By Aline Glick, Head of Product, Aspiring Universe
Precision agriculture has become increasingly sophisticated, with smart sensors available to monitor crop conditions in the field at the level of a single peach. However, local sensing devices are prohibitively expensive and cumbersome for row crop monitoring, and AI-based extrapolations from remote sensing have lacked the scientific foundation necessary for accuracy.
Aspiring Universe Corporation, a 2019 spinout of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has solved these problems by creating a 20-year daily database at 100-foot resolution for every plot of farmland across the globe. The company integrates multiple remote sensing data layers, and uses biophysical-based process models, combined with artificial intelligence and supercomputing, to efficiently assess crop performance, water availability, management practices, nutrient use, and carbon retention. The result is a wide array of actionable insights from agronomy to sustainability.
The company has already attracted a Fortune 500 client list drawn by the innovative science of founder and lead inventor, Dr. Kaiyu Guan, who is also a leading scientist at the nexus of environmental science, engineering, and AI. Many of the custom projects for these clients have focused on carbon sequestration and other sustainability metrics. The company is now in the process of focusing the technology for specific applications. Guan commented, “We are excited to make these tools available, which are the result of 10+ years of my team’s research at the University of Illinois, Stanford University and Princeton University. There are really no other options that can provide the combined accuracy, scalability and cost-effectiveness of this technology.”
Of particular interest to ag investors, the company has just launched FarmScreen℠, a product to help investors streamline their diligence process, enabling better purchase decisions with accurate, unbiased data and insights. Until now, the diligence process for land purchases has relied on in-person on-site verification, limited historical records, and customized drone or airplane flights. These analyses are time-consuming and not directly comparable across properties, limiting the number of opportunities that can be reasonably and efficiently screened.
FarmScreen solves these problems by providing 10 years of historical productivity data, and putting that into context with comparisons to neighboring fields, making it possible to identify low-performing areas that can be targeted for improvement. This enables investors to identify risks, as well as opportunities that could provide a higher return on investment.
The company’s CEO, Daphne Preuss, remarked, “Our methodology starts at the field level, and is well-suited for investors who have been frustrated by county-averaged data that many competitors rely on. We expect that FarmScreen’s deep insights will be a game changer for institutional farmland investors across the globe, allowing them to survey a larger number of properties and identify those that best suit their investment profile.”
Given the carbon and other sustainability insights that can be generated from the company’s proprietary technology, the next generation of FarmScreen will likely include a sustainability layer, making the product essential for investors looking to build their ESG portfolios with farmland. Preuss added, “Just like crop productivity, we are able to quantify carbon and water at the field level, an essential capability for government bodies and investors to characterize the sustainability of a particular parcel of farmland. We look forward to playing an important role in a more sustainable future by empowering ESG investors to select the most sustainable properties.”
More information about FarmScreen can be found on the company’s website.
All views, data, opinions and declarations expressed are solely those of the author(s) and not of Global AgInvesting, GAI News, or parent company HighQuest Group.