COVID-19 has sent waves of disruption all over the world affecting the lives of people in many ways. Supply chains have been disrupted thereby leaving an impact on the supply of essentials. Talking about the startup ecosystem, activities across startups were down drastically and business growth estimations are uncertain due to the economic recession caused by the pandemic.
However, agritech startups are constantly trying to succeed through the pandemic despite the challenges in the industry as the demand for food never ceases. New technologies and their adoption by EU farmers are key drivers in maintaining European agriculture competitive in a global world. At the same time, many agritech startups have managed to thrive through the casualties faced during the tough time of the crisis with the adoption of technology and intelligence.
These intelligent startups have come up with solutions related to farming and agriculture to tackle the COVID-19 on the agriculture industry. And, here we have selected some of these European agritech startups that are rising to the challenge and coming up with creative offerings.
Agrimetrics (London)
Founder/s: David Flanders, Richard Tiffin
Founded year: 2015
Funding: NA
The Reading-based agritech startup Agrimetrics claims that the COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of the global food system. The startup aims to improve the access to and integrability of data that is used by the agri-food sector.
Recently, Agrimetrics partnered with Aerospace giant Airbus to address the challenges in the food and farming sector with AI and satellite data. With Artificial Intelligence that is trained to analyse satellite imagery and Agrimetrics data, they can calculate water soil balance and plant water stress. This will help users develop accurate estimations of water balance in fields and decide when and where to irrigate.
Wefarm (UK)
Founder/s: Kenny Ewan
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €20.9 million
London-based WeFarm helps millions of farmers all over the world as they are crucial to the food supply chain. The agritech startup focuses on small-holdings farms and lets members text their queries. With Artificial Intelligence, it answers these questions and serves their needs.
WeFarm is an SMS-based social networking farm that is unique. It is the best way to reach farmers across the world sans internet access. During the pandemic outbreak, there is an increase in the demand for these farming inputs, especially in markets with limited movement.
Lettus Grow (UK)
Founder/s: Ben Crowther, Charlie Guy, Jack Farmer
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €4.1 million
Agritech startup Lettus Grow fast-tracks the building of two vertical farm models in Bristol in an attempt to help feed communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the firms started producing produce from mid-April and the other larger module will take place sometime in June.
Given that most of the operations of these vertical farms are automated, they can be run with just one person on-site at a time, thereby adhering to the social distancing norms during the COVID-19 outbreak. Eventually, food is produced with just a few people and these vertical farming modules can be deployed in any place with water supply and electricity.
Naïo Technologies (France)
Founder/s: Aymeric Barthes, Gaëtan Séverac
Founded year: 2011
Funding: €19.9 million
Naïo Technologies, a French agritech startup is running its ‘Dino’ autonomous vegetable weeding robot in California. It is deployed on farms in several regions in California. Dino robot is designed to make vegetable weeding on large-scale vegetable farms easier. It works autonomously, thereby leaving more time for tasks.
Dino is touted to be the first completely autonomous electric robot to weed vegetable crops mechanically. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the robot can carry out work autonomously and help farmers follow social distancing norms without compromising on the safety of workers and farmers.
Plantix (Germany)
Founder/s: Simone Strey, Robert Strey, Pierre Munzel, Charlotte Schumann, Alexander Kennepohl, Bianca Kummer, Korbinian Hartberger
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €12.2 million
Plantix tackles the issue of crop failure all over the world and helps increase yields. With its free app, users can take photos of their infected crop that are processed by its AI-driven image recognition software. The mobile app developed by PEAT diagnoses pest damage, nutrient deficiencies, and plant diseases and provides relative treatment measures. The mobile app offers farmers to receive support directly to their smartphones.
This Berlin-based startup secured €6.6 million Series A funding in late 2019 from RTP Global, Piton Capital and existing investors such as Index Ventures and Atlantic Labs. This fresh capital is claimed to be used to improve its AI-driven solution and providing a digital way to automate the diagnosis of plant diseases. It is already helping nearly one million farmers in India and is all set to expand into Vietnam and Indonesia.
If there are any other agritech startups in Europe that help resolve the impact caused by COVID-19 that we have missed, do let us know via comments.
Main image picture credits: Lettus Grow
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