Easy-to-use AI for agriculture

A new AI-powered platform is helping farmers adopt precision agriculture to bring down costs and environmental impacts

Spotted: Many farmers are eager to transition to more sustainable farming methods, but don’t know where to begin. One place might be to access more information about plant health. Having a detailed and granular insight into plant health can help farmers know exactly how much fertilisers, growth regulators, water, and pesticides to use. This, in turn, can reduce waste and the unnecessary use of chemicals.

Aiding farmers in this is startup PerPlant and its Jarvis platform, which relies on high-definition cameras attached to existing farm sprayers. The system uses artificial intelligence (AI) to process the images and generate real-time solutions for spraying in just the right amounts and only where it is really needed.

According to the company, one of the big advantages of its Jarvis system is its ability to monitor plants with centimetre-level precision. PerPlant argues that this selectivity can increase yield by up to 10 per cent and reduce the use of pesticides and fertilisers by as much as 80 per cent. The company also collects data from external sources, including soil information and satellite data on the history of the field and yields over time.

Founded just last year, PerPlant hopes to offer farmers an entry point into precision farming with straightforward tools that can be easily integrated into their existing workflows. The startup has recently completed a $670,000 (around €631,000) pre-seed funding round headed by VCs Foortprint Firm and Antler.

PerPlant joins a host of other innovators in working to make agriculture more sustainable. Some of the developments in this space spotted in the Springwise database include using AI and robots to deter pests and protecting crops with microorganisms.

Written By: Lisa Magloff