Agremo evaluating damage after hurricane – Implementation of Serbian software at world plantations on the rise, cooperation with KWS established in Serbia

The eKapija portal has opened the contest for the best investment in 2017 – Aurea 2018, and while waiting for the winners to be pronounced, we visited the companies shortlisted last year to see how far they had gone in their business development.

Last year’s winning solution, the technological platform Agrisens (now Agremo) of the company Logit, has tripled the number of users in the past year. Let us remind that the software processes images from agricultural areas (gathered by unmanned aerial vehicles), which are then further analyzed in order to provide insight to the users into the quality of the crops, the expected yield, areas subject to various plant stress issues etc. This way, Agremo enables agriculturists to get vital information about their cultures with minimal costs and without having to possess the skills of handling modern technology.

Agremo now has over 3,000 users in over 50 countries of the world, and the number of plants analyzed is constantly increasing. Soon, the platform will get a new version with additional functions and benefits for agriculturists. They are also being contacted by more and more potential partners looking to represent this product and these services. Agremo has also gotten its first users in Serbia as well.

Gladiolas and hurricanes

Ever since the commercialization started in the spring of 2016, the advantages of the Belgrade company’s software have been recognized by farmers from New Zealand, Australia to Puerto Rico and the United States of America. The platform has become very attractive to companies producing agricultural inputs (seeds, pesticides, herbicides etc.) in their research and in connecting them with clients, and, in addition to farming cultures (corn, wheat, sugar beet etc.), which are the most popular, and vegetable and fruit cultures, Agremo is also being implemented in much more exotic plantations, such as mango, avocado and banana plantation. In the past years, the company has been receiving slightly more unusual requests too.

– This year, for the first time, we were asked to analyze flowers by an American client, for whom we are now counting gladiolas regularly and who saves a double-digit number of hours a month now thanks to Agremo. The Danish family business Noble Nordmann, which sells Christmas trees, is achieving similar results. With the help of drones and Agremo analyses, they count tress in various locations in Europe. Aside from receiving great help in planning for the season, Noble Normann thereby realizes considerable savings in time and finances – Logit says for our portal and adds that the evaluation of damage following the devastating Hurricane Maria is no less interesting. Agremo helped drone operators from Puerto Rico to estimate the agricultural damage, enabling agriculturists to present concrete data on the consequences they had suffered.

– It’s good to see that the possibilities of drone usage in agriculture are expanding beyond the usual analyses of weeds, diseases, counting and other analyses we offer.

Although the number of users is growing, since this is a global innovation, the usage of the Agremo software in the local market is only just developing. Logit is aware that there is a gap between the implementation of agricultural technologies in states such as Australia and Canada and the situation in Serbia, but they put a lot of hope in younger users more willing to explore possibilities. For this reason, the access to potential users in Serbia is different, with Logit turning more towards the corporate segment. Recently, the cooperation with KWS, one of the world leaders in seed production, was contracted.

– The project is carried out together with Serbian and Romanian branches of KWS, and the drone technology and Agremo analyses will help survey and analyze corn fields – Logit says for our portal and points out that KWS has existed for 150 years, and it is estimated that it grows corn on 2.5 million hectares in Europe now.

In addition to the growth of the number of users and plants analyzed, Logit is also developing new services and better user experience. Until recently, 9 types of analysis were available: Stand Count, Plant Population, Plant Stress Analysis, Weed Analysis, Pest Analysis, Plant Disease Analysis, Water Stress Analysis, Flowering Estimator and Eagle Eye Report. Since recently, farmers have been provided with 3 additional modes of analysis: arable land area, nitrogen status and potential yield.

Easier data management

Let us remind that Logit is one of only 5 companies in the world developing this kind of software. Even though the two fields do not seem to have anything in common at first sight, globally, ways are being sought for modern IT technology to enhance agricultural production.

Since the implementation of this kind of technology is a new thing, Logit is now working on a new version of the app, in order to further facilitate data management. Most users, they explain, keep their maps either on their own computers or on external devices and then send them to clients and colleagues through third providers, which reduces transparency. The new Agremo version will enable users to store their maps and analyses in a single place and to share the screenshots displaying results with their clients or colleagues with several clicks.

– Furthermore, the new version allows users to compare results from maps formed at different time periods on the same screens. This way, the user can see, on a single screen, what the field looked like, say, a week ago and a month ago and can share it with clients or colleagues.

The success of this solution is also shown by the fact that, this year, Agremo will be the most popular app at the DroneDeploy “AppMarket”. They established a strategic partnership with this American company, the world leader in the field of production of software for navigation and processing of drone images. Logit says that they’ve also formed a joint offer to big users of the solution in the field of agriculture and that users will be able to buy the Agremo app as part of the Drone Deploy package as an all-encompassing solution beginning with March.

– There will be other partnerships as well in 2018, as the negotiations with the most well-established service providers in the industry are well on their way – Logit announces for our portal and adds that “an exciting season” lies ahead.

– Due to a jump in the demand for our product and services, we need to focus primarily on scaling our operations and our infrastructure. We expect to analyze at least 10 times as much surface as last year, which means that we need to raise the entire organization and operations to a considerably higher level.

Farmer education

Logit has existed for 6 years. The idea of developing the Agremo software arose through following global scientific and technological trends and the field of “precision agriculture”. A part of the company’s plans for the upcoming period includes the education of small and large agriculturists interested in enhancing their work, and the company reminds that unmanned aerial vehicles are used increasingly more in this field.

The activities of Logit include international projects as well – from the Middle East, through Western Europe, to Scandinavia – pertaining to software solutions for the supply chain, business intelligence, retail and distribution, in which they are among the leaders in the region. As they say, they’ve also initiated a formal extraction of Agremo into a separate business entity, which has been the intention since the beginning.

Ivana Bezarevic

Logit d.o.o. Novi Beograd

eKapija.com Beograd

Aurea

Aurea 2017

award for investment of the year in Serbia

Agrisens

Agremo

softwear for analysis of data from agricultural areas

innovative solutions in agriculture

implementation of IT technologies in agriculture

precision agriculture

usage of drones in agriculture

KWS

Noble Nordmann

plant counting

plant analysis

crop analysis

mango

avocado

bananas

corn

gladiolas

Christmas trees

drone

drones

unmanned aerial vehicles