- [Narrator] Digi-Key, Supplyframe,
and Amphenol RF present,
Farm Different, a three-part series about people,
technology, and the challenges of modern agriculture.
- It's the industry that's least penetrated
by technology, by digital technology.
- We understand that Ag is that complex moving system
that the technology has to fit into
and not the other way around.
- Startups come up continuously
and they're one of the best vehicles
to be able to have that large impact.
You can grow from something very small, very genuine,
something with a lot of integrity, to something huge
and that's really impacting all people in the world.
- I think what we'll see a big impact from 5G technology,
autonomous vehicle advancements, robotics, and also AI.
- [Narrator] In our final episode,
we travel virtually around the globe,
to speak with growing agriculture businesses,
and discover how their innovations
using modern technology are accelerating
the digital transformation of farms around the world.
Our journey begins in Australia,
with Stu Adam and Tim Howell,
co-founders of Agronomeye,
a startup that empowers farmers
with highly accurate 3D models,
that allow for critical data backed decisions,
in regards to water management and redevelopment proposals
- At Agronomeye,
we are digitizing agriculture from the ground up.
So what we're doing is we're creating high resolution
3D models of complete farming systems,
that the farmer can look at that farming system,
understand his assets, understand where the water moves,
and then start to build his knowledge
on top of that information to be better at what they do
and be more sustainable and be more efficient.
- We had a concept of using drones to take imagery.
We started looking into the AgSpace
and realized that there's a way
to use the tech that we were using as a tool,
versus just a pretty picture.
And then that just kind of developed to where we are today.
We initially started looking at the crop health stuff
and quickly we realized that there's a bigger picture here,
and that's looking at the underlying asset
and then building models
of the underlying asset, to give a starting point.
So that's kind of how Agronomeye was born, I guess.
- Just waiting for the plane take off,
and get some of that data.
A lot of people in AgTech and building technologies,
think that farmers or growers or managers are just sitting
around waiting for the silver bullet to turn up
and solve all of their problems you know.
Farmers have got a million different things
to consider and do in a day.
They can't be changing the way that they
do things drastically to enable your technology priority.
You've got to be adaptable.
You've got to be malleable.
You've got to understand that Ag is a complex moving system
that technology
has to fit into and not the other way around.
- [Narrator] AgTech startups have received $6.7 billion
in investments over the course of the last five years,
with 1.9 billion in the last year alone,
further solidifying these growing businesses
as the drivers of agriculture's future around the world.
Luke Young and Rory Hornby, the co-founders of Agrisea,
a startup pushing the boundaries of ocean-based farming.
- And for me that moment there was this realization
just how much potential oceans hold,
and they have all the nutrients available,
and space to be able to feed 10 billion people.
It's really a case of how to work with that 'cause then,
moving into our next step is actually planting the ocean
having these ocean farms in place.
And so at the moment, we're working with different ways
of actually manufacturing this field to produce
and these different platforms, these scaffolds,
that hold meshes inside them.
'Cause this is our first foray into business,
as like startup, the first startup.
But we've seen such good response from people
and just showing what we're about
what we want to do,
And people actually really come together to try
and build this out as much as possible.
It's this incredible thing.
- And because these are such big problems,
sort of having that big community,
where you can all tackle it together,
I think it's really important,
especially for problems of climate change,
global warming and all the pressures
that are facing agriculture for the future,
and it's definitely a really good community to be part of.
- [Narrator] Across the globe,
10% of farmers in North America,
are already using soil sensors
in as many as 5 million acres of land,
with promising results.
- With farming, and technology, I mean
it just enhances the productivity, the efficiency
a lot of different factors that farmers
have to take into account.
On the farm, It was kind of hit everything en masse.
If you use fertilizer, it was fertilize everything,
same with pesticides herbicides,
and the efficiencies of that today are so much better.
So it's really been a trend
of going to produce more with much fewer resources,
and really identifying a lot of things today
with sensor data that you couldn't 20 years ago.
- [Narrator] Patrick Henry is the president,
and CEO of GroGuru, a startup
that offers soil sensors to measure everything
from moisture, to temperature, and salinity,
utilizing an AI-based platform that ultimately
takes the guesswork out of optimizing harvests.
- And what we have developed ,
is this wireless underground system.
It's a wireless communication capability,
where we can communicate
through multiple feet of soil, rock, concrete,
whatever.
So this allows us to permanently install
the soil moisture sensors below the till depth,
so farmers can just farm over the top,
and then we give it to the farmer on this very simple,
intuitive farmer-friendly user interface.
If you can help farmers increase crop yield,
or reduce input costs and save water,
those are both really good things,
and there's kind of government mandates
around some of these things.
And if you can do both at the same time
which is what we do, then it's incredibly valuable.
- [Narrator] Mike Comer,
the Director of Business Development
and Product Marketing at Amphenol RF explains
how the company's products play a role
across the smart agriculture ecosystem.
- Many of the connectors
in the IoT space are relatively standard products.
There you'll see threaded connectors like SMA or PNC
or type-N connectors.
The farm environment, or the environment
of an agricultural space,
really requires a more robust product.
A product sealed to IP67,
or beyond that even to meet the needs of that environment.
And over time, as we get more and more feedback,
we can utilize our product management team
to develop new products
and launch into the market to companies like Digi-Key,
who can stock that product,
and feed into those development chains.
(soft music)
- You know, digital transformation
for Digi-Key is really nothing new.
And, being able to take technology sensors,
I've mentioned they've been around for a while,
whether it's proximity,
or ambient light or pressure or sound or position sensors.
And you combine that with some data translation,
A to D or D TO A and some processing,
the next thing you know,
you transmit the signals of our real world
into digital bits that can first be monitored,
and then later can be acted upon.
And we've seen that happen
in touch virtually every industry.
- [Narrator] New approaches to agriculture,
and farming technologies are required
to address the ever-changing nature
of our modern world.
Innovators like these,
combined with willing and able professionals
across the industry will chart a new path forward,
to grow harvest and feed the people of this planet
We call home.
The future of farming begins when we farm different.
(soft music)