The American Seed Trade Association held its annual CSS & Seed Expo event this past week in Chicago, IL. The event is the nation’s largest Seed Industry Conference, hosting over 3,000 participants from across the globe. The conference is a great opportunity for those in the seed industry to network, learn about new innovations, and make business deals that will set the tone for the coming year.
Numerous exciting innovations were presented during the Ag Tech Innovations showcase including those from Granular and SlantRange. Both presented advancements in satellite and aerial imagery analytics that provide near real time updates of a farm’s health.
Granular is a division of Corteva Agriscience based in Johnston, Iowa and brings together West coast software engineers with a 90 year old Agronomy company based in the Midwest. The Granular Insights program combines financial data with agronomics to help inform decision making to maximize a farm’s profitability. During the Ag Tech Innovations showcase, Granular presented their new tool available to farmers called Directed Scouting. The tool combines high resolution satellite imagery to compare trends in a fields growth from emergence through harvest. The tool is useful for identifying issues related to anything from mechanical failures during planting, to fertility concerns or irrigation problems. Anything that can affect a field’s growth can be mapped out in an easy to interpret heat map, which directs a farmer to take a closer look at a region of the field. This is particularly useful for farmers or farm mangers with larger operations and finite time available for field scouting. With this tool, time can be allocated to only the fields needing attention. For more information on this new tool visit: https://granular.ag/granular-insights/
SlantRange is a San Diego, California company made up of Aerospace Engineers, Imaging Sensor Specialists, and Software developers. With decades of experience and multiple patents, you can rest assured this company has the know how to build cutting edge imaging devices. Ranging from $4,950 – $5,750, the SlantRange sensors mount to most any larger format drones and put the image capture process directly in the hands of the farmer. Their software platform, SlantView, promise to provide “Smarter Analytics for Crop Measurement”. Reporting includes information such as Plant Population and Weed Density, as well as plant health projections including Chlorophyll Index and Yield Potential. For more information relating to this technology, visit their website here: https://slantrange.com/product-analytics/
Seed Expo 2019 did not disappoint, and we’re excited about the future of agriculture technology. Farmers are looking at every opportunity to improve profit margins, and companies like Granular and SlantRange are creating tools to help them do just that.