Farming is the largest consumer of fresh water globally, accounting for 70% of usage. In certain nations, such as India and Chile, this figure can exceed 90%.
For Mario Bustamante, a resident of Chile, this challenge is very personal. “Water scarcity is a significant concern here,” he shared with TechCrunch.
Bustamante believes artificial intelligence can dramatically reduce water consumption on farms worldwide. His company, Instacrops, was initially established to install IoT sensors on agricultural land to alert growers to harmful frost, but as sensor technology became widely available, the business shifted its focus to software and water management.
Today, Instacrops supports 260 farms in lowering their water usage by up to 30%, while also boosting harvests by as much as 20%. The company is participating in Startup Battlefield and will showcase its work at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco later this month.
Transitioning from hardware to AI completely transformed the business, enabling it to handle more data with a leaner team.
“We now process around 15 million data points every hour. Nearly a decade ago, that would have been our yearly total,” Bustamante explained. “We’re cutting expenses, reducing staff, and achieving greater results with fewer resources.”
Instacrops can either deploy new IoT sensors or tap into a farm’s existing network to gather information, which is then used to recommend optimal irrigation times for different fields. The company’s LLM models analyze over 80 variables, such as soil moisture, air humidity, temperature, atmospheric pressure, crop output, and NDVI—a satellite-based measure of plant health.
These recommendations are delivered straight to farmers’ smartphones. Instacrops provides a chatbot application and also works with WhatsApp. “I believe within a year, we’ll be fully on WhatsApp, since it’s a universal platform for farmers everywhere,” Bustamante noted.
On farms equipped with advanced technology, Instacrops is even able to manage irrigation systems directly, according to Bustamante.
Instacrops primarily serves growers of high-value crops in Latin America, such as apples, avocados, blueberries, almonds, and cherries. Farmers subscribe to the company’s irrigation insights by paying an annual fee for each hectare of land.
The company participated in Y Combinator’s summer 2021 program and has attracted funding from SVG Ventures and Genesis Ventures.
If you’re interested in discovering more about Instacrops and many other innovative startups, be sure to attend TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco from October 27 to 29.
