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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

agtech

Dairy Farmers of America’s Accelerator Program Looks to Advance Tech Innovation on the Farm

As more and more startup accelerators enter the food tech space, one trend on the rise is larger entities building out programs to keep a pulse on innovation. Several major CPGs already have programs in full swing around the world, and now, other organizations are starting to develop their own takes on the accelerator model.

One such organization is the Dairy Farmers of America (DFA). Started in 1998, the cooperative of family farmers now has 13,000 members from dairy farms across the country and works with some of the world’s largest food producers besides manufacturing its own brands.

It’s also home to a relatively new accelerator program that gives startups an entry point into the dairy industry and at the same time looks to bring more tech to the farm to help production, animal health, and safety, and other elements. And, of course, it’s a way for the DFA to connect with younger companies pushing newer, tech-driven ideas to the agricultural industry.

That’s especially important right now, as the U.S. dairy industry as a whole has seen a significant drop in numbers of late. The USDA reported that more than 2,700 dairy farms closed in 2018 in the U.S. The reasons for these closures are legion, politically complex, and partly based on changing consumer demands. Tech may not be able to solve all of them, but bringing more innovation to the farm could help with labor costs and shortages, product diversification, and measures to make farms more productive.

Speaking of DFA’s inspiration behind starting an accelerator, the program’s Director of Innovation, Doug Dresslaer, told me, “[We] needed a way to partner with someone who could [get us] on the right path and get in front of some new technologies.”

The program focuses on two areas, agtech and dairy food products, and on finding companies innovating in those realms. For example, ripe.io, who uses blockchain to improve supply chain transparency, was a member of the 2018 cohort. My Dairy Dashboard, one of the members of the original cohort, makes a cloud-based data analytics solution for dairy producers and their advisors.

The accelerator takes around six or seven companies per cohort, according to Dresslaer. The program itself is a combination of onsite meetings and virtual programming. Of the 90 days that make up the duration of the program, participants will usually spend four weeks of that time onsite in Kansas City (where DFA is headquartered), meeting with mentors and industry figures and attending sessions around business development, product development, marketing, and other aspects of startup growth. While there’s no requirement for companies to relocate fully to Kansas City, Justin McCarthy, a Public Relations Manager at DFA, says many of them hire locally anyway, to have a presence near headquarters.

As far as the types of companies DFA chooses for the program, it’s based largely on how their innovations can improve processes, reduce margins, and improve overall productivity on the farm. While McCarthy noted that DFA is staying current with topics like plant-based dairy, right now, the focus is more on helping the farmers through tech.

To that end, the 2019 cohort featured a mix of sustainability, like Bezoar Laboratories’ patent-pending probiotic for cattle that reduces methane production, and technology, such as Labby’s AI-powered smartphone app that tests milk onsite to save farmers the time and money from sending samples to the lab. The 2029 class also included a few smaller CPG companies making dairy-based goods and snacks.

McCarthy notes that on the farm, especially, adoption of tech is increasing. “Most farmers are very receptive to new tech developments,” he said, adding that nowadays farms are being passed down to younger millennial generations who “understand creativity in technology” and are “much more willing to entertain” conversations about adding tech to the dairy farming process.

Larger organizations may be getting into the accelerator game, but the dairy industry itself doesn’t have a huge presence there yet other than Land O’ Lakes’ program, which is currently on hiatus according to a recent email sent to The Spoon.

For its program, DFA typically looks at companies with a product already in market or, in the case of hardware offerings, close to manufacturing stage. Unlike many accelerators, there’s no hard stop for applications, which are instead accepted on a rolling basis throughout the year. And while they’ve yet to announce dates for the 2020 cohort, the program typically runs in springtime.

But as Dresslaer noted, the program itself is really just a jumping-off point to a longer-term relationship between DFA and the participants. “The goal of this type of program is that we only take companies that we see long-term relationships being built with them,” he explained. “We really want to help them and partner with them in some way.”

Vegebot Can Identify and Harvest Lettuce (and More, at Some Point)

Homer Simpson once sang “You don’t win friends with salad,” but he might change his tune if he knew those greens were harvested by a robot.

Well, probably not. But we at The Spoon definitely think its cool that researchers at the University of Cambridge in England have developed a robot that can automatically identify and harvest heads of iceberg lettuce. Dubbed “Vegebot,” the research team announced over the weekend that its robot had successfully completed tests in a variety of field conditions on an actual farm.

Because it grows flat to the ground and is easily damaged, iceberg lettuce can be a challenging crop to harvest. The Vegebot uses an on-board camera and computer vision to identify the lettuce, whether it is mature enough to be harvested, and if it is healthy (diseased lettuce could spread to other lettuce in the harvest). Once identified, a second camera near the cutting blade makes sure the cut is smooth before a robot gripper picks it up.

This high-tech harvesting is cool, but as of now, it is also very slow. You can see just how slow in this video:

Robot uses machine learning to harvest lettuce

However, like with most things robotic, the speed will come. Right now, the robot has proven that its computer vision, cutting and gripping technology can work outside of the lab and under a variety of conditions. Additionally, the robot’s name is “Vegebot” not “Lettucebot” (there already was one of those), and Cambridge researchers say that the underlying technology could be used for a variety of crops.

Automation and robots are on the verge of becoming more mainstream in agriculture as technology like Vegebot’s, Augean Robotics and Agerris improve, and human labor shortages become more of an issue. Working on a farm requires intense physical labor, often in 100-plus degree weather. Having robots on hand can mean continued production without risking human life and health.

Even Homer Simpson can see that’s a winning idea.

Agerris Raises $6.5M for its Ag Tech Robotics and AI Platform

Agerris, an Australia-based robotics and AI platform for agriculture, announced over the weekend that it has raised $6.5 million (AUSD) in seed funding from Uniseed, Carthona Capital and BridgeLane Group.

The startup was founded by Professor Salah Sukarrieh and began as research at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney (which is also a partner in Uniseed). From the looks of it, Agerris is building a modular robotics and AI platform that has broad applications for both plant and livestock farmers.

According to a University of Sydney news post, Agerris has two main products. The “Swagbot” can autonomously monitor and identify weed issues, detect food and crops through computer vision, as well as herd livestock. Agerris'”Digital Farmhand” is a lower cost robot platform to help row and tree crop farmers manage crop health and yields.

Tree Crop Demo - Farmhand and Swagbot

Agerris will begin trials in Australia before attempting to expand to Southeast Asia and countries in the South Pacific over the next year.

AgTech presents a big opportunity for robotics as the world’s farms will need to increase production to keep up with a growing global population, and robots can do much of the hard, manual labor that comes with farming. Adding to that pressure currently here in the U.S., farms are facing a labor shortage, creating even more need for automation in the fields.

Agerris seems similar to Pennsylvania-based Augean Robotics, which scored its own seed funding last week. Augean builds the Burro, a squat, rugged, wheeled robot meant to haul gear and crops around a farm. But the Burro is also a broader platform, upon which Augean will offer additional ag-specific capabilities such as weed detection, targeted spraying and more.

If you are interested in how robotics will change the meal journey, be sure to come to our ArticulATE food robot and automation summit next week in San Francisco. Tickets are almost gone, so get yours today!

Upcycled Flour Co. Planetarians Closes $750K Seed Round, Partners with Barilla’s BLU1877

This week Planetarians, the San Mateo-based upcycled ingredient startup, announced that it had closed a $750,000 seed round with participation from Barilla’s venture/innovation arm BLU1877, Techstars, The Yield Lab, SOSV, and a group of angel investors.

Planetarians takes defatted sunflower seeds — the hulls and fiber left behind after the seeds have been pressed for oil — and upcycles them into high-protein, high-fiber flour.

In a phone interview, Planetarians CEO and co-founder Aleh Manchuliantsau told me that for the past few months they’ve been doing tests in the Barilla facility, using their upcycled flour to make crackers, breads, biscuits, tortillas, and, of course, pasta.

The various products Planetarians has developed with Blu1877.

“With Barilla, we completed scalability tests in an industrial setting,” Manchuliantsau told me. “Next, we expect to do commercial manufacturing.” The company also just won the Most Innovative Startup Pre-Series A award at the Agfunder Agrifood Tech Innovation Awards, which it announced yesterday.

Planetarians will use its new funding to continue developing and trialing new products. They still have their upcycled chip snacks, which they developed with Techstars last year, and have been working with Italian meat-focused company Amadori to develop flexitarian meatballs cut with their defatted sunflower flour.

Upcycling —that is, turning food byproducts into new edible goods — is becoming quite the CPG food trend as of late. Regrained repurposes spent beer grain as energy bars, Renewal Mill (who just raised $2.5 million) turns leftover soy from tofu into baking flour. Even big players like Tyson Foods have gotten into the food waste game with their Yappah! crisps made of chicken breast trimmings. Clearly by investing in Planetarians, Barilla hopes to get their own piece of the upcycled pie.

Last year Manchuliantsau told me that it can be difficult to get consumers comfortable with eating upcycled food waste products, especially ones typically designated for livestock feed. But having a powerful food corporation like Barilla behind them will help Planetarians push their food to the masses  — especially if it’s in the form of pasta.

Blue Apron Founder Bets Chickens can Help Beat Climate Change

What with droughts, slash-and-burn agriculture, overfishing and factory farming, sometimes it can seem like our food system is careening towards disaster.

That’s why Matthew Wadiak, co-founder and ex-COO of meal kit company Blue Apron, decided to found Cooks Venture. Launched yesterday, the company will attempt to pull the food system back from the brink through regenerative agricultural initiatives, starting with… chickens.

But not just any chickens. Cooks Venture’s birds are heirloom and pasture-raised and have markedly better livelihoods than factory-farmed chickens, who are sometimes raised in cramped, unsanitary conditions and/or injected with steroids. Heirloom chickens, like heirloom tomatoes, also have more pronounced, unique flavor profiles than your average supermarket bird.

Poultry preorders opened today. The chickens cost anywhere from $15 to $20 each, depending on how many you buy. Orders will ship in July of this year, and a press release from the company states that it also plans to sell the birds via grocery store and restaurants by summer 2019.

Chickens are just the first step for Cooks Venture, whose end goal is to show how regenerative agriculture can slow — or even stop — climate change by sequestering carbon in soil. Next up, they’ll start raising and selling cattle, pigs, and vegetables, all sustained on the same plot of land as the chickens. The company operates out of an 800-acre farm in Arkansas and has two processing facilities in Oklahoma.

Cooks Venture plans to create a holistic system of ruminant animals (cows, pigs), “monogastric” animals (chickens), feed crops, and a variety of vegetables. The feed crops will sustain the chickens and cows, whose manure will fertilize the ground for vegetables, all of which will help trap carbon in the soil and take CO2 out of the atmosphere, reducing greenhouse gases.

Cooks Venture is far from the only one doing regenerative agriculture. Small farms around the country promote this system as sustainable both for the environment at large and the farm itself, since this kind of closed-loop system keeps the soil healthy.

It seems like Cooks Venture’s role, then, is not really to prove that regenerative agriculture is good for the planet (it is), but to give it a higher profile. With Wadiak behind the project, it’ll likely be seen and heard about much more than the farm that drives an hour to sell free-range poultry at your local farmers market.

The big question — both with Cooks Venture and regenerative farms everywhere — is if this sort of uber-sustainable venture is economically sustainable. From a per-pound perspective, Cooks Venture’s birds are on-par with organic whole chickens from most grocery stores ($3.99/pound). However, at 20 bucks a pop, not everyone will be able to afford one of their chickens, just like most people can’t afford to buy 100 percent of their groceries from a farmers market. There’s also the question of whether farmers, especially ones dedicated to a single crop or animal, could afford to shift towards regenerative agriculture practices.

As climate change leads to higher temperatures and more droughts, regenerative agriculture might become less of a radical choice and more of the only choice. If so, we’ll be glad we have templates like Cooks Venture and others to lead the way.

GM-No? Yield10 Bioscience is Developing Gene-Edited Corn for Increased Yields

Most of us have heard the oft-quoted U.N. statistic that in order to feed a growing global population in 2050, we’ll have to double food production. That’s a daunting challenge.

Some hold up genetically modified (GM) and genetically engineered (GE) crops as the answer to the impending food crisis. By changing the DNA of a crop, scientists can make them resistant to pests, weeds, and drought. In short: they can reduce harvest losses and preserve yield.

Yield10 Bioscience, an agricultural bioscience company, claims that it is developing crops that will not only reduce crop losses but will actively boost yield potential, allowing farmers to grow more plants with fewer inputs (e.g. fertilizer).

The Woburn, MA-based company grew out of a renewable bioplastics company, which began applying its tech in crop science before shifting its focus in 2015 to focus solely on new ways to engineer higher-yield crops resistant to common pests and weeds. “We started using our technology to answer the question: How do we make crops more efficient?” Yield10’s CEO Dr. Oliver Peoples told me over the phone.

The answer: genetic editing (you’ve probably heard of CRISPR, a gene editing technology).

Companies like Yield10 are basically trying to do what farmers have been doing since the dawn of agriculture: breed crops for more desirable outcomes, like sweeter fruit or bigger yields. Only instead of selecting the best crops from each harvest over years and years, they’re going straight to the source. “We’re like a genetic app developer,” explained Peoples.

Once Yield10 develops an app — er, seed — it plans to license the technology to large seed companies like Bayer/Monsanto and others to bring them to market. Peoples didn’t disclose prices, but said that the business model is to make money both from licensing the original product and get a percentage of revenue from the partners’ sales to farmers.

Yield10 hasn’t actually brought any of its seeds to market yet. Last month, the company announced that it is developing a new breed of corn that’s drought resistant and will produce larger yields. It expects the seed will be ready for field testing in 2020.

The vast majority of all corn grown in the U.S. is genetically modified.

Though Peoples and I started out discussing Yield10’s technology, we quickly went down the rabbit hole of varied public perception of genetically modified foods. A significant number of Americans think that GM foods are worse for our health — roughly 49 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. This despite the fact that U.S. regulatory bodies have unequivocally declared that genetically modified foods are safe to eat.

The question of whether GMO crops are “good” for us and our planet is a sticky one. On one hand, genetically modified crops that are inherently resistant to weeds and pests mean that farmers can use less fertilizer and pesticides, which translates fewer chemicals washed into local water sources. On the other hand, relying on only a few super-seeds means less biodiversity, which is critical for soil health. Plus the GE crop market is controlled by mega-corporations like Bayer-Monsanto, who don’t exactly have the best ethical or environmental track record.

Regardless of how you feel about GM foods, odds are, you’re already eating them. The FDA reported that in 2012, GE soybeans accounted for 93 percent of all soybeans planted, and GE corn accounted for 88 percent of corn planted, most of which was used for animal feed. And it doesn’t seem like farmers are going to stop using genetically modified crops anytime soon.

Peoples isn’t the only one trying to change our tune about genetically engineered foods. Just last month, a nonprofit of pro-GMO farmers launched Ethos Chocolate, a line of chocolate bars out to convince people that GMO’s weren’t evil — in fact, they might be the best way to save beloved ingredients like cacao, oranges, and apples.

Down the road, Peoples is optimistic that GMOs will follow the same trajectory as vaccines: At first people were skeptical, but eventually they became accepted as safe and, in fact, necessary.

“GMO traits benefit the farmer,” said Peoples. “It’s difficult for consumers who live in cities and have never really seen a farm. They don’t recognize it.” Maybe it’s up to farmers themselves to change the minds of the half of Americans who don’t want genetically modified foods on their plates.

Tillable, the Zillow for Farmland, Raises $8.25M Series A

Tillable, a farmland rental management company, raised an $8.25 million Series A funding round led by First Round Capital and The Production Board (hat tip to Axios).

The Chicago-based startup has an online marketplace which helps landowners and farmers settle on fair land rental prices. Through Tillable, farmers can input bids on pieces of land, and landowners can manage said bids, vet potential renters, and get insight into how their land is being used post-rental (yields, fertilizer usage, etc). The Tillable website also takes care of administrative rental tasks, like leases and monthly payments.

Basically, it’s Zillow for cropland.

It seems clear what landowners get out of a tool like Tillable — more visibility, efficient rental management, access to more land bids — but I was initially skeptical about why farmers would like the system. After all, more farmers knowing about a chunk of cropland = more bids = higher rental prices.

However, unlike eBay, the highest bid doesn’t always win on Tillable. When farmers apply for a piece of land they also submit information on their farming practices and experience. So if a landowner, say, doesn’t want pesticides used on its land, it might favor an organic farmer. Owners can also make residency rules, like designating their land “no till.” (As far as I can tell, Tillable doesn’t provide a monitoring service, so landowners have to assume that farmers are being honest with their reported yields and practices.)

Tillable could also help open up the agricultural industry and make it accessible for new farmers. According to the FAO, the average age of farmers in the U.S. is 60 years old. If we want to keep, you know, having food, we need a new generation to take over. However, there are surprisingly few resources for incoming farmers, especially those who don’t have parents or grandparents’ farms to take over.

Tillable plans to use its new funding to expand sales, marketing, and engineering operations to attract more landowners and farmers before the 2020 growing season.

Agriculture is getting a major tech makeover, with players developing everything from autonomous tractors to “bee drones” — and now, farmland rental marketplaces — to help make the notoriously difficult profession a little bit easier.

Ethiopian Coffee Company Uses Blockchain to Keep More Profits with Farmers

Ethiopia is known as the birthplace of coffee, which, legend has it, was discovered in the eighth century by a shepherd who noticed his goats were bleating and jumping after eating coffee berries. More recently, the home of coffee has started experimenting with a new technology: blockchain.

Last June, Ethiopian-Dutch company Moyee Coffee partnered with its sister company FairChain Foundation and tech company Bext360 to create Token, a new brand of coffee entirely powered by blockchain. As the name suggests, each bag of coffee contains a namesake token worth €0.50, ($0.56 USD), which consumers can give directly to the farmers or the FairChain Foundation, or put towards a discount on their next bag of coffee. Then, using blockchain, they can trace the impact of their donation.

Obviously fifty cents is just a drop in the bucket in terms of farmers getting a larger piece of the profit. Moyee also hasn’t released any data about how many of these tokens were used or how much they increased the income of growers. But even fifty cents can seem like a good bit of money when coffee farmers only net an average of $1.30 for each pound of Fair Trade beans they sell — beans which will go on to retail for roughly $15.

In addition to being a smart marketing play, Moyee’s initiative also serves to get both consumers and farmers more comfortable with the often-intimidating technology that is blockchain.

Now, according to the Thomas Reuters Foundation, Moyee is increasing its investment in blockchain with new capabilities. The company will use blockchain to enable traceability on the buyer’s side, so that roasters and consumers can see exactly where and when their coffee was sourced. They can also access the profiles of Moyee’s 350 grower partners to see how much they’re paid for each pound of coffee. With this new technology, farmers can also deal directly with buyers, cutting out the middleman (exporters, importers, etc.) and, at least theoretically, giving them a larger piece of the profit.

Buyers can also use a mobile app to tip individual farmers and fund projects like planting programs which will help make coffee farms more resistant to climate change.

Moyee isn’t the only one working to make the (often lengthy) coffee supply chain more transparent. Last March Starbucks launched a traceability program which outlined coffee’s journey from “bean to cup.” This seemed to be marketing play more than anything, since the company didn’t call out any specifics on how it would use the data to help farmers or ensure more sustainable supply chains.

Nonetheless, the growing number of coffee transparency programs highlights a consumer desire for traceability beyond just the world of food safety (cough, romaine, cough). People want to know more about where their food and drink comes from, and are also seeking out sustainable, ethical products. In response, companies are turning to blockchain to do everything from improving accurate seafood labeling to fighting wine fraud.

But that doesn’t mean blockchain is a magic bullet to fix the entire food system. As traceability startup FoodLogiQ’s Chief Marketing Officer Katy Jones pointed out when we spoke last year, blockchain is only as strong as its weakest link. If the data that goes into tracking, say, a bag of coffee beans isn’t 100 percent accurate at each step of the way, then the integrity of the entire chain is shot.

And giving farmers a slightly better percentage of coffee profit or a few €0.50 tokens will not solve the issues of drought, fluctuating prices, or credit access that plague many coffee growers. But it’s a step in the right direction putting more power in the hands of the growers themselves. As climate change makes coffee more difficult to cultivate, farmers will need a lot more resources and support — unless we end up just making our coffee without the beans in the future.

Hi Fidelity Genetics Raises $8.5M for AI-Driven Plant Breeding

Hi Fidelity Genetics (HFG), which combines sensors, data and artificial intelligence (AI) to improve plant breeding, today announced that it has raised an $8.5 million Series A led by Fall Line Capital and Finistere Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by HFG to $11.5 million.

There are two parts to the HFG system. First, the company inserts proprietary capacitance sensors into the ground that are used to make a 3D statistical model of the roots of individual plants throughout their entire growth cycle. (A heartier, deeper root structure means a healthier plant.) HFG then combines that underground data with other, above ground data such as crop lineage weather, pests, etc. HFG runs all this information through its AI platform, and is able to predict which plants should be cross-bred to create new hybrids that will be more robust and have greater yields in that farm’s particular setting.

Traditionally, finding the right plants to cross-breed is a manual process that is reactionary, happening after plants have survived drought conditions or some form of pest. Additionally, most breeding processes rely on trial and error. Spencer Maughan, Co-Founder Hi-Fidelity Genetics and Partner at Finestere Ventures, told me by phone that Hi Fidelity’s massive data-intensive approach allows for a new type of automated, predictive, cross-breeding selection process. “We can predict hybrid outcomes,” he said. HFG doesn’t do the actual cross-breeding of plants, rather it just indicates which plants should be cross-bred. The actual hybridization is farmed out, as it were.

Right now, HFG’s technology works with corn. The company has been conducting tests for the past three years and will go into its first trial in North America in 2019. Its primary business will be selling hybrid corn seed bred for particular situations such as specific region’s soil makeup or drought conditions. HFG currently offers four varietals of organic and non-organic seeds but will eventually get its catalog up to around 40 hybrid seeds. Maughan also said that the company will explore monetizing its AI platform as some kind of SaaS offering for other breeding organizations.

Data is playing an increasingly important role across agriculture as sensor companies like Arable and Teralytic provide new insights into the soil conditions for farmers so they can improve how they grow crops. Hi Fidelity is now looking to use data to change the what type of crop is grown.

Apples to Apples: Agrofresh’s Tech Optimizes Produce Freshness Along the Supply Chain

We’re deep in the swing of apple season, and at least in the U.S. there’s one apple to rule them all: the Honeycrisp. Delicious to eat and tricky to cultivate, it’s so popular that farmers are having to pull less popular apple varietals (sorry, Red Delicious) to make room for more of the beloved fruit.

Philadelphia-based company Agrofresh has a suite of technologies which could help farmers growing Honeycrisp and other apple varieties reduce risk, optimize their products’ journey along the supply chain, and reduce food waste. Called FreshCloud, the service covers fresh produce from just after its picked through its transit to retail.

There are three main technologies under the FreshCloud umbrella. The first is predictive screening, which examines apple samples on a genetic level to test for produce disorders. To use it producers will send in a physical sample of their apples to Agrofresh’s lab, which will report if the fruit is at high, medium, or low risk for a particular disorder.

After harvest comes storage. The company sends someone to the farmers’ apple-packed warehouses to take an air sample every few weeks, which they analyze to identify potential problems or impending spoilage. “Apples are living, breathing things,” explained Brittany Buchanan, AgroFresh’s FreshCloud Global Business Lead, over the phone. Analyzing their “breath” for different volatile outputs can help clue producers into issues on their farms that might not be evident to the naked eye, or give storage facilities a heads-up that their crop of apples is starting to inch past its prime.

Next up: transit. Agrofresh uses data from bluetooth-enabled sensors in shipping containers to track things like humidity and temperature as produce makes its journey to retail. In terms of consumer-facing food waste, this is the part of the stack which could have the biggest impact.

Traditionally, retailers and restaurants have operated under a First In, First Out policy: food that arrives first, gets sold first. Agrofresh is trying to get companies to take a more specific approach based on the produce, instead. Their monitors can decide which products to ship when, and to what stores, so that produce that was, say, stored at higher heat can be shipped to a closer store for immediate sale. “We’re working to tie inventory management to the ‘story of the fruit,'” said Buchanan. By deciding each shipments’ destination based on its freshness, they can hopefully increase the amount of time fruit stays good on the shelves, and help ripening fruit get sold before it goes bad.

Agrofresh’s storage insights platform.

She didn’t disclose all pricing details, but Buchanan said that predictive screening service cost $500 per sample. That seems like a pretty steep price to pay just to learn if your fruit is at low, high, or medium risk for a specific disorder. But then again, one defect can destroy a producer’s entire crop. Which means that paying a chunk of change to know if they have a problem could be worth it, especially if that farmer has put all their eggs in one (apple) basket.

Other companies are also working to optimize produce longevity. Spoiler Alert has a management platform that helps food producers, distributors, and retailers better manage their inventory. Both Agshift and Walmart’s Eden Technology (plus Zest Labs) also determine food freshness using algorithms in order to divert it to the appropriate retailer. Apeel takes a more hands-on approach, creating an edible coating that, when applied to fruit and veg, can roughly double their shelf life. But Agrofresh has the appeal of offering a full stack of services that covers fresh fruit throughout its journey from farm to fork.

Agrofresh was founded in 1996 and now has over 250 employees. The company has over 3,500 direct customers in over 40 countries (basically, anywhere that grows apples). It also has around 800 patents for their tracking and testing technology. While they chiefly focus on apples, Buchanan told me that Agrofresh also works with other fruits like avocados (yes, a fruit!), cherries, citrus, and bananas.

Up to 50 percent of all fruits and vegetables go bad before they can be eaten. Companies like Agrofresh are helping to tackle this waste at multiple stops along the supply chain. Hopefully, that can help translate into more Honeycrisps — and other apple varieties — for you, and less in the landfill.

Bee Vectoring Technology Uses Bees to Apply Pesticide on Crops

Bees are pretty remarkable creatures (once you get past all that stinging). They pollinate crops, make delicious honey, and if a Toronto-based agtech company has its way, bees will be used to apply pesticides to crops to help ward off disease and increase yields.

The appropriately named Bee Vectoring Technology (BVT) works with commercial beehive operators hired by farms to pollinate crops. BVT installs a dispenser in the hives that holds a patented, all natural and organic fungicide in powder form. As the bees exit the hive, they walk through the powder and carry it to the crops. When the bees land and shake to release pollen from the plant, the fungicide is dropped into the flower where it acts a preventative measure against certain pests.

“It is a biological agent delivering a biological agent,” said Ashish Malik, President and CEO of BVT in a phone interview.

The method isn’t a cure-all, and won’t prevent every type of crop disease.”This is a solution that is best suited for diseases that affect crops through the flower,” said Malik. Right now BVT works with bumblebees to deliver a biopesticide that prevents botrytis, a fungal infection, from growing in strawberries. According to Malik, it takes approximately a hive and half of bumblebees (roughly 200 insects at the hive’s peak) to work an acre of strawberries.

The benefit of the bee delivery system, Malik says, is that farmers can increase their crop yield while minimizing waste. By using bees to apply the biopesticide, farmers don’t have to take a shotgun approach, spraying chemicals across their entire field. Additionally, BVT’s fungicide is naturally derived and needs no water for its application. And according to Malik, the good news for the bees is that the biopesticide BVT developed does not harm the insects or impact their honey.

BVT is currently piloting a program at a strawberry farm in Florida, and has run tests in other parts of the world. It is in the R&D phase to expand their work into protection for other types of berries, and treatment from other types of pests. The company is going through the regulatory process to get approval for its patented biopesticide, which Malik says should happen in six months.

Founded in 2012 BVT is currently “pre-revenue,” which is something you hear quite a bit when covering startups. But what you don’t hear as often is that the company already went public in 2015. BVT is listed on the Toronto stock exchange. It’s not like the company has a huge burn rate, as it has less than 10 people working at the company. When it does start generating revenue, BVT will use a service model where they will charge a fixed amount per acre of land for the whole season, and Malik said it will be priced competitively to the chemical programs currently being used.

BVT’s animalistic, earth-friendly approach to pesticide application reminds me of BioFiltro, which uses thousands of worms to filter wastewater on farms. And it seems like there’s some kind of partnership opportunity with Nectar, which helps beekeepers better manage their hives (you know, because bee populations are dying off).

Perhaps BVT can generate enough buzz to build its business, and maybe its business can save some bees.

IBM AgroPad Combines Paper, AI and the Cloud to Analyze Soil and Water

IBM unveiled its new AgroPad yesterday, which uses a combination of paper, artificial intelligence and cloud computing to help farmers easily test for acidity levels and concentrations of various chemicals in their soil and water.

What’s interesting about IBM’s approach is the combination of low + high tech. Here’s a description about how AgroPad works from the IBM announcement blog post:

A drop of water or soil sample is placed on the AgroPad, which is a paper device about the size of a business card. The microfluidics chip inside the card performs on-the-spot a chemical analysis of the sample, providing results in less than 10 seconds.

The set of circles on the back of the card provide colorimetric test results; the color of each circle represents the amount of a particular chemical in the sample. Using a smartphone, the farmer would then take a single snapshot of the AgroPad by using a dedicated mobile application and immediately receives a chemical test result.

AgroPad can measure pH, nitrogen dioxide, aluminum, magnesium and chlorine levels in samples. With this data, farmers can better understand their farmland and make adjustments to where and how they fertilize.

For the artificial intelligence nerds out there, what’s interesting is that the AI is actually running on the mobile phone. After the picture of the AgroPad is taken, the analysis happens on the device itself — not back up in the cloud. The computer vision in the software can precisely analyze the color composition and intensity better than the human eye to deliver instant results.

For the cloud computing nerds out there, each AgroPad test paper has a unique QR code. When a farmer takes a photo of the test paper, AgroPad attaches the phone’s GPS data, as well as the timestamp when the photo was taken, to the specific sample. When multiple tests with all this meta-data are uploaded into the cloud IBM stitches together all the findings to create a data-rich map of an entire farm.

As the global population increases, optimizing and maximizing farm output will be even more important. As such, there are a lot of companies working on technology to make farms more efficient and productive. Big Blue already faces a lot of competition just in the soil analysis space from a number of startups already going to market. Teralytic makes in-ground sensors that monitor pH, nitrogen and potassium. Arable‘s own sensors measure moisture, solar radiation and plant health. And CropX‘s screw-in sensors measure soil moisture and salinity.

I asked Mathias Steiner, Manager, Industrial Technology & Science, IBM Research in Brazil, how a manual process like AgroPad’s (physically going and taking samples) will be able to compete with theses sensor companies. He told me that AgroPad’s chemical indicators are not available as an electronic sensor. Presumably, AgroPad could find a market because unlike sensors, the tiny pieces of paper can’t be stolen and won’t break down. Additionally, it’s a safe bet that IBM could more easily customize AgroPad for different farms by offering different chemical analysis.

Right now, AgroPad is still in the prototype phase. Steiner said the company is looking to team up with an industrial-sized partner for expanded tests.