Irish companies showed their strength in next generation crop technology innovation at the Satellite Masters Conference 2016 in Madrid last night (25 October 2016) with Donegal based SaaS Company Farm Flo Ltd awarded European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) Ireland Region Prize for their remote farm monitoring App and National Space Centre Ltd’s CTO Bruce Hannah awarded the Astrosat Earth Observation Challege Prize for his innovation, SCAMPER which will assist producers in monitoring the global €6bn seaweed food-crop via new sensors on the International Space Station.
The Farm Flo entry is an easy to use App which is designed to plug into Farm Flo’s existing software to maximise efficiency for farmers by eliminating reams of dreaded paperwork. The Farmflo App enables farmers and farm consultants to gather location specific data on mobile devices such as smart phones regardless of the availability of internet connectivity on the farm, synching to update farm software once connectivity is restored.
Dan O’Donoghue, Farm Flo CEO said “We are delighted to receive this award. At Farm Flo we continuously invest in innovation to deliver easy to use, next generation farming software. We are currently rolling out the product across new markets including U.K., New Zealand and Australia.” Read more
The prizewinning SCAMPER System (Seaweed Crop Assurance, Monitoring, Prospecting, & Ecological Resource management), in accordance Award Sponsor Astrosat’s requirements, will see a new and innovative Earth Observation (EO) suite of sensors to be deployed on an existing platform aboard the International Space Station. The SCAMPER system will collect data via these new sensors and analyse it on earth to provide timely and accurate monitoring of global seaweed resources which will enable better quality control, efficient quantification and effective damage limitation of crops.
Accepting his award, National Space Centre’s CTO, Bruce Hannah, said “The value of global annual seaweed harvest was estimated to be Euro €6b from over 19m tonnes of seaweed in 2014. This system will enable increased efficiency and better regulation in the production of a multi billion Euro food crop. I look forward to developing a space sensor cluster with Astrosat, for deployment on Teledyne Brown’s platform aboard the International Space Station.”
The SCAMPER system is projected to be made available to Government and commercial customers in 18 months. Read more
The Satellite Masters Conference is a major innovation event now in its third year, which brings together space organisations, industry leaders, start-ups, innovators and major prize winners in the Satellite innovation sector.
Farm Flo: http://farmflo.com
Astrosat prize: https://astrosat.biz/news/astrosat-welcomes-the-copernicus-masters-challenge
Satellite Masters Conference: http://www.satellite-masters-conference.eu
