Irish Agritech Innovation: Driving Growth in Start-ups and Agriculture

Reap Interactive is Enterprise Ireland's new start-up innovator champion

From left: Robert Shine, Kieran Supple, Ronan Boyle. Image: Orla Murray/Coalesce This year's winners include a bovine monitoring tool, a system to reduce slurry emissions and a way to grow potatoes faster. Roscommon-based agritech Reap Interactive bagged the Start-up Innovator of the Year award as well as a €10,000 prize for its livestock management tool at Enterprise Ireland's latest Innovation Arena Awards. Nine finalists took part in a live pitching competition in front of a panel of judges and an audience at the National Ploughing Championships in Co Laois yesterday (17 September). BovinePlus, Reap Interactive's innovation, tracks individual animals and uses AI and image analysis to provide real-time data on the weight, health and water intake of the animals. The system identifies issues including underperforming animals and enhances the efficiency of the feed provided to them. The gleaned data can offer insights that can boost farm profitability and efficiency. BovinePlus is already used in farms in Ireland and Reap Interactive plans to expand into England, Europe and the US with an investment of €1m funded by Enterprise Ireland and a private equity investor. "You're not looking at herd average, you're looking at every one of them individually so that they're being reared in the most efficient manner possible and that has a knock-on environmental impact," the company's founder Kieran Supple told the Business Post earlier this year. Also battling it out for the start-up innovator award were Cotter Agritech and RT Sales. Cotter Agritech previously won the first AgTech UCD accelerator programme for start-ups in 2022. The other winners on the day were Samco Agricultural Manufacturing, which won the Innovation Arena Championship Award, and Easyfix, which won the Green Impact Award. The Innovation Arena Champion Award is given to an established company focused on scaling and innovation. Samco won for their new application system and mulch film that allows for potatoes to be planted earlier in the season. Green Impact Award winner Easyfix's new technology stimulates bacterial growth in slurry to reduce ammonia and methane emissions. Low electrical current is passed through slurry, or liquid livestock manure, that stimulates the growth of bacteria. "We believe that Irish-owned enterprises can, over time, be the prime driver of the Irish economy, and Irish agritech companies and farm families will have an important role to play in that shared ambition," said Enterprise Ireland CEO Leo Clancy. Last year's Start-up Innovator of the Year was Proveye, an agritech based in NovaUCD, that removes noise from image data, making it easier to understand and derive insights. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

9 agritech companies competing for innovation awards

Finalists at this year's Enterprise Ireland's Innovation Awards include a dosing gun designed to reduce medicine usage, a smart weighing scales and software to optimise parasite control. The National Ploughing Championships kicks off today (17 September) and will include some of the most innovative agritech start-ups in the country. As part of the event, Enterprise Ireland will host its annual Innovation Arena Awards, where nine start-ups have been named finalists for their innovative tech. Three companies have been named as finalists in each of the three categories, and each start-up will deliver a live pitch in front of a panel of judges this afternoon. This year's Start-up Innovator of the Year award comes with a €10,000 prize, while the new Green Impact Award 2024 will honour a company whose innovation is focused on sustaining the development of food and farming for future generations to come. Meanwhile, the Innovation Arena Champion 2024 prize will be awarded to an established company with a focus on scaling and innovation. Enterprise Ireland CEO, Leo Clancy, said Ireland's agritech innovators are "shaping the sector globally". "It is their innovations and solutions which are driving efficiencies and helping to address global challenges by meeting growing demands for food, safeguarding our planet for future generations and ensuring farm families have good livings," he said. Brandon Bioscience Brandon Bioscience is a marine biotech company based in Co Kerry and founded in 1998. The company was the overall winner at the Innovation Arena Awards in 2021 for its biostimulant product using brown seaweed extracts, which can reduce chemical nitrogen input on farms by up to 20pc. The company's latest innovation focuses on reducing pod shatter (the natural process that plants use to disperse their ripe seeds)in rapeseed. The company's product does this by helping with the elasticity of the pod containing the seeds, especially in the period before harvest. Cotter Agritech Limerick-based Cotter Agritech was founded by brothers Jack and Nick Cotter in 2019. The founders have built Cotter Crate, a sheep monitoring system that uses hardware and software to help farmers keep track of their animals and identify which ones need treatment. With this, the start-up was named best agri-engineering start-up at the Innovation Arena Awards in 2019. In 2022, the company was also one of three start-ups to win big at the AgTechUCD accelerator. Their latest innovation, Automed, is an automatic dosing gun that integrates with the company's existing SmartWorm automatic parasite detection software to deliver precision medication administration for livestock. Dairymaster Kerry-based dairy equipment manufacturer Dairymaster is no stranger to the Ploughing Championships, having bagged the top prize in 2015 for its Swiftflo Commander processing system. The company has a wide product range of milking parlour systems, equipment and management software for milk cooling, feeding, and slurry handling, as well as health and fertility monitoring. In 2018, it scored at a €2m R&D partnership with IT Tralee and the software research centre Lero to develop intelligent autonomous systems for farms. Now, it's bringing its DairyVue 360 product to the Innovation Arena, a digital farm management platform that analyses all aspects of herd performance in the milking parlour, giving the farmer real insights for decision support on farm. EasyFix Founded in 1996, EasyFix is a family-owned business that designs, develops and markets a wide range of products for the agricultural, equine and safety industries. The company is now focused on reducing ammonia and methane emissions in slurry storage systems, using technology that stimulates bacterial growth, which reduces ammonia and methane emissions in storage. Their new technology system works by delivering a low electrical current that stimulates the growth of bacteria in storage which reduces emissions. Grassland Agro Grassland Agro was formed when Liam Woulfe's already-established Grassland Fertiliser merged with Timac Agro Ireland in 2013. The Dublin-based company specialises in soil, plant and animal nutrition. The company's product is a urease inhibitor, which protects against nitrogen loss through the volatilisation stage of the nitrogen cycle. Previously, it was not possible to combine this inhibitor with phosphorus-based fertilisers due to degradation as a result of the acidity of these fertilisers. The company's Glaze Extend Blend overcomes this challenge by buffering the inhibitor against the acidic effects of the phosphorus-based fertiliser. Mastek Having been in operation since 2000, Mastek is a leading manufacturer of low-emission slurry equipment and applicators, such as dribble bars, trailing shoes and umbilical systems. A previous prize winner at the Ploughing Championships, the company's HQ is in Cootehill, Co Cavan with an additional office in Shrewsbury, England. Its latest innovation is the unique Flexi Shoe applicator, a sustainably focused product that aims to provide lower emission slurry application, especially in unlevel lands. The machine delivers the slurry in a band just underneath the grass surface, which reduces the loss of ammonia into the atmosphere. Reap Interactive Reap Interactive began operating in 2021 and aims to disrupt farming with data-driven performance monitoring. To do this, the company has developed BovinePlus, which is designed to track each animal individually, eliminating reliance on herd averages. This tech uses AI and image analysis to provide real-time data on weight, health and water intake, optimising profitability by pinpointing issues such as underperforming animals and enhancing feed efficiency. RT Sales RT Sales is a family-owned business jointly run by Johnny Reidy and his son-in-law Padraig Teahan with more than 20 years of experience in hedge-cutting contracting. The company has now designed and manufactured its own hedge cutters, the RT ProArm Hedgecutter range, which features their patented mounting system. This mounting system optimises safety by stabilising rear mounted grass mowers and eliminating the need for axle brackets on a tractor. In an interview with the Irish Farmers' Journal, Teahan said they wanted to create a design that "allowed machines to be easily interchangeable between tractors". Samco Agricultural Manufacturing Another former prize winner is Samco Agricultural Manufacturing, a start-up that focuses on the machinery, technology and mulch film sectors. The company, which is a family-run business based in Limerick, in won a prize in 2017 for agri-engineering SME. Now, Samco is now focused on early potatoes in Italy, and has developed a new application system and mulch film designed around establishing earlier planting and growth of the crop. The potato plant establishes an earlier growth pattern due to the microclimate generated by the film covering the surface above the plant, which in turn will enable earlier harvesting and entry to the market. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

How Ireland's agritech sector continues to thrive

With the 2024 Ploughing Championships kicking off, we take a closer look at Ireland's agritech scene and some of its best success stories. Agriculture is unsurprisingly one of the Ireland's key sectors, with Irish agrifood exports worth €19bn in 2022. This strong agricultural base provides an ideal market for the agritech industry, with a whole host of start-ups, research and innovations based around the agriculture space. In fact, as Ireland's National Ploughing Championships returns to Co Laois for its 92nd year, it's important to take stock of the country's incredible innovations. Farm-focused start-ups Successful start-ups include Kildare-based Dairy Robotics, University College Dublin (UCD) spin-out ProvEye and Limerick's Cotter Agritech, many of which have continued to grow since they first stepped onto the scene. For example, ProvEye, which develops image-based analytics technology for agriculture and the environment, was recently selected as one of 15 global companies to take part in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) clean energy accelerator programme. Tipperary-based Herdwatch, which aims to digitise and streamline livestock farming, secured a multimillion-euro investment at the end of 2022 and has since snapped up Dublin-based farm software provider Kingswood Computing as well as ComTag and UK-based Lilac Technology. Meanwhile, Roscommon-based agritech start-up Farmeye - which has recently rebranded as Senus - has gained funding support from the European Space Agency for its hedgerow conservation and management project. Research and innovation It's not the start-up scene that's showing off Ireland's agritech chops. Last year, UCD opened a new agritech facility to boost education, entrepreneurship and innovation in the sector. The €4.8m facility is based at UCD Lyons Farm in Kildare, which contains 250 hectares of farmland that is used for research and teaching purposes, as well as labs, meeting rooms, offices and space for exhibitions and seminars. Additionally, a Sustainable Food Systems and AgTech programme was one of four programmes announced earlier this year to receive €7m in funding, as agritech was named a key sector, along with medtech, cybersecurity and digital health. Meanwhile, VistaMilk, the research centre focused on agriculture, has nurturing research in the agritech field since it launched in 2018. Some of its projects in recent years include developing a way to help farmers breed cattle based on their "carbon hoofprint", creating sensor technology to measure the levels of nitrates in soils more accurately, using 'dairy drones' and AI to help farmers decide where their cows should graze and developing a device that can remotely monitor cow health. We've also spoken to researchers and workers within the field - pun intended - to ensure that animal healthcare is a key factor. For example, molecular biologist Jennifer Drohan is focusing on 'programming' E coli bacteria to receive and send information from inside the body of an animal. "The work we're doing will provide farmers with a non-invasive, greener solution to monitoring cattle health, which in turn will improve the efficiency and environmental sustainability of the Irish national herd," she told SiliconRepublic.com. Meanwhile, Catherine Heffernan from MSD's Animal Health Intelligence division, works with a range of cutting-edge technologies, including a new monitoring technology for cows called Sensehub, which monitors animals' reproduction and health status "This technology allows farmers and vets to make proactive and informed decisions to improve animal health, welfare and performance every day, leveraging real-time data to achieve the best results." Staying ahead of challenges Speaking to SiliconRepublic.com, Padraig Hennessy, chair of Agtech Ireland, which represents organisations within the sector, said Ireland's strong tech presence along with its agricultural roots are what make the sector so vibrant. "Many Irish people are just one or two generations removed from farming, giving them a deep understanding of agricultural challenges," he said. "This connection, alongside Ireland's thriving tech industry, allows for a natural synergy where technological innovation is applied to farming practices." However, the industry is not without its challenges. While many of the impressive innovations coming out of the agritech sector focus on improving sustainable practices within the farming industry, there can be a reluctance to adopt these new technologies. "Farmers, often operating on tight margins, are hesitant to invest in technologies, even if they can improve efficiency in the long run," said Hennessy. "Also, technologies can seem complex if farmers are not familiar with technology in general." He added that in order to improve tech adoption on farms, the Government need to continue utilising mechanisms such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme (TAMS), which offers grant aid for certain on-farm capital investments. "Additionally, I believe farmers need to be educated on how agritech can improve profitability and sustainability, while offering hands-on training for easier implementation." Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.