December 2024 - 6

AGTECH
Talking Tech
New app innovations aid growers
BY KEITH LORIA
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
F
arming has forever been
changed by technology, with
new innovations helping
growers of fruit, vegetables and tree
nuts improve things such as pest
management, disease monitoring
and data collecting.
One of the biggest help to growers
these days are mobile apps, which
can help farmers achieve optimized
irrigation, targeted fertilization and
enhanced orchard monitoring. With
the use of a phone, growers can
uncover a host of information and
save themselves time and money
in the process.
AgProz
AgProz offers software and mobile
solutions that provide accurate and
responsive crop acreage data, reliable
marketing resources and analytics
that help growers of all segments.
" We're more tied to vendors
and companies who are trying to
find growers, " said John Krum,
founder and CEO of AgProz.
Krum started the company with the
idea of overlaying agriculture data on
a map, similar to Zillow for real estate.
" With AgProz, what you're able to
do is from a map see how many acres
a grower has, what kind of crops
are farmed, as well as a name and
contact info, " Krum said. " Once I was
able to pull out this information, I was
no longer going in blind about what
growers I could get in front of and help.
It empowers companies like John
Deere and others. It keeps the right
people in front of the right growers. "
6 | DECEMBER 2024
The core product is the app, and
now the data is being leveraged
more from a marketing lens as a
workforce tool.
" You can track certain things inside
the app and navigating the workflow
before doing follow-ups, " Krum said.
Doktar
Regardless of the crop focus -
tree fruits, nuts, vegetables -
Netherlands-based Doktar's mobile
app solutions help farmers make
decisions on real-time data for
precision farming and smart ag.
IoTrack is a mobile application
that enables the management of
the company's Filiz Agricultural
Sensor Station and PestTrap
Digital Pest Tracking Station from
a single platform.
" Users can track their data flow
and receive instant notifications
from IoT-enabled devices, allowing
them to make informed decisions
and enhance efficiency, " said Tanzer
Bilgen, CEO for Doktar.
Meanwhile, PestTrap is an IoT
pest-tracking station that utilizes
machine learning to accurately
identify and count pests in realtime.
It is suitable for use in fields,
orchards, greenhouses, warehouses
and forests.
" With sticky paper and an
integrated camera, PestTrap captures
daily images and accurately identifies
pest types, " Bilgen said. " Integrated
with the IoTrack mobile application,
PestTrap enables effortless remote
tracking and sends notifications when
pest levels reach a risk threshold. "
Users of PestTrap receive highresolution
images with its 5MP
camera and can adjust the image
frequency and timing options for
more precise monitoring.
" They can view pest species
distribution and 48-hour spraying
suitability assessments to take timely
actions that reduce the economic
impact of pests and optimize yields, "
Bilgen said. " PestTrap's machine
learning algorithm recognizes
region-specific pests, tracks their
developmental cycle and learns to
identify new pests accurately within
two weeks. "
Both IoTrack and Orbit, an app that
helps farmers monitor the health and
development of their crops and identify
underdeveloped, water-stressed or
over-irrigated areas, enable farmers
to view all data on their homepage
and spot problems immediately.
" Overall, IoTrack helps implement
practices for precision agriculture
by instantly controlling irrigation
problems, disease risks, microclimate
weather conditions, calculating
advanced agricultural metrics and
potential pest infestations, " Bilgen
said. The app also helps track the
timing of irrigation, spraying and
phenological stage changes in the
field by recording them on time.
" Health, inspection and water stress
maps are crucial, " Bilgen said. " With
Orbit, you can monitor the weather
hourly with the live precipitation
and storm tracking feature and take
timely precautions with frost risk and
fungal disease risk notifications. "
Barn Owl Technologies
Barn Owl Technologies builds
physical hardware that acts as an
automatic scouting tool that helps
December 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of December 2024
