has been a plethora of companies and technologies that sense and diagnose. Still, they are disconnected from the ability to take action, needing to connect to a piece of equipment with a time lag to execute.

Next, we get to action. Action is acting on the diagnosis to mitigate or eliminate any issue. John Deere was one of the first to popularize this capability with their aptly named “Sense and Act” technology which includes their “See and Spray” capability, or the ability to sense weeds, diagnose that they are different from the crop, and then in real-time Act to eradicate the weed with a precise spray response.

Traditional sense and Act is imperfect, though— the field is a complex, dynamic system, and there are constantly new challenges arising, whether it be weeds, disease, planter misses, insects, nutrient deficiency, or other abiotic stresses. Things change daily and in varying areas within a field.

There is a need to be constantly sensing, diagnosing, and acting to optimize outcomes in the field. There is a need to always be in the field.

But most pieces of equipment, such as the sprayer, aren’t entirely autonomous (they demand labor), and they cost farmers hundreds of thousands of dollars, which means every hour they operate comes with a hefty depreciation bill— this makes the efforts of sensing, diagnosing and acting a high-cost endeavor.

Upstream Ag