The Amsterdam based startup Farm21 announces the release of its smart farming platform and field sensors. 

A single Farm21’s field sensor measures soil moisture at three depths, soil temperature, air temperature and air humidity. The low price of $85 per sensor allows growers to create multiple measurement points per field. More sensors greatly increases the quality and accuracy of the data. With this highly accurate and reliable field insights, growers are able to increase crop yield and save on valuable resources.

The Farm21 sensors work completely wireless. Data is transmitted via LoRa, which is a long range, low energy network. Farm21 has partnerships with commercial LoRa providers in several countries, ensuring nationwide coverage. In other locations, growers are able to build their own network with a LoRa gateway. Farm21 offers preconfigured plug and play gateways. A gateway has a range of 1.25-3 miles. Due to the low energy requirements of the network, a sensor can send year round hourly data on a single, replaceable, battery.

A gateway sends data through to the Farm21 platform. Here, the data is translated into concrete farming advice. The online dashboard can be accessed by growers on all devices. Updates and improvements with added value for growers are made every month. 

“A grower decides with whom he shares his data," says says Thomas Houwers, Co-Founder and CEO of Farm21. "He can choose to share his insights with crop advisors or colleagues for example.”

Farm21’s short term goal is to improve the advice from their assistant by including other data sources such as local weather data. This update, expected halfway in 2020, will enhance the quality of the advice.