Tevel is trialling its tethered drone-based system that can harvest fruit from treetops and carry out other tasks, such as pruning, trimming, and thinning.
The Cape Town-based startup considers itself a farming company enabled by technology, rather than a tech company working in ag, says CEO James Paterson.
The Suzhou-based startup is targeting the 34% of China’s farmland which is in mountainous areas, much of which is dedicated to fruit, nut, and tea cultivation.
Israel’s Tevel has a somewhat sci-fi solution to address the declining availability of human fruit pickers: Flying robots with mechanical claws and AI-powered vision.
The Toronto-based company has pivoted from drones as a core business to offering multi-layer analytics as farmers seek the most bang for their data bucks.
Iowa City’s Rantizo integrates with drones and imaging tech to identify crop protection issues and deliver “precise in-field applications of crop inputs.”
The Guangzhou-based startup offers UAVs for fertilizer and pesticide application, remote sensing, and seeding – and has also branched out into ground-based robots, cameras, and sensors.
“We’re the largest beer company in the world and the largest user of malting barley, so when you think about where investment into breeding research or the supporting tech comes from, if we’re not going to do it, who will?”
From major equipment manufacturers’ forays into robotics to the emergence of new startups looking to improve farmer awareness of field activity, here’s what to watch for in the year ahead in the US, according to experienced agtech entrepreneur Corbett Kull.
Word has been getting around about Aerobotics’ incredible decision support technology for tree crops. Rob Leclerc shares some facts and figures about the startup’s rapid growth to-date.
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