TEL AVIV, Israel & SAN CARLOS, CA. — Greeneye Technology, the maker of AI precision spraying technology, and Farmers Business Network, a global farmer-to-farmer network and agtech company, on February 2 announced their agreement to test Greeneye's innovative precision spraying system at the 2022 On-Farm of FBN Field Test Program.
FBN will conduct field trials in the Midwest throughout the 2022 growing season to test the effectiveness of applying customized herbicide programs using Greeneye's precision spray system across a range of geographies and field conditions.
“FBN's On-Farm Field Trials program was launched to give agtech startups the opportunity to test their products on a massive scale and collect a large data set to accelerate the entire innovation process. Greeneye is a great example of the technologies we're testing that can leverage real-world performance data to accelerate adoption,” said Matthew Meisner, vice president of R&D and data science at FBN. “Precision spraying is an essential tool for effective weed control, and Greeneye promises to enable farmers to invest in more effective formulations that provide a solution to herbicide-resistant weeds and chemical drift. The combination of Greeneye's unique AI-enabled precision spraying technology and FBN's chemical expertise will help unlock the benefits of cost-effective precision spraying programs to our rapidly growing network of farmers.”
FBN's field trials will support Greeneye's commercial launch in the US this spring, where it is tasked with working with farmers in the Midwest before ramping up availability to other states in 2023. The Israeli company, which recently closed a 22 million dollars, including investment from Syngenta and AGCO, is leading the charge to drive the mainstream adoption of precision spraying by solving previous barriers such as cost, accuracy and speed of delivery. It has developed proprietary AI-enabled technology that can detect and spray weeds between crops (green on green) with 95.7% accuracy at commercial cruising speed. The system can be retrofitted to any make and size of commercial sprayer, eliminating the need for farmers to invest in new machinery. In previous field trials, the Greeneye system has been shown to reduce herbicide use by 78% and costs by more than 50% on average compared to traditional broadcast spraying.
In addition to precisely applying chemicals, Greeneye's system collects and analyzes high-resolution data from the field, providing users with valuable information on weed populations, crop numbers, diseases and more. Farmers can use this information to introduce more effective herbicide programs that are not affordable when sprayed on a broadcast basis. Combined with the system's ability to identify weeds at the species level, this provides a clear path forward to address the growing threat to global food production posed by herbicide-resistant weeds.
Nadav Bocher, CEO of Greeneye Technology, added: “Greeneye is dedicated to increasing the profitability of farmers by leveraging technology to reduce production costs and maximize productivity, while helping to achieve a more sustainable future. Our system enables farmers to seamlessly transition to precision spraying, significantly reducing chemical use and costs, while also providing a clear path to combating herbicide resistance. We are delighted to announce the first stage of our agreement with FBN and look forward to working alongside its farmer-members throughout 2022 and beyond.”
*The only data shared with manufacturers will be data from farmers who choose to participate in the On-Farm Network R&D and expressly consent to providing their data for this purpose.
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