b'What good are pictures if you cantAs a manufacturer of biological starterfirst-hand the difference an image can do anything with them? he asks.and foliar fertilizers, along with micro andprovide. The driving force behind Taranis is themacro liquid fertilizers and crop protec- Like dad said, seeing is believing for marketplace to train artificial intelligencetion, the company is progressive bythe farmers were working with. The NDVI that was created. We use hundreds ofnature, so equipping every agronomistcamera that Im using is able to detect agronomists worldwide to train our artifi- and sales team member with a drone wasstress, so when Im looking at our prod-cial intelligence, computer vision, and thata logical step in managing the millions ofucts versus others, Im able to get a really means that of these millions of picturesacres the teams assess.good visual of crop stress to see which taken over millions of acres, informationWhen were in the field, were gettingproducts and product combination are is tagged and each insight is annotatedto touch and feel the success of crop thatmaking the biggest difference, Garrett so I can tell you how many plants areweve treated with our products, but itssays. there, which weeds are there, how manydifferent when you go to a farmer andFor the Concept AgriTek team, plants are in defoliation and what nutri- say, Two counties over weve done X andthe next step is looking at implement-ent deficiencies are presentthats whatseen X, says Concept AgriTek President,ing spray drones to easily apply more the artificial intelligence platform doesDaniel Hensley. Thats why we broughtproduct combinations and formulations for farmers, he says. We have centim- these drones in, so we could fly the fields,at intervals that arent dependent on eter and sub-millimeter leaf-level captureget the imagery and show it to our cus- weather or securing an airplane or heli-every time were over a field. tomersits not just our words, the tech- copter.nology is producing this data and its hardWith new uses for drones being imple-Seeing is Believing to argue with something you can see.mented every day, its clear that drone For Concept AgriTek, drones have madeDaniels son, Garrett,lent a hand thistechnology is just reaching the precipice all the difference in the sales and agron- past summer to implement more droneof functionality on the farm: for farmers, omy teams ability to quickly assess prod- data collection. During his agronomicfor agriculture and agronomy companies uct performance and pinpoint troubleresearch internship with the company,and for technology companies working to areas in customers fields.he covered several states and learnedmake their mark on the industry.SW56/ SEEDWORLD.COMOCTOBER 2022'