SupPlant, the Leading precision agricultural technology company, partners with Smart Fertilizer Software to create a sensor-less precision plant nutrition platform designed for farmers across the globe and in South Africa. The platform, named GroPlant, will offer farmers of all capabilities access to data and satellite driven information designed to improve water and fertilization efficiency, while taking into consideration weather events.
It will provide recommendations to farmers based on collective data as well as remote sensing inputs. Smart Fertilizer’s one-of-a-kind fertilization algorithm has been built through data collection and machine learning, accumulated through global farmer partnerships, laboratory testing, academic research, and sensor inputs. Smart Fertilizer’s algorithm incorporates 215 crops, 5000 commercial fertilizers and is used across 72 countries. This has been integrated with SupPlant’s irrigation database and knowledge based on expertise in 31 crops grown in 14 countries representing over 2500 accumulative seasons.
This partnership combines 20 years of experience, hardware application and data collection between the two companies, supporting the need for this trail-blazing new platform, Groplant, which will provide scope to empower millions of farmers.
The functionalities of GroPlant include field creation for selection of crops, field area, planting date, irrigation methods and auto geo-location. The software will also provide real-time weather alerts and lead the farmers to apply the appropriate irrigation strategy in response to extreme weather conditions. Alongside this, users will be able to utilize a ‘favorite fertilizers’ selection to create a preset list for ease of use as well as soil specs and nutrients status. Users will also receive periodic reports and irrigation and fertigation schedules.
According to estimations, there are 570 million farms worldwide. 12% of these farms are ‘small’ farms (less than 2 hectares) and 75% of these farms are family owned. 80% of the world’s farms are situated in lower to middle income countries where Africa alone equates for 33 million smallholder farms. Currently, most of these smaller farms located in low-income countries have little access to up-to-date fertilization and irrigation data. Most farmers are still using family methods, which have been passed down generationally, and may therefore not be the economically or environmentally efficient.
Johnathan Kol-Bar, Smart Fertilizer Chairman and CEO, commented: “The development of GroPlant is set to revolutionize and empower smaller, low-income farmers across the world. Together with SupPlant, we have collected a vast amount of fertilization and irrigation data which will now become accessible to millions of farmers at an affordable cost.
GroPlant has the scope to transform the way in which farmers grow their crop, creating a more sustainable process which benefits both the farmer and the environment. It is an invaluable tool for governments who need to ensure they play their role in sustainable agriculture and give support to their growers to achieve this in their country. This has never been done before, and will be the first app of its kind to exist.”
Ori Ben-Ner, SupPlant CEO: “SupPlant’s and Smart Fertilizer’s capabilities to find a unique solution that for the first time is intended for GroPlant has a vast potential with extraordinary implications on the economy of entire communities and food and water reserves in these countries.”
