No technology is smart enough to control the weather. According to research from IBM, weather is to blame for 90 percent of the world’s crop losses, and an estimated one-quarter of those losses from disease and infestation could be prevented through more accurate weather-predicting models.
That’s why the Israeli startup Taranis was accepted the predigious Microsoft Ventures accelator, and has now completed a $2 million funding round. Taranis’ system combines big-data meteorological analytics with real-time observations input by the farmer via a mobile app to determine optimum preventive measures against weather-related disease and pest infestation.
Israel’s pear growers served as the test group, proving Taranis 97 percent accurate. This model is now being adapted for pear and apple farmers in the states of Washington and Michigan, and another model for almond farmers in Australia. The young company also has customers in southern Russia, Africa and Brazil.
“Brazil is our main target market because it’s one of the biggest agricultural markets after the US, China and India,” COO and cofounder Ayal Karmi told ISRAEL21c. “We think it’s the right time to introduce them to our technology.”
We take our own meteorological data including satellite images, and combine them with off-the-shelf sensors we put in the fields. Our app asks you questions as you walk through the field daily. All this goes into trying to predict occurrences before they happen, to save money on water, insecticides and other chemicals. Using these substances preventatively costs about a fifth of using them after the diseases happen because you can use so much less.
The four Taranis cofounders saw an unmet need for applying weather analysis to preventing crop disease and insect infestation.
“This is a complicated niche to predict,” says Karmi. “We have a team with PhDs in the relevant areas, a unique combination of R&D and software developers.”
CEO Ofir Schlam is former R&D manager in the Prime Minister’s Office and comes from a family of farmers. CTO Eli Bukchin invented meteorological systems for the Israel Defense Forces. Asaf Horvitz, the company’s software architect, has 20 years of experience as a senior software engineer. Karmi, a former product manager, previously developed anomaly-detection algorithms for the Bank of Israel.
“Our main enabler is our weather model that is very granular and can calculate weather precisely within a one-and-a-half-kilometer area,” said Karmi. “We try to predict, for example, leaf wetness, which you won’t get on a regular forecast. We take all these data sources and our system adapts and learns from the actual sightings by the farmers reporting through the app. So the system becomes very individualized.”
The system also alerts the farmer to upcoming severe conditions like frost, hail, storms, drought or heavy precipitation, and sends actionable insights to the farmer’s smartphone
Karmi says Taranis could be used on any type of farm, but is mainly intended for commodities crops such as corn, soy, wheat, and cotton.
(via Israel21c)
[Photo: James Watkins / Flickr ]