Taranis and Lanafil bring precision ag to Uruguay

Precision agriculture intelligence company Taranis announced its partnership with Lanafil, a Uruguayan distributor of fertilisers and plant protection products, bringing precision agriculture to the Uruguayan market.

Taranis will provide the Uruguayan agriculture industry and Lanafil’s customer base of local farmers with access to a comprehensive remote scouting platform that analyses crop conditions and provides insights to help improve yields and increase farmers’ incomes.

AI combined with aerial imagery

Taranis’s platform combines artificial intelligence with submillimeter resolution aerial imagery to help farmers and crop consultants identify and treat crop threats, including pests, diseases, weeds, and nutrient deficiency in real-time.

The company’s proprietary AI analyses three image types – “AI2” 0.5mm per pixel leaf-level drone imagery; ultra-high-resolution full-field imagery from planes; and satellite imagery at 1.2 meter per pixel resolution – and cross-references those images against Taranis’s agronomic knowledgebase of over one million crop health issues. The system detects threats early and formulates customised treatment plans based on crop types, regional environmental conditions, and other factors that can be uploaded directly to users’ smartphones or tablets.

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The Taranis system detects threats early and formulates customised treatment plans based on crop types, regional environmental conditions, and other factors that can be uploaded directly to users’ smartphones or tablets. – Photo: Taranis

COVID-19 crisis

“Uruguay is a particularly exciting market, as our platform is especially suitable for growing commodity crops like soybeans, wheat, and corn, as many Uruguayan farmers do. And with the COVID-19 crisis raging, innovative technologies that improve yields and enable remote scouting are more critical than ever before. We are proud that our AI-backed technology can provide the assistance food producers need to meet their goals during this difficult time,” said Jorge Winiar, GM Latin America, Taranis.

Drones and planes

Taranis targets high volume commodity crops, such as soybeans, wheat, and corn, which together account for 83% of Uruguay’s cereal crop fields. Using drones that scout up to 1,200 hectares per day and planes that scout up to 4,000 hectares per day, Taranis can scout 100 points in six minutes, as opposed to 10 points in more than an hour using human workers, increasing yields. Taranis will be made available to Uruguayan farmers and crop consultants, connecting them to precision agriculture technologies that boost food production and incomes.

“Lanafil is committed to helping our customers meet their goal of increasing local food production to meet global food demand,” said Luis Martínez, Commercial Manager of Lanafil. “This can only be achieved with access to the most cutting-edge products, and we believe our partnership with Taranis will provide Uruguay’s farmers with the groundbreaking precision agriculture solutions needed to step up to the challenge.”

Uruguay will be the 14th country in which Taranis’s products are available to farmers, joining the US, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Russia, Chile, Peru, Paraguay, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Australia, and Israel.