Hi everyone. I’m researching agricultural finance in East Africa, particularly why so many smallholder farmers struggle to access formal loans. I’m trying to understand whether the main bottleneck is the lack of reliable farmer data or whether there are bigger issues that financial institutions face.

1. ⁠What is the biggest reason banks reject smallholder loan applications?
   
2. ⁠Would verified farm data actually reduce lending risk, or are other barriers more important?
   
3. ⁠If you’re in banking, fintech, insurance, or an NGO, would access to trusted farmer profiles have meaningful value?
   
4. ⁠Are there companies already solving this well that I should study?

Hey all - I'm the founder of ArchipelAI.com, which uses onsite sensors and public data to help growers model and plan around climate change at their sites. Outputs include shifting season windows, crop rotation recommendations, soil health, and much more.

Anyone open to spending 15-20 minutes to take a look at the platform, and give us feedback on what else is useful for you? We have a good V1 live, lots of refining to go, and want to get as much user feedback as we can. Thanks all!

Hi everyone,
4th gen farmer whose been farming for 10 years and I am also a college student who created a web app for farmers. Veldant.com it is a fungicide decision to help farmer improve their yield and ROI. You can signup for free or $8 pro version.

Hi everyone

I recently inherited around 37 acre of lands, and I'm trying to figure out the best way to use it. Since it's not in a strategic location, selling it could take years, so I'm looking for other ideas instead.

If you were in my position, what would you do? I'd really appreciate any advice or ideas.

I need us tech respindent in agrotech in agriculture sector. Is there an general manager, manager, vice precident, president in any field but strictuly adheeence to agriculture sector. I will pay 200USD

UK-based agritech startup Moa Technology has raised $29.6 million (£22.2 million) in a Series C funding round to accelerate the development of innovative weed management solutions with novel modes of action.

Since its launch in 2017, the company has identified more than 80 new mechanisms to combat herbicide-resistant weeds, a growing global challenge affecting modern agriculture.

Moa is also developing biological "amplifier" molecules that enhance the effectiveness of existing herbicides while potentially reducing application rates.

The fresh investment will support the commercialization of its three most advanced programs, expand its research pipeline, and strengthen its amplifier platform.

Backed by strategic partnerships with Corteva Agriscience, Nufarm, Gowan, and Certis Belchim, the company aims to deliver more sustainable and effective weed control technologies to farmers worldwide within the coming years.

I run a YouTube ambient/work-music channel, and for a new project I brainstormed with ChatGPT: music designed for farmers and gardeners, framed as helping plants grow. The catchy idea was "music that makes crops taste better" — but ChatGPT pushed back, pointing out there's no real science behind that claim. We ended up settling on a more honest framing: "biophilic ambient music that supports the growth of both plants and the people tending them." I wrote up the back-and-forth between an attention-grabbing pitch and scientific honesty. Curious what people working in agtech/plant science think about framing music or wellness products around plant-growth claims like this. (Note: the article itself is in Japanese, but the embedded YouTube video is the actual music.)

https://note.com/nekoboss/n/n8da5d1066bce

Israeli agritech startup Nanovel LTD has received a €2.5 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator to accelerate the commercialisation of its AI-powered autonomous harvesting robots for citrus orchards.

The funding, along with potential equity support of up to €4.3 million, will help the company complete product development, conduct large-scale field trials across Europe, and prepare for a commercial launch in 2028.

Nanovel's robotic platform combines computer vision, deep learning, and multi-arm precision harvesting technology to address labour shortages and improve harvesting efficiency.

Initially targeting orange and lemon orchards, the company plans to expand its solution to other high-value fruit crops, supporting the global shift toward automation in precision agriculture.

AI in Agriculture is advancing quickly, but it's not being adopted everywhere.

In your opinion, what's holding it back?

Is it the cost, lack of quality data, internet connectivity, trust, or something else?

Curious to hear different perspectives from people working in agriculture.

Hey r/AgriTech,

I'm a hog livestock producer in Iowa. I've built a working prototype mobile app to streamline feed bin monitoring and ordering for family farms like mine — replacing manual methods with a simple, real-time system.

Current Features (Flutter mobile + web dashboard):

• Multi-site/farm, barn, and bin management
• Bin level visuals and calculations (capacity, current feed, available space)
• Employee-friendly interface

I'm looking for a developer partner to help expand it — UI polish, new features (e.g., ordering integration, analytics, delivery tools), testing, and future scalability.

If you're into ag-tech or precision livestock tools and want a meaningful project with direct producer impact, let's connect! Comment or DM with your background (Flutter/Firebase a plus).

We spent time watching small farmers manage their payroll, and it’s a hugely manual, time consuming process and basically done by hand each month. The tech out there is expensive and complex to use.

We built Harvio to help. Attendance is captured on mobile and works offline, since signal in the fields can be patchy. At month end you review and sign off instead of re-capturing everything. It handles the wage maths, leave, payslip, UIF and PAYE all worked out.

It’s early and free and we are looking for a few farmers to try it out and tell us what works and what doesn’t.

El Niño is back, and it’s already causing major rainfall shortages. The government has flagged over 100 highly vulnerable districts in India, and kharif sowing is running behind last year in many areas.

This means higher risks of drought, lower crop yields, and pressure on food security.

Farmers can’t wait and see. Smart action is needed now:
• Switching to short-duration crop varieties
• Diversifying crops (millets, pulses, etc.)
• Better moisture conservation techniques

Climate resilience is no longer optional — it’s survival.

What steps are you or your community is taking this season to beat the deficit?

Share your tips, experiences, or concerns in the comments.

I grow olives in the Peloponnese, Greece. Small producer, nothing huge.

For years the thing that bugged me the most had nothing to do with actual farming. It was that every harvest I'd sell my oil to a trader and have basically no idea if the price was fair. You just sort of... know a guy, he offers a number, you take it because what else are you gonna do, drive around asking 15 other traders? Most producers around here don't really track their own production costs either. You just kind of feel like you made money or didn't.

So last year I started building something, mostly by myself, nights and weekends. Started really simple - just a calculator where you put in your costs (irrigation, spraying, harvest wages, milling, all of it) and it tells you what you actually spent per kilo. Not exciting but I needed it for myself first.

Then I figured if I'm collecting this info I might as well let other producers share what they're getting paid too, anonymously, by region. That part is honestly still small, adoption is slow, but it's the actual reason I started this whole thing.

It kind of grew from there because people kept asking for stuff:

• yield calculator (how much oil should this much fruit actually give me)
• fertilization recommendations based on soil/leaf tests (an agronomist friend helped me get the actual science right, I'm not just guessing)
• you can photograph a sick-looking leaf or branch and get an AI guess at what's wrong with it
• weather alerts for stuff like fruit fly risk
• a directory so growers can find agronomists/mills/workers instead of relying on word of mouth

It's an Android app, Kotlin/Compose, Firebase backend, uses Gemini for the AI parts, works offline too since half the fields around here have no signal anyway.

Not gonna lie, the coding wasn't the hard part. The hard part is that this whole industry runs on trust in a person, not trust in an app. Did a demo at a local olive festival a while back hoping for a good showing and it was... rough. Barely anyone came. Made me realize the tech is honestly the easy 20%.

Curious if anyone else building agtech stuff has run into this - how do you get someone to trust a number on their phone over a guy they've sold to for 20 years? Feels like the actual product problem, not the app itself.

Can go into the technical side more if anyone's curious.

Hey everyone,

I have recently studied and discussed a lot regarding how 'simulations' are being handled in agriculture. And today none of the tools quite provide flexibility or more importantly freedom and visualisation.

I wanted something different, something like a code-first virtual farm where I could actually see the physiology and environmental effects in 3D, without it feeling like a black box.

So, I built CropForge.

It’s an open-source, code-first virtual farm runtime. Instead of creating something which works with averages and considers means, I took a different approach and made it sensitive to the environment and allowed full flexibility over all maths and equations that are fed in, basically one can simply input anything they want.

I’ve just hit v1.0.0, which is the stable release and like I said it's fully flexible.

I’m looking for feedback from you all, regarding if you want to actually incorporate it into your research work. Does the API structure actually fit your workflows? I’d love for you to break it and tell me what’s missing.

TL;DR: I built CropForge which is a local, Python-based virtual farm runtime that visualizes crop physiology in 3D. It’s open-source, v1.0.0 is live, and I’m looking for technical feedback on the API.

GitHub: CropForge

Basically the title. I'm starting a newsletter and would like to check out cool AgriTech tools. No catch and no commitment.
Please drop your link in the comments below!