By Jennifer Dorsett
Field Editor
The 2021 Farm Bureau Ag Innovation Challenge seeks to identify top entrepreneurs working to address challenges farmers and ranchers face on their operations, such as access to labor, optimizing yield and reducing operating costs.
A Texas startup has placed in the top 10 semi-finalists of the national competition, thanks to the company’s cutting-edge approach to gathering data while facing an age-old problem: lack of internet access on many farms and ranches.
Parasanti, a veteran and farmer-led company, offers a simple, affordable, Internet of Things (IoT) plug-and-play solution to farmers and ranchers seeking to capture and analyze data, all without the need for a broadband connection.
“Farmers and ranchers need hyper-localized insights from their on-farm data. They have data coming off their farms but really no way to derive insights that would help them do things like increase crop yields or monitor weather patterns,” Max Adams, Parasanti’s head of business development, said. “But we call ourselves the ‘blue collar analytics company.’ What that means is we’re dedicated to providing and delivering advanced analytics to those who traditionally haven’t had access to them, with a particular emphasis being on the farmer and the rancher. Farmers can just plug their sensor into the ground and go from zero to insights in a matter of seconds.”
The company’s flagship product package is a sensor, edge device and software program.
The edge device stores data from the sensor, which can be uploaded to a computer, phone or tablet.
The Parasanti software on the edge device analyzes the data sets based on each customer’s unique needs.
The sensors can pull in an array of farm data, including soil moisture, alkalinity, conductivity and UV light exposure.
Adams noted ranchers could use the data sensors to collect biometric data from livestock to determine illness, times of peak fertility and more.
This data has been collectable for quite some time, he said. But since most devices and software on the market require internet access, it was basically useless to farmers and ranchers for real-time analysis.
Co-founder of the startup, Josh Seagroves, is an Army veteran who now farms in Williamson County, found himself in a similar situation in combat in Afghanistan.
“One of the issues Josh encountered while being in Afghanistan and Iraq was there’s a great flow of downstream data, but not so much upstream,” Adams said. “Frankly, it’s still a problem today, and believe it or not, the same issues with data really mapped over to the farm and rural areas in the United States, as well, where there wasn’t good bandwidth connection. So, Josh, as both a veteran and a farmer, saw those parallels and wanted to build a product that solved the issues for those spaces.”
Parasanti has already found success working with farms across the country, including Sohnrey Family Foods from Northern California. According to Adams, since Sohnrey implemented Parasanti devices into the family’s rice farming operation, they have been able to cut water usage by about 10 percent, or 360 million gallons.
“Recently, we’ve been having conversations with a couple of large pecan and tree orchards in Texas that we’re looking to kind of expand our operation with,” Adams said. “We’re very excited to see where our participation in the contest takes us. We’re looking forward to it.”
As one of the 10 semi-finalist teams in the Ag Innovation Challenge, Parasanti was awarded $7,500 in start-up funds.
The startup will compete for the Farm Bureau Entrepreneur of the Year Award during the AFBF virtual convention in January.
During the virtual event, $15,000 will be awarded to two finalist teams, $20,000 will be awarded to the People’s Choice Award winner and $50,000 will be awarded to the 2021 Farm Bureau Entrepreneur of the Year.
The AFBF challenge is funded solely by corporate sponsors—Farm Credit, Bayer Crop Science, John Deere, Farm Bureau Bank, Farm Bureau Financial Services and FMC Corporation—to ensure the national organization can continue the competition to support startup businesses.
More information about the contest is available at fb.org/land/ag-innovation-challenge-2021.