Efita Newsletter 1060, dated October 17, 2022

FutureFarming.com

> Artificial intelligence to command autonomous John Deere machinery
Brazilian start-up FieldPRO is developing artificial intelligence that uses environmental data to send commands to autonomous John Deere machines.

> Storage technology: Good vibrations – Drying grain with radio waves
For Minnesota-based company Dry Max Solutions, radio waves offer an alternative method for drying grain free of both petroleum expenses and heat.

> Satellite imagery: DataFarming aims to offer growers cheap and easy access to satellite imagery
DataFarming has developed a web application that delivers satellite imagery to any farmer in the world.

> Harvesting robots: Strawberry-picking robot uses ultra violet light to control funguses
Australian company BSC Electronics in Perth has developed a strawberry-picking robot, that uses ultraviolet light to control funguses on strawberries, reducing the need to use fungicides.

> Expert opinion: Will technology to develop sustainable IPM systems reduce agrochemical dependence?
Will new ag tech enable farmers to farm sustainably and concurrently reduce their agrochemical dependence?

> Small electric tractor developed by Keestrack
Belgian machinery manufacturer Keestrack developed an electric tractor. The Keestrack B1e offers a rated power of 54 hp (40 kW) and a maximum power of 87 hp (64 kW).

> Expert opinion: How new technology can help farmers survive increasing droughts
Drought conditions are expected to continue, and along with them the pressure on growers to conserve, report, and adapt.

> GPS: John Deere Autopath improves accuracy of GPS lines between operations
John Deere AutoPath allows an additional GPS receiver on an implement to automatically create GPS lines for the next operation.

> Storage technology: Good vibrations – Drying grain with radio waves
For Minnesota-based company Dry Max Solutions, radio waves offer an alternative method for drying grain free of both petroleum expenses and heat.

> Autonomous equipment: Artificial intelligence to command autonomous John Deere machinery
Brazilian start-up FieldPRO is developing artificial intelligence that uses environmental data to send commands to autonomous John Deere machines.

See FutureFarming.com

Montagnes à Collioure, par André Derain

03 - 13/10/22

Update: Wild mammals are making a comeback in Europe thanks to conservation efforts

We originally published this article in May 2022. We updated and republished it in September 2022 based on the new 2022 edition of the report.

The European bison, the continent's largest herbivore, was once abundant across the region. But over time, deforestation and hunting caused its numbers to decline dramatically. By the early 20th century the European bison had gone completely extinct in the wild, with only tens of individuals surviving in captivity.

The bison is no outlier, and many other animals have suffered similarly. But it doesn’t have to be this way—and the bison shows it.

The European bison has made an impressive comeback over the last 50 years. Successful conservation efforts have seen their numbers rebound, and Europe is now home to nearly 10,000 of them.

In this article, we look at the change in mammal populations across Europe and find that many species are making a comeback. Once on the brink, iconic animals such as the European bison, Brown bear, and elk are thriving once again.

See ourworldindata.org
13/10/22

Q3 2022 AgTech Venture Capital Investment and Exit Round Up

While AgTech VC investments slowed last quarter, agriculture stood up far better than most industries in terms of overall venture funding.
See globalagtechinitiative.com/

The Inaugural VertiFarm Showcases Next-Level Farming and New Food Systems

The event in Germany highlighted products and approaches for addressing global issues such as security of supply, crop failures, and urban sustainability.
See globalagtechinitiative.com/

Road Among the Olive Trees, by Andre Derain

04 - 13/10/22

Precision Sprayer Company Smart Apply Raises $3.1 Million to Accelerate Adoption

Funding to accelerate sales and manufacturing of its Intelligent Spray Control System in advance of the 2023 growing season.
See globalagtechinitiative.com/

Opinion: AgTech Offers the Labor Upgrade Our Industry Needs

Hands-on fieldwork in agriculture is not going anywhere, but it is due for an upgrade to make the whole industry operate with more efficiently.
See globalagtechinitiative.com/

COVID-19 update

Explore our multimetric views of COVID data: These views allow you to compare multiple metrics across many countries at the same time.

- Cases and deaths
- Cases, tests, positivity rate, and reproduction rate
- Vaccine doses, people vaccinated, and booster doses
- Vaccine doses and deaths
- Vaccine doses, cases, ICU patients, and deaths
- Cases, hospital admissions, ICU patients, and deaths
- Deaths and excess mortality

See ourworldindata.org
13/10/22

Solinftec Celebrates 15 Years in the Ag Tech Space -- But Here's Why the Company Has its Eyes on 2050

The time to start thinking about 2050 is now. Solinftec, a global leader in agricultural digitalization, is doing just that.
See globalagtechinitiative.com/

Sous-bois, par André Derain

05 - 13/10/22

Robots are making French fries faster, better than humans

Fast-food French fries and onion rings are going high-tech, thanks to a company in Southern California.

Miso Robotics Inc in Pasadena has started rolling out its Flippy 2 robot, which automates the process of deep frying potatoes, onions and other foods.

A big robotic arm like those in auto plants - directed by cameras and artificial intelligence - takes frozen French fries and other foods out of a freezer, dips them into hot oil, then deposits the ready-to-serve product into a tray.
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See reuters.com

Moving from at-risk cities because of climate change

01 - 13/10/22

Risk or no risk?

02 - 13/10/22

How John Deere plans to build a world of fully autonomous farming by 2030, CNBC, by Bob Woods

- Deere & Co., well known for its green and yellow tractors, bulldozers and lawnmowers, has spent nearly two decades investing in technology and robotics.

- That has culminated with a fully autonomous version of the 8R farm tractor that does not require someone to be behind the wheel.

- However, while Deere is aiming to push further into other autonomous farm vehicles and other technology-aided advancements, the global fleet of such vehicles is currently less than 50.

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Not surprisingly, Deere’s biggest competitors have been developing automation and autonomy for its farm machinery, too. AGCO, whose brands include Massey Ferguson and Fendt, “has been automating farming operations since the mid-1990s,” said Seth Crawford, senior vice president and general manager of the Duluth, Georgia-based company’s precision agriculture and digital division. “We’re at a stage we call supervised autonomy, where we still have someone in the cab of the machine,” he said. “The buzz is around fully autonomous operations, but where farmers are willing to pay for automation is feature by feature.”

Whereas Deere is focused on adding full autonomy to its own farm equipment, AGCO is eying the wider retrofit market, Crawford said. “In summer 2023, we’ll have a performance-enhancing retrofit kit available for multiple brands of machines,” he said. “Where others say we bring you autonomy with a half-million-dollar tractor,” he said, alluding to the price tag of Deere’s 8R, “we have kits that allow you to do that with your existing fleet. We see a huge opportunity with the installed base, where farmers want to adopt technology to enhance their outcomes, and yet don’t want to flip their entire fleet and make that massive investment.”

In 2016, Case IH, a subsidiary of CNH Industrial, headquartered in London, rolled up to the Farm Progress Show with what it called the Autonomous Concept Vehicle. The sleek prototype tractor, minus a driver’s cab, hinted at the view of autonomy at the time. Fast forward six years, to September’s Farm Progress Show, where Case IH unveiled its Trident 5550 autonomous applicator.

The Trident 5550 is designed for spreading materials in farm fields. Retrofitted with autonomous technology developed by Raven Industries, which CNH acquired for $2.1 billion in June 2021, the enhanced Trident employs self-driving, advanced cameras and AI to interpret a continuous stream of images to detect obstacles.

Released in 2017, the Trident 5550 — with a cab — is designed for spreading dry and liquid materials in farm fields. The model at the farm show was retrofitted with autonomous technology developed by Raven Industries, which CNH acquired for $2.1 billion in June 2021. Similar to Deere’s autonomous 8R, the enhanced Trident employs self-driving capability, advanced cameras and AI to interpret a continuous stream of images to detect obstacles.

The company plans to have a limited number of the machines ready for farmers to test before going to market perhaps next year, said Chris Dempsey, global director at Case IH Precision Technology, though the exact release date is to be determined. “We want to get customer feedback and understand their confidence level [in autonomy] before we go commercial,” he said.
See cnbc.com

Meet the founder: How Doaa Abdel Hameed pivoted her food delivery startup to a “super-app”, AFN, by Lucy Ngige

“There comes a time where the path of your career life has to change.”

Doaa Abdel Hameed was working in people and operations management in the food delivery industry when she and her co-founders saw a gap in the market for a single app to deliver multiple but closely related services to customers. Personally she also felt it was time to make the next step in her career, too.

Earlier this year, she cofounded Bonbell, which began as an app for food ordering and delivery with the intention to eventually branch out into those other services.

So far, Egypt-based Bonbell has worked with 400 merchants and aims to increase that number to 750 by the end of 2022. The company is also now creating a “super-app” to serve clients in different locations like sports clubs, universities, hotels, and corporate buildings. Merchants on the platform offering services such as food ordering, hotel booking, cinema booking, and more can either pay subscription fees or a commission to Bonbell according to their preference.

Bonbell has already raised $550,000, including a round this summer secured from a Canadian angel investor.

AFN spoke to Hameed (DH) about her vision for building a multi-service app to serve clients not just in North Africa, but the wider MENA region and Asian markets where the team is conducting research.
See agfundernews.com

Stormy weather: more and more storms, tropical cyclones...

03 - 13/10/22

Costly hurricanes

04 - 13/10/22

After billions in investment, plant-based meat is a branding catastrophe, AFN, by guest contributor: Adam Hanft

Radical innovation can be its own brand.

For a while. For a minute.

If you’re selling a revolutionary capsule that transports you anywhere in the world, in 30 seconds, you don’t need to say more than that.

It’s what I call the “Declarative Moment.” A simple statement of being.

But soon, 15 companies will be marketing that capsule. You’ll need to differentiate.

Your box is more accurate, for instance. It can bring you precisely to the restaurant you want in Paris, not plop you a mile away.

It does less damage to your immune system.

It comes with discounts at the Ritz.

You get the idea.

That has been the history of technological innovation. Take the initial advertising for the telephone – focused on the simple ability to make calls.

It didn’t take long, though, for the Northern Electric Company, and others, to start marketing product distinction. Rapid and inevitable maturity.

The same pattern applies to the ongoing evolution of voice transmission: the cell phone. At the beginning, it was the basic “The Future Is Here” strategy.

We’ve come a long way, obviously, as Apple and Samsung fight it out over a combination of brand perception and features.

That brief expedition through the inexorable cycles of technology marketing brings us to what you, dear readers of AFN, are most interested in.

The marketing of plant-based foods.

We have long moved past the declarative moment; Beyond Meat launched in 2016 in Whole Foods and announced deals with Dunkin Donuts and McDonalds in 2019 and 2020.

Impossible Foods launched in 2016 with Burger King.

But the market has become crowded and noisy; the novelty has vaporized; and growth has slowed so much that Beyond Meat’s share price has cratered beyond belief, from a high of $109 to around $16 as I write this.

What’s happened? You can debate whether these are truly technological triumphs, but there is no doubt that they are marketing catastrophes.

There is zero differentiation or branding in the space; all the players are stuck in Motorola Land, going no further than saying “we are plant-based.”

This is marketing malpractice – giving plant-forward consumers no reason to consume your soybeans over someone else’s.

Impossible Foods commits the same felony. Interestingly, they are still speaking to vegans who are motivated by the plant provenance. Rather than the broader market – including flexitarians – who want to reduce meat consumption but still lust for hedonic gratification. Those are the

Tyson, who jumped into plant-based when they saw the trend – and didn’t want to become the Kodak of protein and suffer the Innovators Dilemma by clinging to their meat legacy – is also failing to differentiate. They are selling plant-based as a commodity just like the start-ups.

Two smaller companies – Tattooed Chef, who is public and whose stock is also suffering mightily – and No Evil Foods (Disclosure: I am an investor, although I am not exactly boosting them) are also worth noting.
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See agfundernews.com

Trees and Village, c. 1932, by Andre Derain

06 - 13/10/22

Biden Issues Executive Order Promoting Agriculture and Food Biotechnology, by Gregory Jaffe, October 3, 2022

On September 12, 2022, President Biden issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy.” This “National Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Initiative” seeks to advance U.S. biotechnology and biomanufacturing to provide innovative solutions in “health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security.”

Some of its goals are to increase biomanufacturing capacity in the U.S. (hopefully leading to lower drug prices), boost biomass production (which is renewable or recurring biological materials such as plant and tree material and animal and food waste), and educate the next generation of scientists and engineers in bioeconomy disciplines. While much of the Executive Order stresses health, medicine, energy and biological data, there are specific sections that apply to agriculture and food.
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See allianceforscience.cornell.edu

Paysage du Midi, c. 1932, par André Derain (1880-1954)

07 - 13/10/22

"We produce enough food to feed 1.5 times the global population", Thin Ink

But the system is not working for vulnerable communities, says chair of UN Committee on Food Security.

Now, most people outside of the food aid/development bubble wouldn’t have heard of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) but you should because well, it’s dealing with the governance of something that is literally the difference between life and death - the food that nourishes and sustains us.

CFS was established in 1974 as an inter-governmental body and born out of the food crisis in the early 1970s. Its path hasn’t always been smooth and it embarked on an ambitious reform programme after the 2007-2008 food crisis.

It’s still not perfect but it is one of the few global bodies that brings in all stakeholders - civil society, farmer groups, the private sector, governments, financial institutions, UN agencies, academics and researchers - to work on food security issues.

There continue to be debates around its existence and role - see my stories here and here over what civil society saw as attempts to supplant it at last year’s Food Systems Summit - as we grapple with yet another food price crisis amid an ongoing pandemic, conflicts, and climate change.
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I commend the work done by media around the world to raise public awareness on the crisis and hold those of us in leadership accountable.

What I would now like to see more of is greater call for long-term transformation of our food systems to deliver food security, adequate nutrition and healthy diets for all people, while providing decent jobs and incomes to family farmers and food producers.

These diets must be carbon neutral, reverse biodiversity loss, and restore ecosystems. The UN Food Systems Summit convened in 2021 by the UN Secretary-General gave us the momentum for this transformation.
See news.thin-ink.net

Very strong US dollar

05 - 13/10/22

Moving to at-risk cities fromclimate change

06 - 13/10/22

Does open source agtech make sense? Easy Observations, by Nathan Faleide

See easyobservations.substack.com

How Deep Science Ventures aims to build resiliency in tropical agriculture, starting with Costa Rica, AFN, by Jennifer Marston

Tropical regions cover roughly 40% of the earth’s surface and are home to about 40% of the world’s population. Nowadays, these regions also bear some of the worst impacts of climate change in the form of rising temperatures, floods and extreme changes in the weather. All of this affects tropical agriculture, food production, and the livelihoods connected to it.

London-based venture creator Deep Science Ventures (DSV) is in the midst of trying to build more resilient agricultural economies in these regions, starting in Costa Rica.

The firm recently teamed up with Costa Rica’s CRUSA Foundation to launch the Tropical Agriculture & Bioeconomy Initiative (TABI). The national program will create agrifoodtech companies to help push Costa Rica’s economy towards decarbonized, regenerative, and circular bio-economies. The concepts and models designed in this program will ideally be applicable to other tropical regions of the world in the near future.

“The goal has been to figure out how to start companies at Deep Science Ventures, but then to make a landing pad to start bio-economy companies in that wider Latin American region,” Edward Perello, associate director for agriculture at DSV, tells AFN.
.../...
See agfundernews.com

Risk or no risk?

07 - 13/10/22

Stormy weather: more and more storms, tropical cyclones...

08 - 06/10/22

Plant-based proteins are too expensive, Foreign Policy, by Nigel Purvis and Bruce Friedrich
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As the world grows, develops, and warms, our reliance on conventionally produced animal protein increases food prices, makes our food system more vulnerable, and exacerbates climate change. And with demand for meat set to rise inexorably for decades, these external costs will only increase. The growth of renewable energy and the emerging success of electric vehicles have shown that the global economy can transition in ways that spur economic growth, create new jobs, and add choices for consumers. Moreover, as growing demand for electric vehicles makes clear, this transition can happen even in the face of long-standing cultural preferences. With strong domestic leadership and global cooperation, protein innovation can be the next big step that nations take toward a vibrant, secure, and green economy.
See foreignpolicy.com

Le village de Dammarie-en-Montois, ca 1935, par André Derain

08 - 13/10/22