you think about the food and agriculture
sector it's the largest industry in the
world over a trillion dollars of food is
produced every year every region has
different challenges but there's some
commonalities that we see across the
world with this efficient use of water
still is a really important part of
getting the growing of crops right too
much water is actually a bad thing if
you can measure the soil and soil
moisture can you make better decisions
around irrigation management the answer
to that not surprisingly is yes feeding
the world is no small task and over the
next few decades farmers are really
going to have their work cut out for
them crop yields are expected to drop
significantly especially across the
United States there are startups like
crop X that are promising sensors and
satellites that'll save time and money
and water but the real question is how
much and will the farming industry which
has been notoriously Stu stubborn be
willing to try something
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new to see copex in action we visited a
farm in North Ben Nebraska to see what a
farmer adopting the technology might be
in
for propex is a platform that combines
software hardware and a whole range of
Analytics this is everything from
tracking crops remotely from space
providing unique sensors that go
underground and above the crop canopy to
make a complete picture for farmers and
also for the food processing companies
that uh work with farmers in their
supply
chains it began with a focus on
improving Water Irrigation management
you know there's thousands of sensors
all over the world delivering irrigation
recommendations so here with me today
I'm holding the copex soil moisture
sensor it is a three sensor moisture
probe collecting soil moisture
temperature and EC data at three
specific depths beneath the soil profile
that tells us as Farmers when to
irrigate and when not to irrigate but
will also tell us how much to irrigate
for each specific
field it's an important one to get right
there's a lot of savings in terms of
doing it well both for the environment
and costs but irrigations are only one
of the things they do the EC
measurements translate into nitrogen
readings which can tell us how much
nitrogen leeching there is occurring
through the soil profile this helps us
become more efficient with our nitrogen
applications so that we're applying our
fertilizer needs when the crop is
utilizing it the most we are now on
millions of acres of land across the
world when you multiply out the effect
that we have the numbers are almost
mind-blowing we're able to for example
save more water than is consumed by all
the households in a city of a million
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people crop X's Chief sustainability
officer Bridget Hawkins says that
sustainability isn't just some box to
check for good
PR it's essential to the strength of any
business and not for nothing it saves
money in the long run you know as a
business fundamentally you need to be
Prof Prof able because you don't stay in
business if you're not however part of
what makes you profitable is having
customers that value what you do and
having investors that are prepared to
back your vision and your pathway and
more and more those quality customers
and investors are looking for businesses
that value sustainability and act on it
we shown a multiple trials that by using
cobic as irrigation management you can
save 20 to 30% of the water compared to
what was used before we were easily able
to see two to three irrigation
application savings per year which here
in Nebraska that translates to an
average of around $1,200 per application
plus see an increase on yield
productivity of around 10 to
15% precise insights like these might
become more crucial with an
unpredictable
future company like copex and its
competitors including agrible cultiva
and prospera hope to make that future a
little less jarring for farmers and of
course help them reap profits along with
their
crops if the trends that we see continue
you know weather patterns are
fundamentally changing we will see much
hotter and drier conditions we will see
you know massive weather events that
cause flooding those might be the
extreme but as you come away from the
extremes it still means a lot more
variability and
volatility we want to be able to scale
in a way that more and more users can
access the value of crop EXs the
quickest way to do that is to have a
product that can easily scale itself
it's got to be simple easy to install
easy to use Easy to connect up it needs
to work anywhere in the
world we also have what we call the C X
Telemetry device or Gateway that is
integrated with a suite of several
different types of sensors and within
just a couple of minutes we can be up
and running and having rain being
recorded at our specific field
location and yet copex is still working
in an age-old industry that's known for
not changing much over the last 10,000
years or so investors have have an
expectation of a return and the
challenge for EG Tech is it's slow the
adoption rate is slow you're working
with a seasonal market and so having
investors who understand that is very
important and farmers and Growers if
it's expensive very difficult to use
breakes and no one's there to fix it
that's not particularly appealing and so
for CICS we want to break that Paradigm
we need to address those things front
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