Agritask: The Internet of Things creates a buzz of excitement in all kinds of fields ranging from the infrastructure, automotive, and retail industries. What is not so commonly talked about is the IoT’s most crucial use case yet, which is precision agriculture.
Humanity is facing a serious food crisis, and the use of new technological innovations to maximize crop yields is essential.
Building upon the variety of already existing technology, an Israeli firm based in Tel Aviv, Agritask, is providing a holistic ag-operations platform to enable businesses in the agricultural sector to make evidence-based decisions. Israel Fraier founded the company, and Agritask’s SaaS Agronomic Intelligence (AgI) platform focuses on the food and beverage and agricultural insurance industries.
Agritask – Valuable information for all players in the industry
Agritask is a geographic information system-based (GIS-based) system that collects data related to different locations in the field. The platform integrates tools and data sources to analyze the data, quantify the risks and produce alerts, recommendations, and insights. The firm relies on data sources from sensors and machinery, aerial images, and many more.
The goal was to create a unified platform where users could access all types of analytics for the effective operation of their business, obtaining information from different sources based on other forecasting methods.
Currently used in more than 30 countries, Agritask serves various businesses: large-scale agriculture firms, multi-farm corporations, food conglomerates, agriculture-related finance, insurance companies, governments, and NGOs. Monitoring harvest and making informed decisions based on real-time data are inevitable for the agriculture sector as many unpredictable factors already may harm harvest and yield.
Due to dealing with dispersed supply chains, multinational ag-buyers and food corporations need accurate information to ensure quality and promote social and environmental sustainability.
EIT as an investor – US$26M secured
The agricultural intelligence startup recently, in February, secured a US$26M series B funding round, with EIT Food as an investor. Previously, EIT invested in Agritask to support its activities throughout the pandemic, and now the newly secured funds will be used to accelerate innovations and further development of the firm. The funding will help Agritask scale up its sales and operations.
The company will continue working with companies to help them minimize their supply chain risk and ensure sustainable farming operations.
“We are seeing the food and beverage industry spearheading a radical change in the agrifood supply chain, increasing their engagement with and support of farmers to move to sustainable and regenerative agriculture. Technology and data play a key role in creating transparency across the agrifood ecosystem, and Agritask is in a unique position to lead the way. We are looking forward to growing our team and scaling up our work with the world’s leading brands,” said Ofir Ardon, CEO of Agritask.
Over the past few years, Agritask has experienced significant growth and acceptance among the world’s leading food and beverage manufacturers. Brands such as Starbucks and Heineken are using Agritask to reduce risk and better anticipate supply chains. Agritask works with leading agricultural insurance companies such as SCOR, Zurich, and MAPFRE.
Agritask has enabled agri-food clients to provide hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers in developing countries with technology, best agricultural practices, and agricultural insurance products that improve their livelihoods.
