Farm Dog Technologies Raises $750K to Democratize Precision Agriculture
Farm Dog Technologies has secured $750K in seed funding, establishing the company as the champion for precision agriculture solutions for small and medium-sized farms.
Tel Aviv, Israel, August 31, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Farm Dog Technologies Raises $750K to Democratize Precision Agriculture
Farm Dog Technologies has secured $750K in seed funding, establishing the company as the champion for precision agriculture solutions for small and medium-sized farms. The round, led by lool Ventures, will be used to enhance the company's technology and grow its team.
Managing inputs in real time can save water, money and time which is important for every farmer, not just the big ones, and Farm Dog is working towards filling that market gap.
Carole Jett, Former Deputy Chief of Staff at the USDA
Farm Dog provides an insights platform built specifically for the small and medium-sized farm, which tends to grow a different set of crops, operate different equipment and have different financial considerations than its larger counterparts. The platform utilizes proprietary in-field sensors, machine learning analytics and user dashboard. After initial pilots in Israel and the United States, Farm Dog expects savings in water, fertilizer and pesticide use of up to 25% while also creating positive effects on crop yield.
Farm Dog’s ability to build an advanced and affordable insights platform relies on a team composed of veterans of Israel’s intelligence community. While many of their colleagues choose to enter the cyber security industry, Farm Dog’s team utilizes skills built in Unit 8200 (elite intelligence corps), satellite imagery, and reconnaissance to analyze the multiple and disparate data sources in agriculture and provide farmers with actionable insights.
In addition to the intelligence field, the team members come from farming, agronomy, post-harvest, Internet-of-Things (IoT) and product backgrounds with experience at McKinsey & Company, Wix, AGT International and farm-to-fork restaurants. Working out of a converted two-story chicken coop in an agricultural community outside of Tel Aviv, the company also has the support of Intel’s IoT Innovation Lab in Haifa.
“Farm Dog's mission to democratize the precision agriculture revolution is much needed,” said Farm Dog CEO Liron Brish. “The fact is, most technologies that help farmers grow more with less are only available to the largest of farms. This leaves over 10 million farms in the US and Europe and millions more around the world searching for solutions to maintain their competitiveness.”
Farm Dog’s funding is noteworthy as it comes on the heels of the Midyear AgTech Investing Report by AgFunder, the online investment platform for accredited investors investing in agriculture and agriculture technology. The report disclosed a median seed round for agriculture start-ups in the first half of 2015 of $250K, placing Farm Dog’s round far above that amount.
Farm Dog expects the market for its solution to increase over time as farmers in the developed world feel increasing pressure to adopt sustainability technologies while the number of small and medium-sized farming enterprises in the developing world increase due to consolidation of smallholder plots.
“Managing inputs in real time can save water, money and time which is important for every farmer, not just the big ones, and Farm Dog is working towards filling that market gap,” said Carole Jett, former Deputy Chief of Staff at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Farm Dog Advisor.
About Farm Dog
Farm Dog democratizes precision agriculture across all farm sizes. The Company combines an Internet-of-Things sensor network with a machine learning data platform to help farmers make more informed decisions on optimized resource use and long-term land sustainability. Farm Dog was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in an agricultural community outside of Tel Aviv, Israel in a converted two-story chicken coop.