Farmers to get AI eye in the sky to monitor grassland

The funding from the European Space Agency (ESA) via the ARTES 4.0 Downstream Applications Demonstration Fund will help Proveye, a University College Dublin (UCD) spin-out company, bring its grassland management solution to market in 2023.

Proveye integrates Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), satellites and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology into a single platform to provide a higher level of accuracy and clarity in grassland mapping for agricultural advisors, seed suppliers, commodity brokers and government agencies.

In a statement, Jerome O’Connell, CEO and co-founder, Proveye said: “Through our platform, agri-advisors and input-providers will for the first time be able to provide the farmer with a complete near-100 per cent accurate picture of their grasslands in near real-time. “This will enable a farmer to see 100 per cent of the farm area down to plant-by-plant detail, which will be a game changer in terms of productivity and sustainability of grass-based agriculture.”

The funding builds on the success of Proveye’s previous work with ESA on automated satellite image processing and UAV image analysis of grass swards.

Grass occupies about 70 per cent of agricultural land and supports an industry worth about $1 trillion but the management of grasslands lacks the precision available for cereal crops. With fertilizer prices increasing by 150 per cent in the last year and pressures on farmers and food processors to produce food more sustainably, grassland advisors need digital services to manage large areas of land efficiently.

The Proveye grass management platform maps grass yield and grass quality, which is critical for managing grazing, grass forage, fertilisation and grass husbandry.

Proveye, which is based at NovaUCD in Dublin, is validating the platform in Ireland, Europe and New Zealand through pilot field trials.

Professor Nick Holden, UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering, co-founder, Proveye said, “Our technology has the potential to revolutionise grass management not only for the dairy and beef sectors, but also for industries like renewable energy production and grass-based biorefining.”