Israel’s FieldIn helps farmers track crops, cut costs

Growing trees in Israel, Italy and California has become easier thanks to an innovative solution that takes care of all aspects of pest management for high-value crops, using less pesticide.

“We provide an end-to-end solution to special crop growers that follows our clients in all the process, allowing our customers to use pesticide in a smarter and more efficient way, reducing waste and spray mistakes. They also save money with us,” said Eyal Amit, VP business development at FieldIn.

The company manages substantial acreage for large enterprise growers who grow citrus, wine grapes, apples, almonds, avocados, and pomegranates, among others. The lead investor is Terra Venture Partners, an Israeli venture capital fund.

FieldIn won the second prize in a startup competition at the International AgriVest Conference held at the Weizmann Institute of Science last week, for technology that increases the efficiency of growing crops.

The conference is an initiative of Trendlines Agtech, an incubator of The Trendlines Group, Invest in Israel, the investment promotion center at the Israeli Ministry of Economy & Industry and GreenSoil Investments, an Israeli VC focused on agro & food tech investments.

FieldIn sensors helps track and analyze pest types (Courtesy)

“Thanks to our apps and sensors, we can follow the whole the spray process, we can check the weather, which kind of pesticides are used, how they are used, where they are used, their quantity, their pace and if tractors cover every single hectare of the crop,” said Amit.

The company’s “field scout” uses a monitoring app to check the health of the crops and sends feedback to “executives,” the people in charge, using insights based on the big data the FieldIn technology provides.

In addition, a central dashboard collects all the information and helps monitor the pesticide management process, revealing mistakes and alerting the controller if and where there is a problem, like a sudden weather change, or an error, like using a wrong pesticide.

“Our system is unique because we offer an A-Z solution,” said Amit.

Eyal Amit, VP of business development at FieldIn (Courtesy)

The idea came from CEO Boaz Bachar: his father-in-law is an avocado grower. He realized that there was a need for a better way to process the huge amount of data and make pest control management easier.

Based on this field experience, FieldIn, founded in 2103, created a system that continues to develop with the help of feedback from farmers and plant growers.

“We are creating a new standard thanks to our technology. If you reduce pesticides, you help everyone, from growers to their clients,” the people who buy their products, said Amit.