Skippy Scout, a crop-scouting mobile phone application, developed by farming brothers Jack and Hugh Wrangham of Drone Ag, has entered its second phase of crowdfunding, after raising nearly 30 per cent of its target £250,000 funds through an initial private investment phase.
A crowdfunding page is open until May 25, 2019 for anyone who wishes to invest in the company, and benefit from its services. The funds raised will help the business develop new features, increase the company’s staffing, and take the product to market in the next 18 months.
The autonomous crop-scouting app is designed to help farmers save time and costs, increase yields and efficiency on farm, and use less chemicals. Skippy Scout will autonomously fly a drone around a given field and collect very high resolution crop-level photos at pre-determined points.
The drones can analyse up to two hectares per minute of flight, making the crop scouting exercise up to 10 times faster than a person on foot. Leaf-level imagery collected by the camera is sent directly to the user’s smartphone, where it can be analysed and immediately provide crop information to assist in decision making.
Drone Ag co-founder and director Jack Wrangham said his ambition was to bring easy-to-use, economical technology to farmers, to help them make better decisions, increase yield and profitability, while reducing inputs and costs.
We’re excited about bringing Skippy Scout to market and demonstrating the benefits of improved efficiency in agriculture,” he added. “We’ve been delighted by the response to our crowdfunding campaign so far, which allows everyone to invest and share in our success. It’s important to us that we encourage investment from the very communities that’ll benefit the most from Skippy Scout, as well as reach all those interested in improving global agriculture and food production, through technology.”
The app is currently being trialed by more than 200 users signed up to test it, including individual farmers, agronomists, and large agronomy businesses. The commercial version, once launched, will run as an SaaS (subscription as a service) with two subscription tiers for farmers and consultants. Future development is aimed at integrating AI in development to automatically detect green area index, weeds, disease and growth stage, and add variable-rate mapping that will export to farm machinery and allow targeted applications.
The digital farming manager at Hutchinson’s, Lewis McKerrow, who’s testing the Skippy Scout app, said targeted agronomy was fast becoming a reality, and Skippy Scout had the potential to compliment this by helping agronomists to capture images from particular points of interest in the field.
“Agronomy decisions will undoubtedly become more data driven and Skippy Scout offers a unique approach to drone use in agriculture to enhance decision making,” he added. “What really excites me, though, is the potential as Skippy develops to send the drone to specific areas identified by other datasets such as satellite imagery, or soil type variations.”
Drone Ag founders Jack and Hugh are offering investors a stake in their entire company, not just the Skippy Scout app. The team also has significant expertise and IP in drone-based spraying technology, which will play an important role in the future of agricultural crop protection. The company also has revenue generated by the sale of sensors to R&D clients and training courses for drone users.
For more information visit: www.droneag.farm.
