February 8, 2018

By Michelle Pelletier Marshall

The Yield, operating in Australia, provides end-to-end sensing technology solutions for aquaculture and agriculture that provide 24/7 monitoring of wind, air, soil, plant, and water conditions to enable more informed decisions that impact yield and reduce risk. The company seeks to solve challenges at the farm level and throughout the food chain with its mission to transform food and farming practices by building reliable, scalable digital technology. These agtech solutions combine hardware, data analytics, and user-friendly apps, all tried and tested through collaborative efforts with growers.

The company also is a lead partner in the newly-formed Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) in Australia, which brings together 54 members from across the food, technology, and research sectors, under a shared goal to revolutionize the Australian food industry through digital transformation.

At the helm is Ros Harvey, founder and managing director of the The Yield, and co-founder and non-executive director of The Food Agility CRC. Harvey has been steadfast in the company’s purpose to harness the power of digital technology to feed the world “without wrecking the planet”. GAI News reached out to Harvey for more details.

Your Sensing+™product provides unprecedented insight into the unique microclimates on farms – recording the specific growing conditions above and below the ground on each farm. How many farmers utilize this product? Can you provide examples of increased efficiency and reduced risk, along with cost savings, in using this technology?

We focus on taking the guesswork out of growing. We measure conditions at the farm, field, and row level, right down to the hotspot level and use artificial intelligence to predict it, then deliver it via really simple, easy-to-use apps that help people make faster, more confident decisions. This technology can be used on the farm and across the supply chain with a focus on what happens across the whole farming system — when to plant, when to irrigate, when to protect, and when to harvest. We can measure up to 2,500 different points over a 30,000-hectare radius.

As far as success with the product, one of our growers got a 30 percent reduction in water-related losses by understanding what’s happening with water transpiration and using the prediction of water use for each particular crop. We specify to the crop, the location, and the actual growth stage – and by knowing what’s going on locally with expected rainfall through using our technology, we can provide growers with a water balance for the plant so they can water just the right amount at just the right time. The product also is useful to balance water use among mixed crops, and in times of water constraints, which is very common in Australia, growers can choose which crop to water based on the information from Sensing+.

It doesn’t really stop there because the effects ricochet through the supply chain. Our product can help map growth curves to optimize scheduling, which affects all those in the value chain, and by taking just one percentage point off of overproduction, it can save hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Launched in October 2017, we now have 350 customers using Sensing+. Our customers tend to be at the corporate or large-scale grower level since we focus on creating enterprise grade solutions for the top 20 percent of growers who produce 80 percent of the world’s food. We complete a series of trials with our customers before we do a more extensive rollout. It’s been super encouraging because since we launched the product we’ve had very, very strong market interest that has exceeded our expectations.

The Australian Farm Institute reported in 2016 that Australia is lagging behind other nations in broadly applying digital solutions to farming and food production. Where do you see the greatest opportunities for affecting change in agtech adoption in Australia?

It is a lot like in the U.S., in that there has been greater adoption of precision agriculture in row cropping. We are highly focused on irrigated crops (referred to as specialty crops in the U.S.) where the adoption rates are lower, largely because it’s a much more complex environment to manage. You tend to have smaller and more intense operations, rather than the huge harvests of row cropping. So there’s enormous opportunity because the gross margin per hectare of an irrigated perennial crop is thirty times what it is in a row crop so the decisions around the microclimate really, really matter and people really, really care.

On a broader level, people often blame growers for slow adoption of technology, saying they are so risk averse, they don’t know technology, etc., but what I would say is that technology has failed the agricultural sector. If people don’t use your technology, it’s because your technology is not easy to use. If you launched a product in the consumer market that required training, it just wouldn’t be accepted, but in the agricultural market, there tends to be technology that is clunky to use, not intuitive, and not integrated. I think the challenge is for the technology industry, particularly agtech, to create technology based on the user experience. I don’t think growers are risk averse – they are the biggest risk takers in the world, handling the most unpredictable thing on the planet, which is the weather, to create a living for their family and themselves and their communities. That’s a risky business.

Most growers will try any technology but the issue is to focus on the business problem you’re solving and understand that first, then make strong user-centric designs with the grower at the center of that, and create repeatable scale technology that can be tailored to the location and crop. We get fantastic adoption with this method.

The Yield is a fairly new company, having been established in 2014. How have you seen the agtech sector change in this short time, and what holds promise for future developments?

The biggest change was when Monsanto acquired Climate Corp – everyone sat up straight, and went ‘wow’ there’s actually a market here. I think those acquisition events drive the supply of technology and startups. This event made a big difference in that it got people thinking about technology and how it could actually solve problems and create value.

The other thing that happened since 2014 is that we’ve seen the rate of technology and capability rapidly change. I remember when we first started, it was very difficult just to get a central communications gateway to pass the data through, but now it’s becoming easier. And now the big players – Microsoft, Bosch, Cisco – are getting involved in ag. This is a good thing because I think the industry is underserved, and I am pleased to see that both large and small companies are working on vibrant solutions. We are learning together about how to serve our customers and the community better.

In April 2017, The Yield announced a Series A funding round for $6.5 million, which combined with previous investments brought funding in the company to $11.5 million in just two years. What investment opportunities lie ahead with The Yield?

We are an Australian company, but a global company too and that has always been our focus. We see Australia as the place to innovate technology and then scale it to other markets. Australia is one of the most difficult places on the planet to farm successfully – we have the most open economy in the world, we have the highest labor costs, the driest land, shrinking arable land, and we have to ship everything we produce off the island to market. It’s a demanding place. Yet growers here are very productive because they innovate – they have to innovate to succeed.

At this time at The Yield, we are working towards a Series B to support global scaling. We are opening an office in the U.S. this month, and moving towards bringing Sensing+ to other markets including North America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. As part of this effort, we will also be launching a global subscription product later this year.

The Australian investor market has been very good to us. We also have investment now from Bosch and KPMG, as well as a number of high-net worth individuals, but we see the Series B being on a much larger scale, something where we would look to global capital investor markets.

~ Michelle Pelletier Marshall is managing editor for Global AgInvesting’s quarterly GAI Gazette magazine and an occasional contributor to GAI News. She can be reached at mmarshall@globalaginvesting.com.