PHOTO: HUGO CLAVER
The platform is to harness in-field, crowdsourced and academic data, as well as data contributed from leading global partners.
crops, monitoring individual health and ad- justing targeted interventions according to a crop’s individual needs.
Yamaha invests in
strawberry picking robot NORTH AMERICA
Advanced Farm Technologies (AFT), located in California, has received a US$ 7.5 million in- vestment from investors in a Series A funding round, led by Yamaha Motor Ventures & Labo- ratory Silicon Valley. “Finding and supporting
technology teams working to solve the chal- lenges inherent in harvesting and delivering fresh food to the dynamic market of today and tomorrow, is an area of investment interest for Yamaha Motor,” said George Kellerman, CEO and Managing Director. “We are excited and humbled to have Yamaha, a leader of global innovation and technology, support our mission of building a diversified farm equipment company centreed around automation,” said Marc Grossman, CEO of AFC. His company is a developer of robotic farming equipment that includes the T-6 robotic straw- berry harvester. “With this investment, we can expand our lead in robotic strawberry harvest- ing and continue to innovate in other areas.”
Brazilian ag tech boom
brings 1,125 start-ups SOUTH AMERICA
Brazil by now has 1,125 ag tech companies, according to the study ‘Radar Ag techs Brasil
2019’. Several factors have contributed to this ag tech boom. Firstly, the FAO forecasts that the world demand for food between 2010 and 2050 will increase by 70%, and this trend is al- ready reflecting on international trade. Sec- ondly, Brazil is a ‘natural’ provider of agricultur- al goods because of its large resources and its climate, and, moreover, its farming know-how. Finally, Brazilian agribusiness is attracting spe- cial attention from entrepreneurs, researchers, investors and ag tech companies aiming to make a digital transformation towards the fu- ture. As a consequence, despite the unstable domestic economy, Brazil´s agribusiness sector is keeping a ‘Chinese pace’ of growing since the 1970´s. The Radar study helps to under- stand at what level ag tech currently is in the country, and which solutions it has provided. Ag tech start-ups received US$ 80 million in in- vestments in 2018, against US$ 20 million in 2017. 18% of the Brazilian ag tech companies are classified as ‘pre farm’ (inputs), 35% as ‘at farm’ and 47% as ‘after farm’.
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