Investment firm Lightsmith Group has led a $60 million (€57.11 million) investment in the Brazilian AgriTech company Solinftec.
Credit: Mark Stebnicki / Pexels
Solinftec’s mission is to build technology to “create responsible agriculture for the future of the planet.” They plan to do this by using AI to facilitate data collection on every front: from field management to logistics, to operations – so that the agriculture process can be streamlined.
According to Solinftec, its AI programme, Alice, holds the largest agriculture library in the world, with half a billion pieces of data collected from the field every day. Data is received in real-time, 24 hours a day, and 27 million acres can be managed at any given time, from plant to plant.
So far Solinftec’s technology is in high demand: it is employed in 11 countries across the world, including China and the United States, and manages nine million acres in real-time. The company, which was founded in 2007, also operates 80% of the sugarcane operations in Brazil.
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Part of its success derives from the company’s major gains in sustainability. By using its technology, Solinftec boasts, there is a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions equal to “50 million trees planted, 60k soccer fields reforested or 1 million electric cars”.
In March, at the American World AgriTech Summit in San Francisco, Solinftec also announced a collaboration with Growmark that would bring a new AgriTech robot to the market. The robot will autonomously drive around fields, checking for plant nutrients, health, pests and weeds.
Solinftec’s AI expansion is part of a larger growth pattern, as an increasing number of robots, drones and artificial intelligence are being deployed globally to work on farms. Agriculturists are grappling with how to make enough food for a growing global population – which is set to increase to around 10 billion by 2050 – while also working towards climate goals.
Not only is there an augmenting issue with food scarcity, but there is a deficit of an available, young, workforce too. According to TechCrunch, the average age of an American farmer is around 58 years old, while farm labour in the US remains in short supply. In India, millions of people, are exiting the labour force completely, while young people around the world are moving from their rural communities to pursue new opportunities in the city – leaving farming work to ageing relatives.
Then, while resources are becoming ever-more scarce, food has also become a cheaper commodity. Farmers must now produce higher yields with lower profit margins, which is where AI and other similar technologies can help.
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However, AI farming is not all good news. A July 2021 paper published by agricultural economist Thomas Daum laid out two visions of an agricultural future using new technologies: the piece was called ‘Farm Robots: ecological utopia or dystopia?’
Cambridge University’s Asaf Tzachor added to Daum's concerns in a February 2022 paper, where he warned that the issues around using AI should not be ignored, citing a catalogue of risks, such as destabilising ecosystems, that need to be considered as a science as agriculture becomes ever-more mechanical.
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