CropX Helps Growing More with Less Water

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CropX Helps Growing More with Less Water

Agriculture analytics startup CropX has developed a solution to help farmers optimize irrigation while keeping water usage to a minimum 

CropX uses a combination of three wireless sensors and a mobile app, which founder Isaac Bentwich calls the “Internet of Soil,” to determine exactly how much water needs to be applied to each part of the field.

“At the moment, there’s a huge, glaring omission within the whole of agriculture — virtually all agriculture systems irrigate land uniformly. Even the most advanced technology always treats land as though it was uniform,” says Bentwich.

It’s not — in a square-mile field, soil quality can vary widely, Bentwich explains. To solve this problem, CropX does a one-time analysis of each field, using publicly available data about the soil type and topography, and divides the land into irrigation zones.

CropX ships farmers three sensors, and the mobile app shows precisely where in the field to place them. The sensors, which are battery powered and last up to four years, send soil data to the cloud, and the app calculates the amount of water necessary to produce the maximum yield in each irrigation zone.

CropX is currently being used to power irrigation in 5,000 acres across a small number of farms in Missouri, Colorado and Kansas. With $9 million in Series A funding led by Finistere Ventures, Innovation Endeavors and GreenSoil Investments, they’ll be expanding their reach across the country.

According to Bentwich, farmers using CropX have reported water and energy savings of up to 25 percent. They’re also able to prevent over-watering, which not only damages crops but can cause chemical run-off that is damaging to the surrounding environment.

Crop yield enhancement is a $2.5 trillion market, but according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 90 percent of farmers currently don’t use anything to optimize irrigation.

Source: Tech Crunch

 

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