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BASF Venture Capital (BVC) is investing in WayBeyond’s AI agriculture technologies. Founded in New Zealand and now headquartered in the United States, WayBeyond is an IoT and software program as a service (SaaS) company that aims to strengthen crop yields, crop excellent, and grower profitability for low-to-mid tech controlled-atmosphere agriculture (CEA) operations applying information capture, farm management, and prediction tools. 

Controlled-Atmosphere Agriculture Operations

CEA refers to a assortment of systems that take a technologies-primarily based method to farming, which consists of glasshouses, greenhouses, net homes, and tunnels. CEA increasing operations generally make tomatoes, berries, cucumbers, and peppers. Development in CEA, particularly low-to-mid tech CEA, is anticipated to boost steadily as the worldwide population increases and as sustainability objectives drive issues of meals shortages, encouraging growers to lower the environmental footprint of their operations. Significant production markets contain Mexico, Morocco, and Spain export markets contain the United States and Europe. 

WayBeyond’s information collection tools and AI technologies-powered agronomy insights platform, FarmRoad, is an specialist agronomist for each farm that provides growers farm-and crop-distinct insights and suggestions to transform their increasing choices, enhancing yield, consistency, and excellent for far more sustainable farming. WayBeyond also partners with seed producers to make use of the FarmRoad platform and FarmRoad’s crop-contextual AI for seed efficacy and excellent. 

Markus Solibieda, Managing Director of BASF Venture Capital GmbH, stated: “The use of controlled-atmosphere agriculture to develop fruits and vegetables continues to expand globally. As the subsequent generation of growers enters the agriculture market, we think that their entry point will be CEA. WayBeyond is positioned to transform the  way these CEA farmers develop the crops that will feed our increasing population.”  

The EPA says agriculture represents around 11% of the total greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. This comes from the soil, crop production, and livestock. Amongst the methods improvements can be created by enhancing soil management, controlling the way manure is handled, and capturing methane to turn into renewable power, the EPA says. Carbon sequestration is an additional important piece of sustainability in agriculture.