"Traditionally, the way the fertilizer has been applied, only 30% of the total fertilizer gets taken by the crop, so a majority of it gets wasted, Tian said. Farmers usually do one application per season, so they have to front load a lot of the fertilizer. But the crops need the fertilizer during the season as well. We knew there was that problem that a lot of our growers really wanted different solutions to."
"The founders of Upside Robotics met in 2023 because they were both looking to build an impact-driven company that touched climate and agriculture. Less than a year later, they were sleeping in a camper on the side of a Canadian corn field building their robotics startup. Waterloo, Ontario-based Upside Robotics builds lightweight solar-powered autonomous robots that deliver right-sized amounts of fertilizer and nutrients to crops when they need it."
Upside Robotics develops lightweight, solar-powered autonomous robots that apply right-sized amounts of fertilizer and nutrients to crops when needed. The company's software uses proprietary algorithms that combine weather and soil data to decide when and how much fertilizer to apply. The initial focus is corn due to its high fertilizer intensity. The founders met in 2023 at the Entrepreneur First accelerator and combined robotics and chemical engineering backgrounds. Farmer customer discovery validated demand for improved fertilizer delivery. The company was formally founded in 2024 and tested systems while living beside fields.
Read at TechCrunch
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