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I'm an economist and I've worked in many sectors, but I've always been involved in agriculture, as I come from a farming family. I've also worked in public administration, which has given me a vision of how the public sector affects businesses. In 2018, I joined Greenfield Technologies full-time. The company had been founded by my brother and another farmer in 2014, and I thought it was an exciting project from the start. At the time, the team consisted of just two people.
Greenfield Technologies was born out of a need, a real need of real farmers. So the moment the founders identified that need was the first milestone, I think. They were sure that technology could help farmers, so they started looking for companies that provided technology-based services and tools for farmers, but they couldn't find any. The second important step was when they hired the first two people, two researchers, to design the services. And the other most important milestone was when they decided to enter the market in 2018.
Yes, that's right. In the beginning, we targeted farmers, especially those growing speciality crops such as almonds, olives, tomatoes, fruit trees and alfalfa, because Spain is the world's largest producer of speciality crops. However, we soon realised that the farmers we were targeting were supplying their products to food companies, and that all the information we had about what was happening on the farms could also be very useful to the factories in organising the supply chain. So we started to move from the farmers to the industry, and I think that was another milestone.
Because once we started working with a lot of food companies, they helped us expand our operations outside the Iberian Peninsula and we started working in Egypt, California and Chile, for example, and our growth became more consistent. We realised that our potential was huge because farmers in California and Morocco had the same problems as those in Spain and Portugal.
We have always been very open-minded in looking for alliances that could be useful for us to expand our activities. We knew that we could only grow by working with other companies, so we approached xFarm Technologies and realised that we had a lot in common. For example, our view of the industry and the future, but also the way we manage our work internally. Our alliance felt very natural.
The first is our soil characterisation service, called BIOMap2Soil. It is a unique service, very difficult to offer, but we have gained a lot of experience and a large market share. Soil characterisation means knowing what is in the soil on a farm in terms of texture, water holding capacity, nutrients and diseases. The first thing all farmers do is try to know their soil. This is usually done by taking a few samples and sending them to a laboratory, but the results only give information about the specific locations where the samples were taken. So if a farm is 30 hectares, what about the rest of the area? How representative are the samples? Our soil characterisation service, on the other hand, provides information about the soil situation across the whole farm. It gives farmers an insight into the nitrogen content of every square metre of their farm, rather than just a few spots where they take samples. Our soil characterisation allows us to look at the physical or chemical parameters of the soil, such as texture and nutrients, but also its biological properties, which is extremely important because biological activity in the soil affects crops.
We call it crop monitoring and it allows you to know what is happening in a crop. Through this suite of services, we can provide recommendations, such as irrigation advice, or alerts so that farmers know when they have a problem or are going to have a problem. For each part of a farm, we determine whether the crop's behaviour is in line with a set of pre-defined standards. This means that we can detect deviations or anomalies and alert growers so that they can act accordingly, with a specific treatment or fertiliser, or manage an area differently, or whatever. Crop monitoring also develops predictive models of yield in terms of quantity and quality.
Sure. Let's take olive trees: we use a predictive model that we've developed over the last few years that predicts what the yield will be - in tonnes per hectare - in each part of a farm. This means that the results can be linked to the management of a particular area of a farm. These predictive models also allow me to know the quality and maturity of production in each part of my farm. In the case of olive trees, for example, farmers can harvest at the right time: when the oil content is higher and before it starts to lose its organoleptic properties.
We use satellite information and soil samples; we tell farmers where to take the samples, trying to minimise their quantity - and therefore cost - while ensuring they are as representative as possible. And the most important element is our knowledge to create those predictive models using samples and satellite images.
The main objective is to provide our users with an integrated solution so that they have all the information they need to manage their business in one tool. The challenge is to show our users that we can improve what we have done separately in the past, and that they will benefit in terms of usability and features.
Everything in agriculture starts and ends in the soil. That's why we have an obligation to manage the soil in a way that is sustainable, not only environmentally but also economically. It is vital that we manage the soil in a way that makes it more productive over time, and through soil characterisation we can assess how the practices farmers use affect the soil.
Almond trees, olive trees, alfalfa, stone fruit, avocado and tomato. We currently support more than 11,000 hectares of tomato crops which is more than half of the tomato area in Spain and Portugal.
We are very proud to be a major player in the tomato industry, working with major producers not only in the Iberian Peninsula but also on a global level. And I'm very proud to say that we now work in Morocco, Egypt, Chile and California. We're very proud to offer our services in California, which is the heart of technology for agriculture. And this joint alliance with xFarm Technologies will help us increase our presence there.
I see a bright future for what is now the first player in Europe in our sector. If we're the first player in a market as difficult as Europe, I'm sure we'll be the first player on a global scale.
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