The hardest thing was to see what the results were two days after you watered, to see if you were leaching things down or if you were actually applying enough.

Born and raised in Colorado, Kendall Nye has been farming as long as he can remember. One of the greatest challenges is determining when and how much to water crops without a real-time indication of the plants’ needs.

Founded in 2015, Israel-based CropX developed an integrated hardware and software system for measuring soil moisture, temperature and conductivity. The CropX device scans fields and sends that collected data to the cloud where it can be accessed by the farmer, providing optimal irrigation suggestions. Precisely watering crops according to their needs allows farmers to increase yield while substantially decreasing water usage. 

“CropX has given confirmation into what you have done 48 hours previously now,” Kendall says. “[It] gives me more confidence in our watering techniques.” 

Through widespread use of its sensors, CropX intends to collect the world’s largest database of soil data, allowing the technology’s advanced algorithm to analyze network effects in the soil, further optimizing productivity and efficient use of resources. Tomer Tzach, the company’s CEO believes “the ‘Internet of Soil’ is the key to precise agriculture; it is likely to solve the shortage of water, the shortage of food, and hunger, while saving energy and significantly reducing pollution.” 

This post is an excerpt from OurCrowd’s Q1 Innovation Insider. Download the entire publication here.