Montreal-based AI agtech startup MotorLeaf is launching a strategic partnership with Greenhouse supplier Cultilene to facilitate greater access to artificial intelligence for growers facing tight margins and labor shortages. Together, the companies announced a global expansion campaign to connect large-scale growers of hydroponic tomatoes and peppers with AI-automation services.
Brought to market last year, MotorLeaf’s technology can gather big data generated from greenhouse growing conditions, which can then be used to create custom-made machine learning algorithms to predict future greenhouse production volumes. With this knowledge in-hand, growers can gain insights once reserved for highly-skilled agronomists and technicians, and are better able to streamline their operations and reduce costs while also reducing the risks associated with varying weekly harvests.
“We are convinced that Motorleaf’s harvest forecast service has added value for tomato and pepper growers worldwide,” said Mariëlle Klijn, marketing manager at Cultilene, and a key person in forming the partnership with MotorLeaf. “That is why we are actively bringing this service to the attention of our customers. In addition, this harvest forecast service is a perfect example of ‘data-driven growing’, one of the most pioneering developments within the global horticulture sector and a cornerstone objective of Cultilene.”
Current methods of predicting harvest volumes are typically manual, imprecise, and time-consuming, and because of varying conditions and fluctuations in growth and ripening, can be prone to error. By using data gathered from growing conditions and from past harvests to train AI technology, businesses can know how much produce they will be delivering to market at any given time.
In the piece, Artificial Intelligence Enables Greenhouses to Cut Costs, Streamline Operations, with Precise, Automated Harvest Forecasts contributed by MotorLeaf to GAI News and shared in October 2018, the company provides an example of the power of AI automation to improve greenhouse agriculture.
“Once implemented at SunSelect Produce — a 70-acre greenhouse in California — the AI technology reduced errors in estimating weekly tomato yields by 50 percent at the start; following one year, the greenhouse now benefits from a 72 percent reduction in error. Such precision enabled the company to fully automate harvest forecasting.”
In addition to its predictive abilities, MotorLeaf states that AI can also address the threatening issue of labor shortages in the agricultural sector across the U.S. and the EU. The lack of both skilled and unskilled labor has had a demonstrative effect on growers in Canada, where it is estimated that by 2025 the industry will lose 100,000 workers, and in Ireland, where agricultural output declined by 14 percent last year due to insufficient labor.
In May 2018, MotorLeaf closed on a US$2.85 million funding round backed by Desjardins Capital, Real Ventures, Fluxunit (Osram Ventures), BDC Capital, and 500 Startups Canada.
At that time, there were 52.3 billion square feet of greenhouses and indoor farms that could benefit from Motorleaf’s technology, according to the company. And Cultilene estimates that there are hundreds of greenhouse operations on both sides of the Atlantic that could benefit from MotorLeaf’s services.
“Agriculture is totally different from the tech sector,” said Jennifer De Braga, head of Global Client Experience at Motorleaf. “Tech companies are expected to scale with ease using online platforms and digital tools. The fact is that farming remains a personal industry that prefers to seal deals with a handshake between well-known neighbours. Cultilene enables us to make that handshake with greenhouse owners far and wide.”
A year of preparations have been dedicated to building out the partnership to ensure the alignment of data security regulations between Canada and the EU and to vet the technology. And now the two companies can strive to join the expertise of a Dutch greenhouse specialist with the AI technology advances being made in Canada.
-Lynda Kiernan