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From AI to IOT... How do these companies change the agriculture and food industry

from AI to IOT... How do these companies change the agriculture and food industry

08:02 source: capital laboratory/

original title: from AI to IOT... How do these companies change the agriculture and food industry

capital laboratory · today's innovation observation

focus on cutting-edge scientific and technological innovation and traditional industrial upgrading

Li Xin

at present, the output value of the global agriculture and food industry is about 7.8 trillion US dollars, accounting for more than 15% of the global GDP, and employs more than 40% of the population

however, the agriculture and food industry is facing some new problems that need to be solved urgently, including:

· consumer preferences and demands are diversified: for example, the demand for meat in developing countries continues to increase, while the developed countries have the driving force to reduce meat consumption

· impact on the environment: people are increasingly aware of the impact of the food industry on the environment - changes in agriculture, forestry and land use cause about 20% of carbon emissions, which does not include emissions from the supply chain of food from farms to consumer tables

· serious waste: about one-third of grain, that is, about 1.3 billion tons of grain, is wasted, with a waste of US $680billion in developed countries and about US $310billion in developing countries

· consumer health: while one in ten people in the world is starving, the obesity rate is rising. In the United States, for example, more than one-third of American adults are obese, while 17% of children and adolescents are also obese

· digitization lags behind: the industry digitization index of McKinsey Global Research Institute shows that compared with other industries, the digitization of agriculture and food industry shows a lagging trend

these problems seem great, but they are closely related to every consumer. To solve these problems, it is impossible to achieve them overnight, but we need to make breakthroughs in all links of the entire industrial chain. The following eight companies are the representatives of these breakthroughs:

1 Robotics, an intelligent forestry monitoring platform, is a South African agricultural technology company. The intelligent monitoring platform developed by the company is used to identify diseases and pests in trees, track every tree in the farm, find problems early, and guide farmers to find the location of the threat of diseases and pests

the platform combines weekly satellite data, automatic unmanned aerial vehicles and field monitoring data, and then uses machine learning to automatically detect diseases and pests, and reminds farmers to go to the field to verify the data and diagnose specific problems

the company obtained a round of financing of US $2million in July 2018, with a total financing of US $2.7 million

2. Brightfeed

currently, high calorie but malnourished food has become a global phenomenon. Two billion people in the world are overweight or obese, almost 2.5 times the number of malnourished people. At the same time, the impact of obesity on the global economy is $2trillion a year, almost equivalent to the economic impact of smoking

brightfeed, an American company, finds plant-based nutritional bioactive substances from crops and combines these very beneficial ingredients that ensure a clean and clean environment into daily food. The company hopes to enhance the ability of body repair and maintain good health by restoring the nutrition lost in our modern diet

3. Natural preservative developer chinova Bioworks

Canadian company chinova Bioworks has developed a natural broad-spectrum food and beverage preservative using chitosan in mushrooms. The product can also be customized for specific food and beverage companies to solve specific pathogen problems

chitosan is well known for its antimicrobial properties, but its effectiveness as a natural preservative is limited. Chinova has developed proprietary technology to produce chitosan with molecular characteristics, so that it will provide Alcoa with all the production processes and technologies of materials that are less effective than traditional synthetic preservatives, while maintaining its status as a completely natural product. The company has recently obtained the Gras (generally recognized as safety) certification from the US FDA

the company was founded in 2016 and obtained a seed round financing of $2million in August 2018

4. Connecterra

connecterra, a Dutch company, provides artificial intelligence decision support software services for dairy farmers. The system developed by the company can timely monitor the health problems such as mastitis or lameness of cows, track the changes of the farm environment through the sensors on cows, and remind dairy farmers of the impact of environmental changes on animal behavior

the company was founded in 2014 and has raised a total of 6.7 million US dollars

5. Impactvision, a food testing technology developer, is committed to using hyperspectral technology to establish a more transparent and safe global food system

the company has developed hyperspectral image technology for food processing and cross supply chain. Combined with image recognition and predictive learning, it can help users measure the freshness, quality and foreign matter detection of food in a fast and non-invasive way. At present, the company has accumulated financing of 1.4 million US dollars

6. Solinftec

the Brazilian startup solinftec has established a farm management system based on IOT to help customers monitor the operation status and progress of agricultural machinery. The system uses a series of technologies including proprietary hardware, telemetry communication network and SaaS platform, which can provide customers with verifiable harvest records and traceability of agricultural products without any manual input

solinftec was founded in 2007. Its system currently covers more than 12million acres, monitors 20000 devices, has 75000 active users every day, and covers 50% of the Brazilian sugarcane market

7. The pressure loss in the soil microbial technology service provider system increases; On the contrary, trace genomics

the American company trace genomics has carried out a scalable soil microbial test to help farmers predict soil diseases, health levels and crop quality through high-throughput DNA sequencing and machine learning technology

at present, trace genomics can identify previously unknown microbial species in the soil and provide farmers with information about which microorganisms may affect production. Farmers can use this information to decide what seeds to use, what biological agents to use, and what kind of rotation to carry out

the company was founded in 2015, and recently obtained a round of financing of US $13million, with a total financing of US $19million

8. The yield

the yield is an Australian start-up company. The company has established a micro climate sensing and analysis platform based on artificial intelligence for aquaculture and horticulture industries

the company aims to help farmers manage the water environment and improve production through high quality, including accurate and reliable sensing hardware such as oil cylinders, moving pistons, oil cylinder end caps, hydraulic distributor integrated valve groups, and customized information and analysis services. The company has received investment from institutions such as Bosch and KPMG. (Reference: AgFund)