An agtech company from the Netherlands is about to make landfall on
US soil with a new technology it says could change the way farmers
manage soil fertility.
With its initiatives
Springg and SoilCares, the company, Dutch Sprouts, works with Talend, a
big data integration company, to blend a mix of hardware and software to
gather and analyze soil samples around the globe. It all starts with a
handheld scanner that allows you to analyze soils on the go, according
to Angelique van Helvoort, head of marketing and communications with
Dutch Sprouts.
“You simply scan the soil
and transfer it to our database,” she says. “Within minutes, a readout
and fertilizer advice is sent to the user’s smartphone. In total, the
process takes about ten minutes. It’s really quite easy.”
The scanner uses
mid-infrared reflectance and near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy to
“see” detailed information about the soil’s organic components and
texture. It also enables you to learn about the soil’s concentrations of
pH and the main nutrients. By using the same scanner but different
algorithms, livestock producers will soon also be able to determine
nutrient levels in animal feed.
The key to success is
having a broad database so the samples are correctly calibrated and can
make accurate predictions about nutrient levels in the soil. To do this,
thousands of samples must be taken. Through artificial intelligence and
machine learning, each subsequent sample gets more and more accurate.
“It improves with every sample added to the database,” van Helvoort says. More