Bitwise Agronomy and their growing technology

From a local vineyard in Tasmania to mass global adoption, Bitwise Agronomy is combining traditional farming with modern technology to create ease and efficiency in the agricultural industry. AusIndustry spoke to Fiona Turner, CEO and co-founder, about combining her passion for tech with her love of agriculture and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to enhance farming productivity worldwide.

Fiona Turner, CEO of Bitwise Agronomy (Bitwise Ag), grew up on a farm in New Zealand before moving to Australia. After years in the tech world, the farm lifestyle beckoned in 2016, taking Fiona and her partner to Jinglers Creek vineyard in Tasmania, Australia.

As work required her to travel, Fiona faced the huge challenge of remotely managing the vineyard. She sought advisors but to make decisions and maximise outputs, Fiona still needed actionable information about her crops. This realisation led to a pivotal moment in her career. Her idea for a data-driven approach to farming would soon become Bitwise Agronomy.

Aran Elkington, Bitwise Ag Chief Technology Officer, had worked with Fiona at AECOM, a leading infrastructure consulting firm in Queensland. When he got the call, Aran was immediately on board. His software engineering background compliments Fiona’s agricultural and business experience. Whilst he lives in Queensland, the duo remain a strong and connected team.

“I’m a farmer myself, so I can bring that knowledge. Then Aran's got the software engineering and architecture and CTO skillset, so he gets really deep in the build of the tech and the glue that keeps the technology running…we’re a really good team working together.”

2020 saw Fiona and Aran enlist the input of other farmers and agronomists to create the GreenView system. The system addresses the challenges facing growers every season: forecasting, crop variability, and adverse weather events.

Fiona’s understanding of farming operational needs informs how Bitwise Ag provides information to farmers, helping them increase forecast accuracy and reduce operating costs. Farmers who use GreenView can get 90% (or more) accuracy – giving confidence to the entire supply chain and ensuring a stable price for farmers and consumers.

The impact of the GreenView system

Consistent with their user-first mentality, Bitwise Ag’s GreenView system makes AI accessible and user friendly. Customers attach a GoPro camera to their farm machinery, capturing footage whilst the farmer continues about their work mulching, mowing or spraying.

“We've counted over 6 billion blueberries. So if you imagine lining the road from here to Darwin and back of blueberry bushes, that's what we're looking at.”

GreenView only requires footage for about 5% of the crop to produce accurate block-level information. GreenView sees like an agronomist, delivering information on the different phenological stages of a plant from flower to ripe fruit. From here, quantitative datasets, maps, forecasting tools and information are shared via the dashboard. With this information, farmers can make better decisions about labour needs for sales, harvesting, packing and shipping. Ultimately saving on time and money and increasing profitability.

Tasmania’s natural features make it a logical hub for AgTech, “we're an island where we have such diverse cropping and diverse farming practices and farming types here.”

Testing on her home vineyard and connecting with the local farming community has made the startup experience easier. Bitwise continues to utilise real-time insights on challenges in the farming industry, fuelling their rapid growth.

An AusIndustry connection - not just a business transaction

Fiona says “when you’re doing something completely new and disruptive…you don't know what the outcome is going to be, so it's really important to have a strong network around you.”

Kevin Turner (no relation), Regional Manager for Northern Tasmania, has been integral to the Bitwise Ag journey. The Business Outreach Network fill an important role for startup founders. Located right across Australia, they share government information, programs, tools and resources. Regional Managers also connect businesses to each other to learn and collaborate.

This means business owners like Fiona can focus on their game changing ideas, knowing someone is looking out for them. “If there’s something that we have missed or new grant programs come out…I know that I’ll get a call and you’ll [Kevin] help fill us in about that” Fiona says.

Kevin describes the Regional Manager role as building the long-term relationship and trust – guiding, rather than telling a business what to do. Fiona and Kevin joke about seeing each other at the local farmer’s markets - something you don’t get when your link to government support is based in another state or territory.

“Even though you [Kevin Turner, Regional Manager] are our connection into government, we've sort of touched base on so many different areas of our lives now that it's like having a true friend within the organisation, that’s guiding us and helping us get the most out of it.”

Thanks to information from Kevin, Bitwise Agronomy has benefitted from accessing the Research & Development (R&D) Tax Incentive. Access to this incentive has enabled them to reinvest money into their product and developing the technology year upon year. Fiona says the R&D Tax Incentive has been instrumental to their growth.

The R&D Tax Incentive is a self-assessment program where you register your eligible research and development activities with the Department of Industry, Science and Resources before claiming the offset in your annual income tax return with the Australian Taxation Office. As well as providing financial support, the R&D Tax Incentive can be an opportunity to collaborate with registered Research Service Providers.

The program helps companies to innovate and grow by offsetting some costs of eligible research and development (R&D). The Australian Government encourages companies to do R&D through the incentive program, as new knowledge, technology and processes benefit businesses, communities and the broader Australian economy.

The R&D Tax Incentive offers:

• a refundable tax offset for eligible entities whose aggregated turnover is less than $20 million

• a non-refundable tax offset for eligible entities with an aggregated turnover greater than $20 million.

Bitwise Ag have accessed other government support to increase their growth into overseas markets through Austrade, the Australian Trade and Development Commission. With its geography, Peruvian producers have been able to provide blueberries year-round. This makes Peru one of the biggest exporters of blueberries in the world. In turn, the market is a massive opportunity for Bitwise Ag. Climate shifts and macro events such as El Nino affecting farmers are making technology like GreenView increasingly impactful.

The Austrade network helped introduce Bitwise Ag to local blueberry producers through the Blueberry Exporters Association. Austrade staff connected with Bitwise Ag in Peru via network members in Chile. These connections in South America play an important role, networking and interpreting to help build their overseas customer base.

Bitwise Ag is growing at an incredible pace – with global customers and farms across Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Chile, Peru, Mexico, Spain, Romania and Morocco.

The future of AI in agriculture

Global expansion is the goal for the next 2-5 years. Bitwise Ag aspire to have hubs in the UK or Europe, allowing them to connect with new customer bases and cross language barriers.

Since the technology is well-suited to protected cropping, Bitwise Ag are also planning expansion into glasshouse crops including tomatoes and capsicums. Artificial Intelligence is rapidly maturing, and Bitwise Ag plan to keep up the pace.

Fiona has a vision of AI enhancing human capabilities in farming, turning average pickers into good ones, and good ones into great ones. Robotics and AI are increasingly used in agriculture to improve efficiency, collect data and improve decision making. Internationally, there is growing advocacy for the role of AI in improving global food security, utilising Federated Learning, and the potential of AI to detect pests and predict market prices.

Supporting farmers and solving real world problems

From the seed of an idea to worldwide adoption, Bitwise Agronomy are helping their customers take huge strides in efficiency. By tuning into the needs of her local farming community in Tasmania, CEO Fiona Turner is translating her passions and skills into global impact. Global Market Insights expects the market value of AI agritech to reach USD 10 billion by 2032.

The Bitwise Ag team are addressing this appetite for innovation, spurred by increasing consumer demand and a growing need for greater crop yields.

“We are developing our product really quickly, and where I see the industry going and where I would like to get to eventually is enhancing the human… We've got these massive global datasets that are the biggest in the world - what can we do with that data to look at global trends or climate impact.”

As Fiona, Aran and their team look forward, they will continue to stay true to their goal of solving real world problems and supporting farmers. Bitwise Agronomy are revolutionising farming with AI and are already thinking about the next innovation to shake the agricultural industry.