Ireland punches above its weigh when it comes to food production and food exports. But is it being left behind in the new wave of Agricultural Technologies sweeping through food production systems across the world?

To ensure this does not happen, the Irish Farmers Journal is running an AgTech Summit in the RDS, Dublin on Wednesday and Thursday 29 and 30 March. The summit brings together a unique combination of technology leaders, drivers of innovation within the ag industry, successful start-ups and the investor community. It aims to highlight the opportunities that exist when agricultural and technological sectors work together.

The goal of the summit is to accelerate the adoption of sustainable, resource-efficient agricultural technologies, through knowledge-sharing and the formation of new partnerships and alliances between key stakeholders.

Attending the conference will give an invaluable insight into how the potential changes will affect all agricultural businesses. The focus is to enable attendees to make ideas a reality and increase efficiency in the sector at farm level, all the way through to retail, and drive production and profitability.

Charlie Sheridan, director internet of things at Intel and Vincent McKey, business development manager at IBM are just two of the speakers on the technology side to outline what they believe the future of food production will look like. On the agriculture side, William McKnight of John Deere will set out what efficiencies and data harvesting will yield for the industry.

The potential to collect data on farms and throughout the food chain is growing exponentially. “Over 60% of all data collected may never leave the farm. This is driven by the increased volumes or data produced and battery power, a major challenge. With more powerful and smaller chips it takes much less power to process it on the farm,” says Charlie Sheridan director IoT systems research lab INTEL, a keynote speaker.

“IBM has 3,000 researchers focused on smart agricultural research. They work with partners to develop platforms for the analysis of the data that creates added value. IBM recently purchased The Weather Company, which is a significant game change in what IBM is going to be doing, as it gives access to over 3bn weather points around the world,” says Vincent McKey of IBM,who is responsible for strategy, development, implementation, and growth of all IBM’s business in Ireland across multiple divisions.

The second session aims to connect funding with ideas. Over $10bn has been invested in ag tech in the last three years. Much of this money is from outside investors, who see agriculture as the next big industry in which disruption is certain to happen.

Tom Kelly, head of the manufacturing and competitiveness division at Enterprise Ireland will identify the potential they see in the ag-tech sector.

Paul Finnerty is well known in agricultural and food circles, as former CEO of ABP Food Group. He will be speaking at the conference is his new role as chair of the Yield Lab, Ireland.

Dutch company Anterra Capital, an international food and agriculture growth capital firm, has raised over €100m, making it the largest venture capital fund of its kind in Europe. “The global food system needs innovative solutions, but building companies in the complex and conservative food sector can be challenging,” said Adam Anders, Anterra managing partner.

The final session will focus on businesses that have connected.

Dairymaster is well known for embracing ag-tech and CEO, Edmond Harty will set out the path the company has taken and where it is heading.

new technology

Two exciting new companies, Treemetrics and Moocall, with outline their success and challenges in developing new technology.

Treemetrics was founded in 2005 by Enda Keane and Garrett Mullooly. This software-based company has spent a number of years developing new technology to replace the traditional forestry methods, which have been in place for over 100 years. Nowadays, Treemetrics provides pioneering solutions to the global forest industry, over more than 16 countries, pioneering what they call the “Internet of Trees”.

Moocall CEO Emmet Savage will outline how they successful developed a device that is worn on a cow’s tail and texts the farmer when she is calving.

Within just over two years, they have sold over 15,000 devices in over 50 countries. “We’ve distribution partners in Finland, Germany, Norway, France, Italy, Australia and New Zealand, and we’re very close to signing seven to eight more partners in Europe and into China, Emmet recently told the Irish Farmers Journal.

Over €4m has been invested into the business to date and the next new product they hope to bring to market is already being developed.

This event is being organised by the Irish Farmers Journal.