The Algorithm Farming Energy

Table of Contents

• Fields & Frontiers

• New In Ag-Tech

• More Fields & Frontiers

• A Thought for Friday

• Till You Laugh

Fields & Frontiers

Racing Pathogens With A Clock: The veggies on your supermarket shelf are increasingly the result of an arms race that most people are unaware of. Pathogens are developing resistance faster than breeding programs have historically been able to respond to. Moreover, the interval between the appearance of a new illness and the availability of a resistant variety to growers has previously been measured in years. Syngenta Vegetable Seeds has built a $10 million R&D Technology Centre in El Ejido, Almeria, the core of the world's largest greenhouse cluster, where over 30,000 hectares of protected horticulture produce over 4 million tonnes of vegetables each year. The location is purposeful. Syngenta's R&D directors believe that a new deadly disease emerges every two years or so, necessitating the placement of researchers in high-pressure conditions rather than protecting them. The facility combines breeding, trait development, data science, and biosafety infrastructure under one roof and is based on an AI and machine learning-enabled field-to-lab model that Syngenta claims can cut breeding times in half, reducing the four-year process of disease identification and commercial seed production to two years. Syngenta is leveraging applied data science and crop breeding to steer the seed business away from reactive breeding and toward predictive crop protection. This raises an important question for the broader industry: if one of the world's largest agribusinesses needs a $10 million purpose-built facility just to keep up with biological threats, what does this say about the adequacy of disease response infrastructure available to the rest of the sector - and to the smallholders and independent growers who supply much of Europe's food?

No More Blind Spots: Farm equipment is spreading but the cabs aren’t becoming taller. Over the years, a silent, persistent safety concern in European agriculture has been the visibility gap between what an operator can see and what is truly happening around a major tool. German manufacturer Motec has created a wireless camera system for front-mounted implements. It is the first wireless solution officially certified to meet Germany’s VKMS regulation for indirect visibility on agricultural machinery. Because there is no permanent cable between tractor and implement, it is considerably quicker to switch between machines; a practical benefit that is especially pertinent to contractors operating various combinations. The wireless connection is designed for agricultural situations and is stable in vibration, dust and varied weather conditions. The system is now available in Benelux via Van Looveren Technics. The bigger signal here is one your audience should know about: Competitive distinction in farm machinery is shifting away from horsepower, and toward situational awareness. The ability of a machine to see its surroundings is becoming as commercially relevant as its performance in the field. Safety and autonomy are coming together.

New Energy: Grid congestion affects more than just utilities. For European farms running solar arrays, battery storage and increasingly electrified machinery, it is an operational and commercial one. And it is getting more complex by the season. Eddy Grid, headquartered in Utrecht, has raised €7.5 million following announcing a revenue rise of roughly 900% in 2025 and an additional 1,000% predicted for 2026. In a rarity among energy tech companies in Europe, the three-year-old firm has already turned a profit. When solar, wind, and batteries all work together under a single grid link, its algorithms maximise returns by optimising the real-time performance of these assets across energy markets. There is an immediate connection to farming. The disparity between producing energy and making the most of it is growing as an increasing number of European farms invest in renewable energy infrastructure, on-farm battery storage, and agrivoltaic systems. This is in response to rising fuel prices caused in part by the Iran conflict. The easiest aspect is to own the panels. Making or losing money is all about timing your purchases, sales, and consumption in real time. That kind of intelligence is being developed by Eddy Grid. Homesteaders who generate their own power, this is a great one to watch. Find out more on EU Startups.

New In Ag-Tech

Could a Laser Beam Be Worth More Than a Scarecrow and a Shotgun Combined?

Bird damage is one of the most consistently underreported costs on European farms. A Dutch company has been quietly solving it with technology that birds, unlike farmers, cannot get used to.

Nobody Reports This Loss on the Spreadsheet
Ask a soft fruit grower in Kent or a cherry farmer in the Rhône Valley how much birds cost them each season. The answer is rarely recorded in their formal accounting. Instead, it tends to live in the memory: the morning you walked a block of blueberries before harvest and measured the damage, or the season when starlings arrived early and took a large proportion off the top before you could react.

The research is more detailed than the conversation. Bird predation reduces yield by 10 to 20% in blueberries, 5 to 30% in cherries, and 5 to 10% in grapes, with some vineyards claiming losses of up to 50%. In the UK, woodpigeon damage alone costs approximately £125 per hectare in oilseed rape and up to £1,250 per hectare in high-value vegetable crops, with the woodpigeon population increasing by 134% since 1970. Since 1993, the geese population in Northern Europe has increased by 60%, as has the level of damage to arable crops in Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland.

Farmers have always had choices. Propane cannons, netting, plastic falcons, distress calls, and the occasional shotgun. The issue with nearly all of them is that birds are capable of learning. Before you know it, the threat fades away, and things go back to normal.

The Technology Birds Just Can't Hack
Bird Control Group, which started out in the Netherlands, has been creating laser-based deterrent systems for more than ten years now. The AVIX Autonomic Mark II is a cool automated system that runs around the clock, every day of the week. It can cover an area of up to 12 square kilometres from just one unit, and you can control it with a smartphone app after you set it up initially.

The principle works because birds see an approaching laser beam as a real threat, which makes them instinctively want to fly away instead of relying on something they've learned. Unlike acoustic or visual deterrents, this technology doesn’t lead to habituation over time, which is what makes it effective in the long run.

The results we've seen in the field are definitely significant. At a blueberry farm in Oregon, they were losing about 25% of their potential crop volume to birds every year. But after they started using a laser system, they saved around $100,000 annually and saw a 33% boost in revenue. A vineyard in Nova Scotia shared that they saw a 90% drop in the number of starlings and robins over the 15 acres where the unit was set up.

The European Deployment

This is not a technology on a European roadmap. Bird Control Group's systems are in use across more than 110 countries, with the company operating a dedicated CORDIS-backed EU research project to develop its next-generation Autonomous Bird Control Deterrent system, specifically targeting the growing geese problem across Northern European arable farmland.

This is a practical and accessible option for a soft fruit operation ranging from 8 to 15 hectares in Northern France, the Netherlands, Belgium, or the UK. With an autonomous system's 12-square-kilometer coverage area, the economics become much more intriguing for arable farms that manage geese pressure across bigger blocks in Scandinavia, Poland, or the Baltic states.

Renting the AVIX Autonomic system for two or three months each season is an alternative for farmers who would rather not buy the system outright, as it is priced at around $10,000. The return on investment (ROI) for farmers differs greatly depending on the crop value and the severity of damage. However, for high-value soft fruit, the ROI can be calculated in just one season.

The NetWorth Farmer Verdict

• Who this is for: Soft fruit, cherry, viticulture, and high-value vegetable growers across Northern and Western Europe where bird damage is a recurring seasonal cost. Farmers in Denmark, Poland, Germany, and the Baltic states dealing with goose pressure on their cereal and oilseed crops might want to take a closer look at the coverage range of the autonomous system and see how it stacks up against their past losses.

• It's not really suited for situations where bird pressure is just a rare issue instead of a constant one, or if the value of the crop per hectare doesn't make a $10,000 investment worthwhile. When it comes to lower-value arable crops on big plots, it makes sense to start by looking at the rental model.

• Here are some questions you might want to consider before getting involved: Can you share what the documented bird damage cost per hectare has been over the last three seasons? Does the coverage range of one unit align with your most vulnerable blocks? Hey, just curious—does your local authority have any rules about using lasers close to roads, public paths, or nearby properties?

• For farm operators, the next step is to reach out to Bird Control Group's European dealer network and ask for a site assessment before the upcoming high-risk season. The setup is unique to each farm, and getting it right from the start really makes a difference for the long haul. Hey there! So, Bird Control Group is this private company from the Netherlands. They've got some EU Horizon funding and a solid customer base all around the world. The market it's looking at is really not being managed well. Founders, the habituation problem that this technology addresses is exactly why every other bird deterrent category tends to fall short over time. That insight is definitely something to keep in mind when designing any autonomous pest management platform. Agribusiness advisors often find that bird damage isn't really covered by most EU crop insurance frameworks and doesn't show up much in standard farm performance data. This leads to it being overlooked in advisory discussions quite a bit. It definitely deserves a mention in the risk assessment.

• NetWorth Farmer is keeping an eye on whether Bird Control Group's next-gen camera-integrated detection system becomes available in European markets and if any EU agri-environment scheme starts recognising non-lethal wildlife management investments as eligible costs under the post-2027 CAP eco-schemes. Here are some sources you might find useful: Bird Control Group, CORDIS EU, OSU Extension, Integrated Bird Management UK, Laser Focus World, and Growing Produce.

Digital Pasture

More Fields & Frontiers

Return. Refund. Repeat: Reusable cups at events have always been good for the planet. But until now, they have rarely made operational sense. Brussels-based Borro has landed €1.3m to roll out its digital deposit system for reusable cups across the Netherlands, Germany and France this summer, backed by Seeder Fund, PMV, imec.istart and the corporate venture arm of GS1 Germany. It’s just elegant technology. When a drink is ordered, the server scans a QR code on the cup, which is linked directly to the customer’s credit card. When the cup is returned to a self-service pickup point, the deposit is automatically reimbursed – no app, no queuing, no cash handling. Each cup is uniquely linked to a payment transaction and tracked for full traceability, utilising invisible codes read by cameras instead of expensive RFID technology -- intentionally designed to be simpler and more cost-effective at scale. The urgency is palpable: Tomorrowland fined €2 million for ditching reusable cups. This is an indication of how seriously the EU is now applying its single-use plastics rules.

Eight Days. Five Alive. Two Still Missing: On 19th May, seven men entered a cave in the mountains of Laos' Xaisomboun province looking for gold. Within hours, flash flooding sealed the entrance behind them. For eight days, the world waited. On 27th May, divers finally reached five of the men. They were found crouching on a rocky ledge in total darkness, surrounded by floodwater, weak and hungry but alive. Weeping could be heard in the background as rescuers approached. Above ground, teams were seen cheering, jumping and crying tears of joy. Among those underground is a veteran from the 2018 Tham Luang rescue in Thailand, the same cave diver, returning to the darkness once more. It takes about four hours for each round trip to the survivors. The diving section is tough, those narrow, debris-filled passages really take a toll on the rescuers, leaving their knees and elbows pretty bruised up. Two men are still unaccounted for. The rescue team put it simply: the job isn't done yet. Some stories just speak for themselves. This is one of those things.

If America Treats Fertiliser as a National Security Asset, Why Doesn't Europe?: Washington has officially crossed a line that many European policymakers haven't even come close to yet. The Trump administration has made fertiliser a national security priority, rolling out a comprehensive strategy that includes the USDA, the Department of Energy, EPA, Commerce, State, Treasury, and the Army Corps of Engineers. They're positioning domestic fertiliser production alongside semiconductors and critical minerals in terms of strategic importance. At the heart of the plan is the push to speed up permits for the $3.7 billion Blue Point ammonia facility in Louisiana, getting stalled domestic production projects back on track, and establishing a new USDA economist role focused specifically on keeping an eye on farm input costs in real time. Officials were straightforward that farmers shouldn't expect immediate price relief, high costs are likely to stick around until at least 2027, but they pointed out that this announcement marks the most coordinated long-term federal fertiliser strategy ever put together. European farmers are facing a tough situation, paying 58% more than the 2024 prices for nitrogen. Meanwhile, policymakers continue to see fertiliser as just a commodity instead of recognising it as essential infrastructure. This raises an uncomfortable and long-overdue question.

A Thought for Friday

Cultivating Growth

In farming, growth begins with the soil but also the way we think about ourselves. I believe that we should prepare our minds with positive identities and meaningful intentions, much like a farmer prepares the land for a good harvest. Our lives are like fields that are ready to be planted. The thoughts, habits, and values we choose to plant are what we get back.

Before the crop is fully grown, I like to take on the role of the grower. I grow resilience, patience, and discipline in myself, even when I can't see the effects yet, just like I carefully care for immature plants. Challenges are the storms that test our strength; instead of running away from them, I welcome them as chances to grow stronger.

I know that growth doesn't happen quickly or easily. Waiting for the right conditions won't get you anywhere. You have to work hard every day, water your plants, weed them carefully, and protect what's important. Like a farmer who adds compost to soil instead of taking it away, I give value by making things instead of taking them away.

As we end one season and get ready for the next, we need to think about more than just what sort of growers we are now. We also need to think about what kind of producers we want to be in the future. Let's change the way we think about positive self-fulfilling prophesies by planting the idea that we are strong, capable, and meant to have plenty. Not only does technology play a role in the future of agritech, but so do the identities we build within ourselves. Let's work on our thoughts with purpose, and watch our fields and futures grow

Till You Laugh

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