 thank you so much for joining the farming podcast brought to you by Private Property. My name is Mbali Nwakao as always your host every Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8pm right here on the Private Property Channel. Thank you so much for choosing us as your preferred podcast not only is it the farming podcast but all the other podcasts that we bring through to you from the private property home. We have Zama during the week and also SD then we have Chad over the weekend bringing you fantastic houses or homes rather that you could start browsing and start looking for a new space to live in. So thank you so much for your continuous support in all our different podcasts and most importantly the farming podcast as well because we want to turn you into you know turning your home garden into a sustainable food source and if you're starting a farm or growing a farm again the farming podcast is the place to be because we bring such exciting guests and bring you awareness of the phenomenal entrepeneurs, farmers, professionals on the ground that we have in the agri industry that is definitely bringing a lot more value into this beautiful sector that we all love. Today I'm joined by two gentlemen who are entrepeneurs in this space and they're going to tell us about data-driven farming. They've come up with a business that is less than five years old and it involves drone and they'll tell us all about their technology and what I like about this specific business is that it can you know service any farmer irrespective of land size however you know I would like the two gentlemen to obviously give us more detail in today business and so if you have any questions or are curious about how important data is in your farming operations and what exactly you can do with data then this episode tonight is definitely one for you so please feel free to comment like share and obviously ask questions directly to the guests this evening which I will read out live and we will be happy to respond to whatever farming needs or specific topic needs that we're discussing this evening so without further ado let me introduce the team from Curai which is an agritech startup and I am joined by Clive Mate as well as Samuel Mateja. Gentlemen how are you doing and thank you so much for coming on to the show. Thank you so much for the introduction and thank you for having us today. Good evening Bunny and your guests thank you so much for this opportunity. It's a pleasure thank you so I want to start with Clive perhaps. How did you come about incorporating Curai and why specifically did you bring this technology aspect within agriculture why couldn't you go for any other industry so maybe tell us a bit about who or what Curai is and why did you decide to start your business in the agritech space. Thank you so much Mbali. I mean Curai was born from more of a passion project that I and Sam had obviously stemming from our historical experience growing up more specifically in the farming community so growing up by the access to a small-scale farm obviously actively involved in the activities in the farm so I mean that could be something like weeding and crop spraying and pretty much as trying to monitor and see if we can identify any issues right and that was 10 15 years ago when I was still growing up obviously the whole thing changed went to Vasity became an aerospace engineer worked in the industry for quite some time and we gathered quite a lot of knowledge and experience right and as you might know the aerospace industry is probably one of the sectors that really gets access to take way early on before any industry does so that experience and the access to take that it kind of gave us and obviously making back to my experience is I guess a son of a farmer right it then became obvious that there was a need to then define value and push it back to the experiences that we had now as we were forming Curai in our heads it was value that we were creating that 10-year-old client was going to use and see value in I mean same we'll probably speak more on the actual take how things work and I guess how it then defines value for for farms but the whole idea is to push the use of data push the use of pretty much optimizing the access to resources that we have to at the end of the day increase productive efficiencies as a farm now we there's aspects right where we are seeing a farm is more of a social activity more specifically for small-scale farms but for us to be really productive and push the barriers to not only achieving food security but then to then start a deriving more profitability as a continent there is need to treat a farm as a business and if you're going to treat a farm as a business it means there's productive relationships between inputs and outputs and wherever there is such a relationship we then speak of tech that optimizes the actual productive function and that's pretty much what Curai does right is to push the productive efficiencies specifically for pre-havoc in efficiencies aspects of the farm. Okay awesome Sam I'd like to come to you because following with what Clive said you know he was born and bred you grew up in a farm environment and I know you're more of the tech business partner in this relationship and talking following up on what Clive has just said you know following up on data on your farm how your farm runs treating your farm like a business what exactly does Curai do is it a product or a service to the farmer and what exactly does it do so what type of tech does Curai use and how can it benefit my business. Cool thank you for such a great question Bali so like Clive explained earlier on technology is the best way to leapfrog all the inefficiencies that are happening currently in pre-harvest inefficiencies in farming the way that Curai technology works is that we work hand in hand with farmers farm managers and all the employees on the ground we provide them with data driven insights we do this by using high tech sensors so usually in a form of drone equipment we come to your farm you fly over your piece of land any crops that you do have in the ground we then aggregate all of this data bring it back in house analyze it through machine learning processes so basically that's just the fancy way that we pick out patterns and from these patterns we can then deduce how any stresses that you might have on your crops any watering issues that you might be experiencing any pests that are possibly spreading and are going to affect your yields at the end of the day so with this insight that is given to you in a timeless manner you will then be able to act as a farmer and be able to interject as well as plan ahead for your season thank you for that so tell me what type of farmer should be using Curai you know is it a farmer that's producing on open land is it a farmer that using is producing under crop protection so tunnels shape nets what type of farmer is using is is using curai so because we are using an aerial method to gather our data we would inherently prefer open field crops not under any shading or any protection what usually happens is that we work with most of our clients during the summer periods and then if do if farmers do then prefer to go into tunnels or cover their crops we will then are starting of thinking of employing other soil sensors so sensors that stick in the ground to also be able to gather that data so that we can give you insights and input on how your crops are performing and give you data driven actions to still help you reap the full harvest right still with you Sam thank you for that you know it's open field aerial mapping that's that's the purpose of your technology going back to the crops are we talking about tree crops so if you're farming any fruits citrus etc or can a farmer with maize or doing grains producing grains use curai technology furthermore can a farmer maybe farming vegetables you know if it's a crop that just lasts on the ground for three months do you think it's still applicable for a vegetable farmer to use curai or is it just specifically for long-term crops oh buddy thank you that's a very good question so unlike many of our other competitors out there curai is not limited to a single crop or a tree crop of a vineyard we work across the whole country all the way from the western Cape to Lombok or dealing with grain crops vegetables vineyards tree crops um the analysis would definitely change because the pests and infections that are dealt with in tree crops are totally different to vegetables and vineyards and we've spent the past couple of years working on our software and technology to accurately give customers the correct feedback so yes we have we do have a extensive experience with a whole variety of crops handled across the african continent great coming on to you clive and i hope you can explain this in the most simplest manner as possible you know maybe talk to a farmer you know i am a farmer but yeah as if you're talking directly to a farmer without using the high tech jargon etc that's going to confuse us so today i'm a maize farmer i want to use kurai to identify pests and diseases in my farm how does it work and am i flying the drone every single day is there a specific time that i need to fly and then once it detects that what happens um so maybe just just provide us like on the ground how would one um literally or physically interact and use kurai i think buddy for for that question is quite quite relevant i think also needful as well um so how we work is we obviously uh first build some kind of relationship with the farm in this case some kind of contract that obviously allows us to to then come to your farm and start collecting data and and and the likes right okay so depending on on the crop uh it depending on the crop we it then determines the actual frequency so the the number of times we come and collect data obviously if it's a more sensitive crop like like lettuce will probably then come to your farm every two weeks if it's an open field crop like maize will come to your farm every four to six weeks the whole idea is to collect data at each and every different stage of i guess are the the crop growth phase and that does two things right the first thing it does is obviously tell us what's happening at that particular point in time but then if you collect all the different time frames that we we collect this data you then start to see some kind of a pattern uh on what's really happening in your farm which areas are underperforming uh which areas are overperforming and and things like that but the bigger picture in why we why pretty much is called um crop monitoring right so that you kind of detach from being worried with what's happening on your farm um so you can detach with aspects of uh pest infections for instance you can detach with with any aspect that is related to your crop being your crop yields being threatened by any uh crop stress or it can be heat stress or dehydration stress now if you have detached all those factors to cry and cry because of the contract that has been set up or comes to your farm in that frequency which is obviously determined by the crop and rest assured you know that if any of those issues arise you're going to get some kind of notification actually of the inside being pushed to you as a farmer uh through our platform or through whatever means is is is our way uh more convenient so the idea is that if any of those threatening situations arise they get pushed to you timely enough that you can then act before um a significant portion of the uh yields as in threatened i mean historically 90 percent of potential threats have been eliminated uh through our interaction like this obviously there's other factors that come in regarding to you as a farmer having access to platforms to for instance spray or crops if you identify any pest uh obviously let's say apply fertilizer if you identify any soil deficiencies and the likes but it's more of a quite an inactive engagement uh between the teammate cry coming to your farm and collecting data and you have access to that information quite timely uh as well so it's more of an active engagement than us just coming once a year or once or once in in in a few months it's going to be kind of a relationship that we're building and just to understand correctly clave i hear you saying just collecting data and we know what's uh the regulations around the public so who keeps that data who owns that data and when you're collecting the data for the farmer are you providing recommendations on how the farmer can improve in his or her production or is it just collecting data putting it in a format where a farmer can understand whether it's in the form of graph excel spreadsheet and maybe the farmer could take that information sit with the agronomists and they just stop planning to say where are we going right and where are we going wrong so maybe just expand a little bit on that part oh yeah so when we we speak of data uh the there's obviously different levels right of the actual data i mean the data itself gets transformed uh through our processes into information into knowledge then eventually into wisdom right so you is the farmer on the right to the actual data and information but then uh the the upper levels which are the the actual actionable insights that we give to you that's a bit of a fuzzy area right because that's that that's wisdom that we have developed over the past years uh through our own experience in our own um our own ai becoming smarter and smarter so that's a bit of a fuzzy element on who really owns uh the the the data but the actual insights that we then push to you uh it's something that you don't really then have to be able to to make to say for instance know how to uh interpret an excel graph or something like that we try to eliminate all those uh aspects for you as a farm and that's why you call them actionable insights uh or just discernment right so for um for instance what we then give you as an output is a map with let's say red green and some kind of orange region um areas obviously those being portions of the farm and it's a simple summary that says the red farms uh i dehydrated now you have to basically apply some kind of um you know spraying whatever it is that you do or the the purple farms need uh fertilizer to be applied at a rate of 30 kgs per ton now we are trying to detach you from the actual analytics of giving you our crafts and spreadsheets and and in the lives i mean that's the job of a scientist and that's basically what the the the big intimate choir is doing right trying to to to simplify the complex because all we need to do is to know what we're doing and we act on that and then the actual results get seen by the actual efficiency the improvement uh in the crop yield uh the improvement in you yourself as a farmer spending less money uh in the actual fertilizer in the actual pesticides but realizing an increased yield uh at the end of the day right before i move on to sam uh clive i just want to ask you one last question here uh with regards to what you've just said so how many haters what does one farmer have to have to be able to use karai to make sure that the costs make business sense what's the minimum starting or entry level uh number of hectares that one would need to have in order to use karai i mean there there's no uh limit in in theory in terms of uh what the size of the farm i can be can be a garden can be a one hectare farm i can be a 400 hectare farm they there really is no limit right the the only constraint that that didn't come to play because of the physical aspects related to to us going to a farm and uh pretty much collecting data is is then the the aspect that then relates to the actual fixed cost of us going to the farm uh and and driving to the farm right and because of such reasons we we kind of anyway with different models where if we have a number of small scale farms we kind of like aggregate them together and say on a particular Tuesday we are going to reach in a with 20 farms pretty much growing the same crop right i mean there's a high chance that if it's in the same uh sport then they're pretty much growing the same crop in the same age so because of those models that we then use that then kind of not only saves costs for us as a company but also then reduces the cost of us saving you as a farm and hence the price that we charge on you so there's also particular models and obviously you kind of get uh situations where we're dealing with uh your large scale farms and in that aspect is very much feasible for us to just come to your farm and collect the data got it got it sam moving on to you and with what clavis just said you know that it's best to work with farmers who are uh working um together so that you could aggregate them to make sure that the the fly to the drone process the drone flying process is easier for you to collect data but you know i know that uh models like that typically work in uh in different regions within the african continent but south africa specifically is quite unique because there's a lot of small scale farmers um you know um widely dispersed from a geographical point of view and people farmers who are farming as a collective or you know in a small community would typically be be will typically be farmers maybe were part of a specific program farmers who are part of a cooperative so now how are you solving the challenges around where uh you're finding embali in in kating embali in limbo embali in northwest that uh maybe is farming maize each on 50 hectares but you have to physically go to their farm so how are you how are you dealing with the logistical or geographical challenges to say um this week i need to be at this person's farm etc especially if we're farming the same crop and the data or analysis needs to happen pretty much at the same time so uh thank you that's also a great question and one of the biggest bottlenecks dealing with small scale farms in in the southern hemisphere in southern africa um the way we deal with that is you work largely with cooperatives and organizations that are managing or work with these farms in particular and all their suppliers and we try to correlate all that information to schedule our flights and our monitoring trips as we visit these farms we're also looking at another business model where we will then try to equip these local farmers to be able to fly uh drones for themselves i know big or for ir is a big talking point at the moment uh claire and i were privileged enough to go um aeromotorical engineering and we worked a lot in the aerospace industry so we understand a lot about flight dynamics but we also want to um empower or equip uh people with with their knowledge and know how to handle such technology and to be able to do it for themselves so um our current model is that we would work with um all the cooperatives and managing partners in how to facilitate the data capturing but eventually we want to get to the point where they will be able to do the flights and do the collection for themselves that was actually going to be my follow-up question to say you know just to limit the moving parts between um you too as the co-founders of karai you know could i just buy or rent out to your drone fly it on my on my farm um and then you know it's it's collecting insights and gathering information and then you know sit on a desktop have a zoom call like this where both of you gentlemen can then just advise in terms of the type of information or data that i'm reading so i wanted to know the follow-up question was literally going to be can one just fly the drone by themselves and then you would obviously provide that advisory service uh post flight on what the data actually says or is is is reading okay uh just just to add on that so our our biggest problem with that is just the South African civil aviation authority regulations so um in order for you to be able to do that for yourself you're going to by law are required to have a drone pilot's license the drone uh the aircraft needs to be registered with the civil aviation authority as well and as well as the company is going to need to have an operators license called an ROC in order to operate in South Africa so that's also a legally a requirement that you are going to consider before being able to do that but like i said we're working with partners and stakeholders both in government the department of transport and the South African civil aviation authority in order to expedite that process because um it's a very simple procedure to follow um this business model has been tested out we have clients out in Africa we're currently partnered in Lagos we farmers are doing the flying of drones by themselves and then they just send the data to us we do the processing and give them back the insights so the only biggest speed hand is just legislation in South Africa but as soon as that is caught up yeah that will be the way forward amazing gentlemen it sounds like you've just done so much research and development since you started karai and really thought it through you know about the needs uh that a farmer has and you know how can we perfect our systems on our farms clave coming on to you you know as as as sam was speaking i remember that a part of your service offering not only provides aerial mapping um and just obviously providing data on what you've just seen based on how high the drone flies etc and the information it captures i know that part of your service offering also provides spraying so like there's a physical drone that you could use over your fields and it's spraying um correcting that specific part of um you know the field etc now coming on to that you know um there is also a lot of technology advancement where there are self-driven tractors you know that um have boom sprayers at the back that maybe um have a capacity to carry let's say i don't know 200 liters and maybe cover hectares and hectares of of land so tell us about the technical specifications on your specific drone spraying so how many liters can one um so so how many liters can one flight hold and how many hectares can that cover it because what i'm trying to ask find out here is how many times so let's say i'm farming on 500 hectares how many times would i have to have a drone flying to spray and i'm trying to compare versus a tractor maybe they could drive itself but as a capacity to maybe spray has a capacity to hold 200 liters and spray maybe you know all my hectares at a go so how many just give us the technical specifications around your drone equipment specifically on the spraying pot and how many hectares would one flight cover i think somebody for for that question i mean perhaps before i get to the actual technical uh aspects in terms of the operational performance uh i think it's worth just mentioning generally why we initially uh embarked on this journey of literally designing and developing our own crop spraying drones um i mean uh they they should eventually uh come life i mean within in the next few months specifically because of the ca regulations that samson mentioned so what obviously taking back again to our experience in the farming uh i guess the farming activities growing up uh you realize that uh besides the actual information part right that we've been speaking um about i think all up to this stage uh the other second biggest i guess inefficiency that farmers have are pre-harvest specifically for small in medium scale farms is the actual access to to infrastructure so access to platforms that then perform the key activities that we need right um and you realize that if you basically break down all the activities uh the one of the chief and really crucial ones is the actual crop spraying uh obviously then lean to the actual application of fertilizer um and that's why we then embarked on this journey of designing and developing our crop spraying drones and the primary reason was to define access of these platforms to small and medium scale farms in a in a way that obviously is affordable but still does the job way more conveniently right so i mean a single drone for instance can be used by four or five different farms in one particular day now having a defined access right we then bring it down to the i guess the the fortunate um our part but because of the access to take and the decreased cost actually of accessing technology these drones are even way more efficient in applying it it can be fertilizer or pesticides compared to to your tractors in aircraft even right i mean there's particular reasons for that um it is a system that basically flies low enough we usually fly like two three meters above above the crop uh so the actual pesticides the actual droplets are applied to uh to the crop surface way more efficiently so obviously speaking of 20 to 30 percent are savings in just the pesticides but now the biggest element of the actual savings the efficiency comes comes in when when you cope with the actual data analytics in the actual application so give you a scenario we we fly in a 10 hectare farm we realize that only 0.5 hectares uh it is affected by pest so now we need to uh spray that portion right ideally with a tractor or any other platform you're coming basically dump chemicals in the 10 hectares now with the actual drone because it's also data driven it knows where it is to every square centimeter in the farm what we just do is take a prescription map from our analytics upload it to the drone and it pretty much goes goes exactly where the the the infection is right obviously goes with it much more quicker but also it means you have saved in 9.5 hectares weight of chemical now that's uh that's a huge 95 percent savings in that uh a given scenario you've spent less money but if also obviously dealt with uh a given threat now let's go to the specifications of these actual drones right um and I guess one of the most and something with the redimensioning is the actual uh spray rate rate in terms of how much it can cover at a given time so our current platforms uh if I obviously mentioned it in terms of the number of hectares per day speaking of something like between 45 and 50 hectares per given day depending on the terrain and the complexity of the farm um now uh the the platform itself can carry up to 16 liters at a given time now that might sound uh quite quite small right but then if we get the actual rate in the speed at which this platform covers you then realize that you can easily just replace the payload just like that so uh in any given hour we're talking of close to a hundred liters of chemical being applied uh to to a given crop right obviously there's scenarios where if you are doing quite some heavy spraying where it really becomes impractical at this stage so we cannot for instance apply 300 liters per hectare so there are those scenarios where we say you know what we can just advise and identify areas that are infected but we we then detach ourselves from the actual uh spraying our platforms and not yet at that stage but for any medium to ultra light spraying rates anything below 60 liters per hectare the drone is by far the most efficient platform to use right I like the fact that you mentioned that the drone goes low enough to be close enough to the crop to spray because we've seen some commercial farmers and farmers just let's just say established farmers who are farming in hundreds of hectares using helicopters to spray and I've always asked myself like you know that the whatever chemicals they spraying is obviously getting blown by the wind you know even if even if you're on a um you're spraying on a day that is not so windy but you kind of see that the chemicals moving away to the side um you know and um I like the fact that the drone just fly hovers just low enough to the crop to spray a specific area so therefore you know I suppose you as a farmer if you're using that uh a method you're not doing preventative spraying you know you're not just spraying at a blanket approach you're spraying to fix a certain problem at a certain space so you're obviously saving on chemical costs etc fertilizer costs if needs be genuine this sounds like a fantastic business that you've built um and I'm sure it's not the last that we hear from you from the farming podcast um and just in in the industry at large and um hopefully a lot more farmers could use um this technology and also understand the the this the importance of using data on the farms because I was speaking to speaking to a group of farmers today to tell them that you know data is so important even if you're seeking finance even if you're trying to understand the yields per hectare on your farm you need data to make that informed decision and when investors want to invest in your business they want to know how much how much can you produce at which seasons at which different seasons and the reasons why you're producing that so you know farming is definitely a business but I just want to know from from having incorporated karai um what have been some of the milestones of the accomplishments that you guys have achieved that's far and the biggest learnings you know sometimes you know entrepreneurs like yourself develop a product or service thinking that farmers might need this but when you actually go and trial run the actual product or the service you find that oh there's a lot of tweaks and changes that we need to make because what we thought does not really translate into reality so just to some of the show because I we are running out of time just a quick one maybe either of you could answer either of the two questions to say firstly what have been some of the milestones and accomplishments having started uh uh karai and then also what have been the biggest learnings uh bringing karai into the farmers and uh once the farmers have used the product or uh yeah your your your service offering what have been the biggest learnings so what have been the biggest learnings and what have been your accomplishments since you guys started um I'll let you decide who answers which okay go on about the biggest learnings I think so far we were kind of privileged because we both came from um an extensive farming background so we had a lot of insight but we also on the other hand had a third eye if you may call it that being outside the industry so being aero engineers we could give them um we could show them something that they never thought of or something that they've never seen before and that was very um also a big uh hump a speed trying to convince people that the technology does work to believe and trust in the princes that took a very long time but eventually a lot of people came around because their results spoke for themselves so I think that was our biggest biggest challenge um yes thank you cloud I think for me when it comes to the I guess the accomplishments just generally being able to have produced a really amazing product um I mean um not amazing in the sense from an engineering perspective we love engineering I love drones um obviously uh amazing that respect right but I mean I could possibly point to two or three uh scenarios where we we just see the light in the um the face of a farmer right uh initially by them just like seeing this tech so I guess they say the crop spraying drone just seeing the drone hovering and flying up and down the amazement but also 30 40 minutes down the line when this drone is sprayed five to six uh hectares and how they are so thrilled but at the same time um it's like there's this fulfillment in them that prior to this right in this particular scenario I just spent 40 minutes of my time and this this thing has been there's been finished comparing that to the pain that they um that you usually feel right of trying to hire tractor for the day spend three or four hours out up and down with the tractor possibly missing spots I mean that's a scenario that we've heard quite a while where they miss sports with tractors and things I mean that just a farm seeing the fulfillment between the two scenarios and then just loving the insights we're providing to them and acting in immediate almost immediately in in some cases seeing the the the impact uh that uh the services defined like that for me is just fulfilling beautiful fulfilling thank you so much gentlemen for your time this evening I thoroughly appreciate our conversation and um yeah I wish you all the best with your business and your service offering I guess I hope that you know from this conversation we get more farmers curious about how do they incorporate data into their farms to make strategic decisions for the next season for the next planting cycle etc and um yeah thank you so much for sharing your journey with us and your experience and the reasoning behind uh uh incorporating karai but thank you so much for your time this evening thank you so much buddy you're really a great time it's a pleasure thank you that was Clive Maate and Sam Maateche from karai the co-founders of karai which is an agri-tech startup incorporated in 2018 and they were talking about uh data driven farming and the data pretty much comes from the service that they offer to farmers using drone technology to do aerial mapping of the farm to identify any unwanted pests and diseases on your crops it could be useful short-term crops vegetables long-term crops you know and it's not specific to the size of the farm but what the technology does really is help you identify the problem areas in your farm and you specifically tackle those specific areas at the end of the day cutting you cost saving you costs from a fertilizer consumption insecticide consumption and I think another one a petrol or diesel consumption you know uh because when you use boom sprays you have to always buy petrol or diesel and two-stroke oil and so you know I think what's great about their technology it's really tackles the most critical and problematic areas on the farm instead of having to you know use a blanket approach in your entire production if you'd like to reach out to the gentlemen um go to their website kurai k-u-r-a-i um I don't know is that dot com or dot c-o dot z-a clive uh just dot c-o okay right dot c-o go on to the website they have all the uh services and you know uh the journey around the business and what they offer to the farmers information that you need right there and their contact details so thank you so much for watching on to the show I will catch you on thursday 8 p.m and looking forward to the guests that we'll have then and for you to also engage and interact with the upcoming episode but thank you so much for supporting the podcast and you could catch us on youtube if you missed this conversation tonight that's it for me take care