November 3, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

These facts come at you fast. Currently, agriculture uses 70 percent of the world’s freshwater supply, and by 2050, the UN estimates that we will need to produce 50 percent more food to meet demand – indicating a water increase of 40 percent by the end of this decade. However, in today’s food production system, an estimated 60 percent of the water used to grow food is wasted due to inefficiencies in irrigation and planting methods. This wastage equates to 40 percent of our global freshwater.

So if we need to increase food production by 50 percent by 2050, how will we ensure that we have the water to do so?

The first factor that needs to be addressed is our inability to measure the water needed in agriculture. Non-sustainable water usage carries a global cost of US$214.7 billion (€220 billion) per year, and is expected to soar to US$1.95 trillion (€2 trillion) within only the next eight harvest cycles. Water is rapidly becoming the deciding factor for successfully feeding the world, but it is also becoming increasingly scarce. 

With this impending food gap on the horizon, constellr was spearheaded by researchers Max Gulde, Marius Bierdel, and Christian Mittermaier and was spun out of Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI.

The startup uses microsatellites to monitor the Earth’s surface temperature, and soon will be monitoring the Earth’s chemical composition. These satellites, however, go beyond visual imaging to determine water needs and water availability across every field on Earth and identify stress symptoms before crops are damaged, thus allowing for earlier response times, crop health monitoring, and sustainable resource management, compared to currently used space-based systems.

These advanced abilities have caught the attention of sharp investors. Lakestar and VSquared have co-led a $10 million Seed round for the company that also included early and new supporters FTTF, IQT, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, EIT Food, OHB Venture Capital, Next Humanity, and Seraphim.

“Climate change is the fundamental challenge our generation is facing and, in our efforts to combat its effects, we must ensure the global food and water systems are more resilient,” said Steven Jacobs, Lakestar’s venture partner leading deep tech investments, who will be joining the constellr Board.

“Never has there been a greater need for scalable monitoring solutions like that offered by constellr. We’re thrilled to join their journey in building cloud-based space infrastructure that will enable European leadership to effectively monitor agriculture.”

The company explained how the high-precision data provided by its satellite imaging can be used to determine the water requirements of crops that have already been cultivated. Therefore, an impending drought can be recognized much earlier than through existing methods, and fast enough to implement effective measures such as targeted irrigation, thus reducing water consumption while increasing yields per liter of water used.

By providing a central dataset for agriculture to build reliable forecasts, constellr helps to determine yields more exactly and earlier to avoid potential catastrophic knock-on supply chain issues. 

Overall, the company facilitates the savings of up to 40 percent of water, and reduces the risks of crop loss, shifting agriculture as a whole toward an environmentally positive system. Within five years, constellr expects to see 60 billion tons in water savings, thereby avoiding 14 megatons of CO2 being emitted while generating benefits for Europe’s farmers in the billions of Euros.

“The team has worked relentlessly on all fronts, removing obstacle after obstacle, getting a first camera in space, and [pilot] customers onboard.” said Max Gulde, co-founder and CEO, constellr.

“And now, we are incredibly proud to partner with what will become our mission control: Lakestar, VSquared, FTTF and IQT for deep tech, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, EIT Food and Next Humanity for agriculture, and Seraphim, OHB Venture Capital and Spacebel for space. Together, we just ignited the second stage towards a global water monitoring system.”

As a result of the combination of higher food demand, less arable land, and shifting environmental conditions, the likelihood of increasingly strict regulations being placed on the usage of water and fertilizers is high, even further emphasizing the need for monitoring technologies such as constellr’s.

Over the past six months constellr’s team has doubled in size to more than 40 members, with roots in aerospace, engineering, clean tech, insurance, finance, and data science, and has contributed to more than 20 space missions. Additionally, the company is working with large-scale agrifood, agrichemical, and smart irrigation organizations to quickly implement pilot programs with clients. And through the use of satellites the size of a small refrigerator, and with the capital from this investment round, constellr expects to be the answer to these challenges within the next 18 months.

“Despite being a young company, we believe constellr is already well positioned to become one of the leaders in the next generation of earth observation solution providers,” said Herbert Mangesius, founding partner VSquared. “We followed the team for almost two years before making this investment and are impressed with the culture and their ability to execute and build on their ambitions on the technical as well as the commercial side. For us, this is the first time we invest in an earth observation business, having invested only in space infrastructure cases previously.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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