Agtools
Agtools was selected as one of the top 20 of 4,500 applications nationwide by Pepperdine University as most fundable company. Also, the company graduated from Techstars Farm to Fork Program in Minnesota, which focuses on companies taking on major food system challenges. It was approved as the tenth company out of more than 500 applications for the Plug and Play FarmTech program in Fargo, North Dakota. Agtools was also accepted into the Larta Institute, an accelerator that caters to companies in the agriculture industry, and into the Boston Consulting Group and Msaada Partners-backed Majira Project, which provides resources to post-accelerator companies that serve underserved communities. It has closed the seed round of $1.45 million and will focus on customer success. ApisProtect provides the most robust, unobtrusive, and cost- effective solution on the market for commercial beekeepers. Using ApisProtect, beekeepers can generate an additional $98 of value from each hive per year. In trials monitoring the condition of more than 20 million honeybees worldwide, ApisProtect drove a variety of operational improvements that created an opportunity to increase hive count and productivity. ApisProtect research shows that 80% of manual hive inspections do not require any action on hives but disrupt the bees and risk the loss of a queen. Augean Robotics spent the 2020 season autonomously moving table grapes over nearly 8,000 autonomous miles with eight growers in commercial use. This use saw 15% to 50% productivity gains, across six to eight person teams per Burro, depending on field harvest layout. Now, their team is taking orders on the newest generation 7 Burros, for delivery next year, and will be testing them through the winter months. Beyond this, they are keen to speak with growers in other crops, including those in nursery operations. Finally, each Burro features onboard cameras and is connected online; they are working to leverage this capability by adding crop scouting capabilities using computer vision and sharing crop data with collaborators. Autonomy in the field starts with people-scale collaborative robots and expands from there. If you’d like to learn more about Burro or try one, visit them at www.burro.ai, or contact them at sales@burro.ai.
ApisProtect
Augean Robotics
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JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2 021
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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