From our pilot projects, we develop case studies that support grant applications from (as one example) the AusAid incentive fund, to enable us to set up co-operatives and provide free phones and AgriLedger to around 1,000 farms in Bougainville.

In Myanmar we’re partnering with IFC.

In Kenya, and later Ghana and Ethiopia, we’re partnering with African Development Bank.

Farmers receive everything including the phones for free, and in a relatively short time (e.g. one growing season) see an substantial increase in their disposable income.

AgriLedger is also a digital wallet and an online store.

Via the app, we encourage farmers to use their newfound additional income in positive ways.

We allow companies to provide ethical products and services into a new, completely untapped market. Things such as solar lights, farming equipment, and micro-loans can be accessed by the farmers directly via AgriLedger.

Companies providing these services pay us royalties, around 10%, however we ensure the farmer is always getting better value than they otherwise would have.

The royalties fund more product R&D and more pilot projects and grant applications.

Over 1 billion small-scale farmers earn their income from Agriculture, yet up to 50% of a farmer’s crop value ‘vanishes’ between harvest and sale.

Huge inefficiencies in planning, a lack of empowerment and a lack of access to proper farming resources result in poor harvests, spoilage of crops and poor prices at point of sale.

Farming cooperatives are seen the most effective and equitable way to increase farmer’s incomes by overcoming these inefficiencies, however poor record keeping and a lack of transparency often results in farmers being taken advantage of through corruption and graft.

Our solution is to enable trust between farmers and co-operatives by providing a smartphone and our blockchain app, AgriLedger, to farmers in the developing world, all for free.

This app enables farmers to easily record all transactions in an immutable ledger between each other and their farming cooperatives, and to plan better, buy and sell together and cooperate to share resources.

In our pilot projects in Kenya and Bougainville, farmer incomes increased by 3x on average from a single season to the next, all through sharing resources and buying/selling together.

Farmers can understand with confidence, even if they cannot read or write, that if they hand over their crops to a co-operative, they will receive payment for these crops for exact amount they provided, and trust the AgriLedger app.

As a Northern Australian company, we specifically identified a need to address the impact that farming is having on the Great Barrier Reef.

After spending months speaking to farmers across the region, we identified that power and water consumption were critical pain points for farmers.

Hence www.watersave.io was born in March of 2017.

Our tech team are building new hardware devices and retrofitting for LoRaWAN & Sigfox IoT networks.

We’re then delivering data to clients in a practical format via our custom software platform.

This allows us to provide a complete end-to-end IoT solution for our clients and manage each element of the IoT system architecture.

Team members: Damian Zammit (CEO): Recognised 2014 QLD Government (DSITI) Innovation Champion. Cofounder of theSPACE Cairns Startup & Innovation Hub.

Darryl Lyons (COO): Communications, mechanical and electrical services BMS (building management system) controls.

Nathan Finney (CFO): Principal of Crowe Horwath Accounting Cairns.

Xenek Stoehr: Tech Dude End-to-end IoT systems, from code on a sensor node to message flow and decoding. End-to-end internet communications, navigation and control systems Multilingual website development.

Tony Peter: Internet of Things Developer Electrical / Mechanical engineering background Rapid prototype design & build.

Given that farming accounts for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals, a farmer’s’ ability to save water will become a key factor in their survival, based on current pricing trends.

Currently, irrigation costs are consuming 30% of farming revenues, with this number on the rise as power and water costs increase.

WaterSave is delivering an affordable, automated farm irrigation solution, which can be monitored from anywhere in the world.

Via a combination of in-field micro weather stations and soil moisture sensors, farmers are alerted when paddocks are sufficiently irrigated.

Our solutions are extremely affordable as our sensors do not require SIM cards, thus dramatically reducing monitoring costs.

In addition, our sensors can monitor nitrate levels, which assists in the reduction of fertiliser use and the associated environmental impact.

The WaterSave solution is delivered in 3 stages:

Stage 1: Establish a regional IoT network

Stage 2: Install on-farm flow meters and end-of-row soil moisture sensors

Stage 3: Semi-automation of the irrigation system

Note: Stage 4 (Full automation will be in market by February 2018)

Pycno produces professional yet cheap and easy to use wireless sensors targeted for agriculture that plugs into the soil and provide users with critical information of the soil and the air from remote locations.

All this information is captured by the sensors and gets  displayed in real time from anywhere you are in the world on our website so that farmers can visualize and understand the condition of their fields.

Users will get the notification in critical situations through text messages or calls which help them make better informed decisions about the situation of their crops and bring a reduction in the use of resources like water, fertilizers, and electricity while providing an increase in the quality and quantity of their produce.

Farmers today have no empirical data of the situation of their fields and depend mostly on previous experience to make decisions putting Agriculture as one of the most outdated yet essential markets today.

With the increase in population, food demand and scarcity of resources, there is a lot of pressure on farmers to produce more.

Using sensors, analytics, and data science can show you how by having detailed information from your fields will help you make better-informed decisions, reducing the number of resources while increasing the quality and quantity of your crops.

Pycno focuses on unassisted Plug & Play remote sensing and visualization technologies.

This includes radio communications, efficient and low power electronics together with energy harvesting and very easy to use and user-friendly devices.

This kind of technology is ideal for everyone that needs to measure parameters from remote areas of the world and be able to get to that information in real time anywhere you are in the globe in a completely autonomous and unassisted way.