[Disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent company AgFunder is an investor in Fieldin.]
Digital ag company Fieldin has joined forces with ARAG, a major player in the precision spraying space. The two entities aim to boost adoption rates of precision spraying amongst US-based permanent crop growers, which is comparatively low with other parts of the world, according to Fieldin.
While numbers for overall precision agriculture adoption in the US put the number around 26%, Fieldin cofounder and COO Iftach Birger says that number drops to about 10% when looking specifically at West Coast permanent crop growers using precision spraying technologies. This is compared to a 90% adoption rates in parts of Australia, where Fieldin also operates.
“Spraying is a very complicated activity and the methods for doing it are very old fashioned,” he tells AgFunderNews. “With this partnership, we are making precision spraying technology seamless and accessible for growers bringing spray data from the cockpit to the farms’ dashboards and driving actionable insights.”
Fieldin, founded in 2013 in Haifa, Israel, installs sensors on tractors and farm implementations to measure the performance of spraying and harvesting tasks. It feeds that data into the cloud, where its AgOS software then provides growers with recommendations on farm-management decisions.
The partnership with ARAG—which was acquired by Nordson Corporation in 2023—allows Fieldin to introduce precision spraying to farmers at a lower barrier to entry for them, says Birger.
“We see ARAG as the leader of precision on the edge. We are leading on the software side and how to implement that.”
Precision Ag Solutions (PAS), a major supplier of advanced spray technologies in California’s Central Valley, is also involved in the project as an ARAG distributor.
‘Data-driven spraying’
Right. now, says Birger, farmers spend huge amounts on spraying, and each mistake is costly. This is at a time when costs are rising for permanent crop growers, including costs for chemical pesticides and herbicides.
The partnership aims to ensure it’s easier for farmers to transition to “data-driven spraying” that leads to better coverage, less waste of resources, and more targeted application of chemicals.
While the partnership will eventually encompass all aspects of precision spraying, to provide a low barrier to entry for growers, it will start out simply offering a tool for measuring flow data, which tracks the volume of chemicals being applied per acre on a farm.
Sprayers have to be calibrated to ensure they are actually delivering the proper amount of chemicals and not over- or under-applying them.
“We are basically helping growers to reduce their calibration time, because now they can calibrate remotely and they don’t need to be in the field all the time,” Birger explains.
For example, a drop in pressure in the spray tank could impact the amount of coverage going to trees. Data from Fieldin’s sensors can detect this, allowing growers to immediately know and address the issue.
Further out, the combination of ARAG’s hardware with Fieldin’s software will address other areas of precision spraying such as variable rate application.
“What Fieldin has done with this partnership is basically help growers start to utilize [precision spraying] technologies,” he says.
“We are only in the beginning,” he adds, “but we believe there’s going to be a big change in the way this part of the operation will be in the future.”
