The "Flying Agronomist" at the Service of Agriculture

Farming is a profession for dedicated visionaries, people whose love of the land leads them into a very challenging path — any change in the weather, an extreme drought or flood, a fire or war, or just an unknown pest — can destroy an entire season's harvest. Therefore, any technological innovation that can help farmers to better manage their farmland can make the difference between failure and success.

Simcha Shore, the entrepreneur of a promising Israeli AI-based technology designed to help farmers, is a dedicated visionary on his own. He has developed an advanced agronomic service for agriculture, down to the level of the individual farmer, using remote sensing and a cloud-based artificial intelligence platform.

Shore founded AgroScout, a startup that offers a variety of services to help farmers cope with various agronomic challenges. The AgroScout platform monitors crop development in real-time, and accurately plan processing and manufacturing operations across regions, crops and growers. The platform provides accurate, field-wide pest and disease monitoring down to leaf level. The AI-driven application analyzes images from the field to identify a broad range of pests and diseases. The platform then generates actionable reports for smart treatment, based on accumulated agronomic knowledge.

The AgroScout remote agronomy platform uses a simple, inexpensive, off the shelf drone. The app optimizes flight plans for the most efficient cross-field sampling with high-resolution geo-tagged images from the entire field. The fully autonomous drone can scout 5,000 plants across 50 acres in 20 minutes.

Shore employs professional agronomists who improve, enrich, and refine the knowledge accumulated on the AI application. The platform can identify a broad range of pests and diseases, their spread trends, as well as fertilization, irrigation, and growth problems. It maps the field with various statistical data, and predict expected crop growth.

The love of the land has always been part of Shore's life. He grew up in Rehovot, a small orchards town at that time, while his father worked in the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture. Shore holds a BA in Middle Eastern and Asian studies, and a certificate in information systems analysis and engineering. Later on, he worked as an information systems analyst and technologist is the Israeli Defence forces. He retired from the Defence forces about eight years ago and then was amazed to discover the huge gap between the technology adoption rates in the Defence industry compared to the agriculture world. "Since the world is now being asked to produce more and more food than ever before, with less growing space, I decided to bring the value of technology to agriculture," he says. "Our mission is to create a world where people who grow our food grow more in a more sustainable way so everyone everywhere can be fed".

He raised money from family and friends, and later on the company joined Trendlines incubator, which is located in Misgav, specializes in Agro-tech, and was part of the Innovation Authority's incubator program. At first, AgroScout developed algorithms that identify diseases in potatoes, a common global crop whose diseases are visual. Today, the company develops algorithms adapted to about 20 types of crops, mainly outdoor ones.

Investments from the Kibbutzim (Cooperatives) — the Natural Partner
Shore built a team that began working with researchers and growers in Washington State. Over time, the company attracted significant investors, including Kibbutz Yir'on (cooperative) in northern Israel, Kibbutz Yotvata (cooperative) in the south and Agriline — a trust fund exclusively owned by Vincent Tchenguiz, and several other private investors. AgroScout's headquarters are located in northern Israel in a converted vintage dairy farm in the heart of a multi-generational farming community of kibbutz Yir'on, which made it easy for it to fly a drone and demonstrate the technology to potential customers and investors in the adjacent fields. However, a year later, as the war in Israel broke out, Yir'on was evacuated, and the company temporarily returned to its original location in Trendlines. Today, it employs 20 people.

"This was not possible a decade ago — at that time we needed 200 employees to do what we do today — but innovations in robotics and AI are enabling this revolution," says Shore. The company also holds marketing teams in the US and Brazil. "Israel has excellent agriculture and academy and we love working with them. We learned a lot from the Israeli growers and agronomists, and with this knowledge, we expanded globally. We participate in a program of the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture, which encourages the absorption of innovative technologies in agriculture. In Brazil, we work with some of the largest sugarcane growers in the world, on the scale of millions of acres, and at such sizes our service becomes much more significant."

The AgrouScout application is sold in a SaaS model — and it is usually not sold directly to farmers, but to the world's largest food corporations. "Food corporations try to ensure the quantity and quality of raw materials that arrive at their plants, so they buy our service," explains Shore. "They are the paying customers and the ones that enable farmers to use the platform. Any farmer can buy on-line an off-the-shelf drone, connect to the app and receive our service. We have a mobile app in 20 languages, and it's really an 'agronomist in your pocket.' The drone scans the crops and the farmer receives decision-supporting intelligence."

How is this different from the process that was prevalent before?
"When an agronomist arrives at the field, he sees only a small part of it, and based on that he will make decisions for the entire field, even if the problem does not exist all over the place. If an agronomist recommends pest control by spraying, for example, sprayers are used throughout the field. Using a drone, he can spray in a specific spot, because the drone collects images of the entire field with the specific pest that caused the decision to spray. Early detection of pests and disease gives the grower the upper hand in effective and pinpointed treatment, reducing chemical applications, saving money, improving crop quality and achieving sustainability goals. Using information from satellites, the farmer can identify irrigation/fertilization problems, then treat them, and not lose an entire season's crop. The farmer has to make decisions about purchasing materials, sowing, planting — and the system supports him in all of them. This way, he can increase the yield per acre, because the management is much more precise and efficient."

A drone can take countless images. How do you choose what it will take?
"We developed a tool to help fly the drone, which directs it to reach certain areas in the field where agronomic issues exist, and the farmer can choose between different programs for different needs throughout the season. There is also the option for the drone to take a peek or take in-depth photos. The farmer uploads the data to the cloud, and receives a detailed field map — how many plants have grown, crop forecast, pests data, fertilization and irrigation requirements, and other information. The system uses all data collected from the drone, the farmer's mobile, weather data and satellite imagery."

And the vision for the future?
"An agronomist is a limited resource. That is why we are engaged in making the best Israeli agricultural and agronomic knowledge accessible to every farmer in the world and to every acre on earth — the future is 'precision agriculture' and we want to play a very significant part in it."

AgroScout
Year of establishment: 2017.
Founder: Simcha Shore.
Field of activity: Agro-Tech (advanced agricultural technologies).
Leading motto: To bring the state of the art Israeli agricultural knowledge and technology to every acre on earth.

Contact>>

In Association with AgroScout