NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. — From technology dealing with cows and

grasshoppers to advances in irrigation and weed control, Alltech is hoping

that their new crop of agri-tech startup companies are primed to bring about

real change in the agriculture industry.

 

The Kentucky-based global leader in the animal feed industry recently chose

10 companies from 183 applicants in its initial class of The Pearse Lyons

Accelerator, named after the company’s president and founder.

 

As for the initial class, Aidan Connolly, chief innovation officer at Alltech, said

he’s “really impressed with the startups' ideas, their engagement and the talent.

“We were especially looking for emerging technologies in agri-tech, such

as drones, sensors, the Internet of things and artificial intelligence, and I’m excited

to see those are all represented within the 10 companies that were chosen.”

One of the companies chosen, Hargol FoodTech, has an origin story that,

according to its co-founder, “came from the stomach,” which is to say that during

research into global obesity issues, Dror Tamir stumbled across a potential

answer to both that issue and its inverse issue of global malnutrition.

 

“As an entrepreneur, you go back and think about solutions,” he said of the

conversation that sparked the idea. “I learned about the lack of protein

in people’s diets across the globe and started looking for healthier and

sustainable alternative protein sources.”

 

That was the beginning of Hargol FoodTech. The alternative protein source

that Tamir and his team landed on was grasshoppers, which are considered

the most widely eaten insect in the world. Despite that, Tamir realized that

collection of the insect was happening primarily from the wild. With a growing

season that is limited to about four to six weeks a year, grasshoppers are

considered a delicacy in most of the countries where they are consumed.

“Prices are high, demand is high, very low ability. I understood that there was a

great business opportunity,” Tamir said.

 

Tamir created a team with more than 50 years’ experience in breeding and

growing insects to tackle the issue of how to mass-produce grasshoppers. Based

in Israel, he said the team has had a breakthrough in three species, shortening

the time of hatching eggs from about nine months in the wild to 13.5 days in

incubators, which he calls “one of the greatest achievements we’ve had.”

Three of his colleagues in The Pearse Lyons Accelerator also have a stake in

animal agriculture.

 

Moocall, a startup based in Ireland, produces wearable technology that can

help producers accurately predict when a cow will give birth, taking the guessing

game out of breeding operations. eFishery, from Indonesia, provides fish

feeding technology that automatically senses the appetite of fish and adjusts

food amounts accordingly.

 

Australian startup Agriwebb provides producers a mobile application for herd

and farm management for cattle, sheep and wool producers.

 

For row and specialty crop producers, the accelerator offers several innovations,

including Tevatronic, an Israeli company that has developed a technological

system capable of running crop irrigation autonomously.

 

Irish-based MagGrow is seeking to revolutionize crop protection through

their magnetic spraying system, which they say reduces drift by more than 80

percent.

 

Gary Wickham, MagGrow chief executive officer, recently told

thinkbusiness.ie that their three product lines, including crop sprayer system

retrofits and two backpack sprayer systems for greenhouse operations and

small farmers, could be the key in solving a critical issue in his native Europe.

 

“Crucially in Europe, spray drift is also a big problem, as every year £30 billion

worth of Europe’s water is contaminated by pesticide run-off,” he said.

 

The company, which is already operating in Africa, Europe, the U.S.

and South America, is expected to employ 100 people by July 2017. Their

technology has been patented in 127 countries, which Wickham said equates

to 85 percent of their market.

 

Even in its infancy, The Pearse Lyons Accelerator is proving beneficial to its

initial class.

 

Oleg Korol, chief executive officer of Tevatronic, said his company is already

benefiting from the program and Alltech’s influence.

 

“The business accelerator actually looks likes it’s going to accelerate things,”

he said. “The backing of the big company Alltech allows us to access resources we

didn’t have before.

 

“This allows us to learn a lot of information that otherwise would take

us a long time and research to obtain.” For Wickham and MagGrow, the

program is helping his company to achieve a very specific goal – rapid

expansion into the United States.

 

“It’s making us more visible out there as a relatively new technology,” he said

of the accelerator. “We have entered the U.S. market, but it certainly helps in terms of our presence in the U.S. marketplace and certainly here in Europe. We are actually recruiting in the U.S., so to be associated with something like this is really important

for us,” he said, adding that the team will be focusing on the upcoming St. Louis

 Ag Showcase as a potential venue for recruiting team members.

 

Tamir is finding the accelerator and its benefactor Alltech as a potential partner

for his grasshopper enterprise, saying they have already seen a “long list of

benefits” in the collaboration.

 

“The main thing is working with Alltech trying to build potential commercial

collaboration,” he said. “As much as we developed the grasshoppers as a source of food for humans, there is a very high demand for grasshoppers as food for pets and feed,

since grasshoppers are the base of the food pyramid for many animals.

 

“Alltech as a provider of feed and food for pets already had some experience

working with insects, and they are looking for better alternatives that

will provide healthy and sustainable proteins, Omega 3 and other nutrients.”

 

Additional members of The Pearse Lyons Accelerator Class are:

•SkySquirrel (Canada), a crop-analytics company that develops drone-based

technology for monitoring crop health, with a primary focus on improving crop

yields and reducing costs at commercial vineyards.

•Greengage (UK), which provides market leading LED lamps to serve the

farming industry with a simple and highly effective solution you can rely on.

•Agrilyst (USA), helping greenhouse operators run their operations more

efficiently by pulling in data from sensors in the greenhouse and information about

crop yields and other metrics.

•Alesca Life (China), with a concept called farming-as-a-service developed to

allow scalable, localized food production for commercial and retail customers.