Jan 7, 20203 min read

Looking back on the year

Updated: Jun 17, 2020

2019 growing season with First Fruits

Trailblazing our way into the agriculture community we at innov8.ag chose to partner with Microsoft and Tuctronics to empower farmers with data to make recommendations regarding inputs in hopes of lowering overall production costs and promoting environmental stability. Innov8.ag's very first pilot was launched at First Fruits Farms, working close with a diverse team, including orchardists, students, colleges, climate, and GIS professionals.

As a recognized leader in the apple industry for over 40 years, FirstFruits Farms is a premier grower, packer and shipper with more than 6,000 acres of apples and cherries. Their business philosophy seeks to connect the organization and its employees to a larger purpose of community development and service to others. FirstFruits is truly a community of people connected by a common mission: ‘bearing fruit that will last’.

Through our experience with our first pilot customer, First Fruits Farms, innov8.ag Solutions now has the opportunity to learn and grow as a company. Some of the implications and tools that we learned, is the ability to help growers better manage their resources, specifically water, by implementing Sentek soil moisture probes. These probes reach depths up to 2 feet (24 inches) and give the grower the ability to make mindful decisions regarding water usage. This then allows the grower to better understand nano-climate per orchard block - opening the door to optimize irrigation, pest & disease management, & chemical utilization.

Create Relevant Content

Use our application alongside Tuctronics soil moisture probes, weather stations tied to Azure IoT services and Farmbeats to collect data. Get insights that allow you to determine if your crop needs more or less water while also allowing your Team Leads to cut costs by making informed decisions that reduce the waste of any resources.This portion of the application also allows you to see exactly how long it takes for the water to reach each depth in the soil in increments of four inches, ranging from four to twenty four inches.

Disease Modeling

Using our disease models to pinpoint and record disease pressure within your field will help reduce chemical inputs, cost, as well as promote plant, soil, and environmental stability.

Budget Line Technique

Our Budget Line Technique uses the same irrigation data and allows the user to set budget lines around the irrigation curve view in the summed graph format. This summed graph consist of all depths summed divided by the number of sensors. We desire to give you as a grower the capability to make sure that your water consumption doesn't cost you more than you planned. This would then permit you to cut costs and better manage your finances. While many farmers have recently been getting their water usage cut by the county or cities, this allows you as a grower to make sure that your crop gets an adequate amount of water while also keeping your water usage even lower than what they asked for.

Satellite Image History

With the use of our satellite imagery you can see which part's of your crop are affected by lack of water or even the whether within specific locations of your farm. Use GPS coordinates to hone your satellite imagery down to very specific crop locations in order to gain the best insights needed to make an educated decision in your work processes. As a farm owner or even as a team lead you can now make informed decisions from the comfort of your own home without even having to go outside.