The Yield: IoT Solutions for the Agriculture Industry

Technological evolution has been touching every facet of the business world; even unlikely verticals such as farming have not stayed untouched from the realms of these new age technology trends. In today’s day and age, cultivation methods are not restricted to sowing seeds, by using the appropriate pesticides or raising animals by following the traditional techniques of embryo transfer or artificial insemination. It demands technological co-operations as well to meet the needs arising on a daily basis. Working in this area since 2014,The Yield has set a trend of supporting its clients with agriculture technology to yield the best result. Ros Harvey established the company with a motive to use technology to help feed the world’s growing population without wrecking the plant. The Yield does this by providing on-farm sensors and a customised information service to help growers take faster decisions and do more with less

The Yield’s first product was in the oyster industry which is now being rolled-out in two Australian states. The technology uses real-time data to reduce unnecessary harvest food-safety harvest closures by 30% with industry-wide savings up to $7 million a year. The Yield also provides its data and knowledge infrastructure to researchers to improve animal husbandry and disease management in return for commercialization rights of their algorithms.

Operating from Sydney and Hobart, the company’s target market is the top20 percent of growers of the Australian market. “Our customers across the food value chain demand technology that helps to mitigate uncertainty and risk which is mainly driven by weather,” explains Ros.

Customers also look for improved farm decision making, insight by food processors into on-farm supply chains, improved food safety administration, optimized shelf-life for retailers, better insight into risk for the finance and insurance industry and food safety and provenance. Therefore, by using Internet of Things (IoT), the company tries to alleviate risks faced by its customers and assists them to improve their yields. “We combine on-farm sensing, a data platform which ingests a wide range of data, predictive analytics and user-interfaces in order to deliver simple user-friendly experiences.

Controlling the sensor layer means we can ensure high-quality analytics-ready data,” Ros elaborates. Offering end-to-end fully managed services, The Yield removes complexity and risk from its customers’ businesses.

“We are leveraging and building upon a number of Microsoft solutions via the Azure Cloud within our platform that includes, IoT Suite, Microsoft Azure SQL Databases, Azure Data Storage and Azure Machine Learning & Analytics,”says Ros. Using these Microsoft solutions, the company develops secure and robust solutions that can easily scale from Australia into a global market. “Our engineering team is experienced in the development and deployment of solutions within the Microsoft ecosystem and are leveraging that experience to expand its knowledge and expertise into the IOT functionality that has recently been incorporated into the Azure cloud,” she adds.

Offering end-to-end fully managed services, The Yield removes complexity and risk from its customers’ businesses

The company has expertise in distilling business problems and building scalable IoT digital solutions with a strong focus on building beautiful UX across the whole technology stack. Possessing an experienced workforce of technologists, domain expertise and business analysts, the organisation has contributed its valuable work across private, government and research sectors.

Robert Bosch is The Yield’s technology partner and an investor. Through working with global giants like Bosch, Microsoft and Intel, The Yield aims to be the world-leader in intelligent solutions in agriculture. It will be launching is agriculture solutions later this year which is underpinned by its proprietary micro-climate sensing system. This offering leverages its oyster’s platform technology.