Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Revotree (An automated, machine learning, IoT agronomic platform for optimal irrigation, pesticide and fertilizer utilization at farms.)

Teaser

The European agricultural sector is in crisis. The number of people employed in the agriculture sector went from 30M to 22.2M between 2005-2016, the number of farmers from 12.2M in 2010 to 10.8M in 2016 and by 2020 there will be less than 10M farmers. Moreover, the agriculture...

Summary

The European agricultural sector is in crisis. The number of people employed in the agriculture sector went from 30M to 22.2M between 2005-2016, the number of farmers from 12.2M in 2010 to 10.8M in 2016 and by 2020 there will be less than 10M farmers. Moreover, the agriculture industry output in Members States has also decreased from 2016-2017 and this reflects in the capital expenditure reduction. The reasons for the crisis are due to the high costs for inefficient operating activities, thus leading to low margins for the sector.
The following issues are present in the agricultural scenario:
i) High water consumption and increasing water price where agriculture consumes 44% of fresh water in the EU and the volume of water used for irrigation is 39.8 Bm3/year in EU-28, with a total cost of over 20 B€/year for the agriculture sector,
ii) Expensive and inefficient irrigation systems that forces farmers to be on the fields 3-4 times per week, and the lack of water irrigation technologies leads up to losses of 1,500 out of 2,500 trillion litres of water in agriculture, and
iii) High costs of pesticides and fertilizers:excessive usage of fertilizers and pesticides leads to an enhanced risk of the soil quality and associated problems with water quality. Farmers ignore the real status of soil at root-level. Therefore, they use non-optimized fertilizers, introducing further inefficiency.

Revotree is the only agronomic Internet of Things (IoT) automated intelligent irrigation platform that lets farmers know crops’ real needs, able to take autonomous decisions via its algorithms to control the opening and closure of the water flow and indicates the correct usage of pesticides and fertilizers needed without any user interaction, thereby improving crops’ productivity and natural resource usage. Revotree allows farmers to improve their business by saving money on water consumption, improving crop productivity, and decreasing the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

Work performed

The SME-Instrument Phase 1 project constituted was focused on the following main activities:
1. Optimization of Revotree’s manufacturing and supply chain
2. Definition of the use cases for crops
3. Market Analysis
4. Evaluation of the business model options and value chains
5. Industrial customer partnership agreements:
6. Customer validation with farmers:
7. Business Plan and Go-to-Market Strategy:
8. Definition of the work plan and budget for the Phase 2 project.
9. Plan of future activities.

The most important outcomes are listed below:
• Revotree has worked towards optimizing its kits and the platform for water irrigation efficiency. Revotree has also identified its key suppliers for materials and components based on the best-price approach and the quality of manufacturing activities.
• A complete Bill of Materials (BOM) and Cost of Production (CoP) evaluation has been performed.
• The validation plan will be based on the i) climate and ii) crop type. Other variables will be taken into account for future pilots and in-depth analysis related to water irrigation management.
• The market framework is extremely favorable. The smart agriculture market in the EU was valued at 5.4B€ billion in 2016 and is expected to reach 5.8B€ by 2024 with a CAGR of 7.48%
• Southern Mediterranenan countries, Africa, and Latin America are locations where Revotree aims to implement pilots. So far, the pilots have enabled the company to improve the product for commercialization.
• A draft of the project budget and development plan has been provided.
• Value and supply chains have been defined and studied. The main suppliers have been contacted to fix the supplying cost for Revotree’s kits. Key technological/financial partners have been engaged.
• Customers have been contacted and met.
• A preliminary Risk Analysis has been performed and a Risk Mitigation strategy developed to demonstrate how Revotree will manage its risk profile.

Final results

EU policies that protect farmers, reduce their reliance on dangerous pesticides through ecological farm practices, rebuild soil fertility, reduce water consumption and, crucially, secure farmers’ livelihoods by sustaining yields over time are much needed throughout the entire EU. Smart farming using IoT technologies is a new and emerging sector with only a few efficient solutions on the market. Smart farming is a hi-tech system that is a clean and sustainable solution for players involved in the agricultural sector. Finding new and disruptive solutions based on platforms that utilize Machine learning algorithms relying on Artificial Intelligence automating farm management and providing solutions able to collect information based on soil properties and optimizing the pesticides and fertilizers usagewill help farmers to reduce water consumption and enhance crop productivity.

Revotree’s expected results are that:
• Revotree’s kits allows a reduction in water consumption for crop irrigation, hours spent on the field by farmers, remotely monitor and irrigate crops, increase crop productivity, and reduce consumption of pesticides and fertilizers.
• Agricultural data business related opportunities will allow Revotree to perform analysis, modeling, and prediction allowing third party developers to have access to data in an authorized and easy way.
• The final price achievable is the lowest in the market vs. competing solutions, and coupled with the API data sales, Revotree’s technology leads to a breakthrough in the smart agricultural IoT market.

It is a matter of fact that introducing optimized, cost-competitive and sustainable technologies in agriculture will support farmers in improving the operational efficiency, maximizing the sector profitability and the margins.

Website & more info

More info: https://revotree.it/.