Saving water from Denmark to Kenya with smart solutions
Less irrigation and greater yields. The Danish company SoilSense has developed a wireless soil moisture sensor system which analyses data in real-time to provide direct insights on how much water crops need.
SoilSense is a Danish company founded in 2017, with the purpose of addressing global water scarcity. With their sensor system and automatic data collection, SoilSense help farmers all over the world optimise their use of water resources.
The secret behind SoilSense is the mix of robust hardware and intelligent software that analyses algorithms with real-time irrigation data. This means that farmers and consultants using their solution can concentrate on optimising the farm, while SoilSense automatically collects and analyses data on irrigation.
Today, the company’s system is currently being used by farmers in Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Lithuania, Kenya and Peru, thus operating on three continents.
Reducing hunger and water usage
SoilSense help farmers grow their business while protecting the scarce water resources and make agriculture more sustainable for the benefit of our planet. In that way, the company work directly with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
One is SDG 2: Zero Hunger as current estimates show that nearly 690 million people are hungry, or 8.9% of the world population – up by 10 million people in one year and by nearly 60 million in five years.
“We help improve the food production system and make it more sustainable and resilient to produce more food with less impact on the environment,” SoilSense writes on their website.
Together with improving food systems, decreasing water usage is also on the agenda, which is included in SDG 6: Clean water and sanitation. Today, agriculture accounts (on average) for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals globally.
Born global and sustainable
Jesper Alkestrup founded the company while studying at MIT in Boston. From there, SoilSense grew to Africa and South America and with a strong team and the right investors, Jesper Alkestrup has great confidence that SoilSense can succeed in creating innovation in the global food production.
SoilSense has raised capital from innovative Nordic investors such as Planetary Impact Ventures, who together with The Footprint Firm are investors in the Nordic spirit, working to solve global climate challenges by supporting companies in growth with great ambitions on behalf of the climate.
“We are born both global and sustainable. We believe that there is a great future in this, and the investments confirm that there are others who believe in the same thing,” says Jesper Alkestrup to the Danish media outlet Verdens Bedste Fødevarer.
Moreover, SoilSense has raised capital with investments from Tech Station Invest, which is an experienced hardware investor with an understanding of the development and scaling of products. This is a critical part of the puzzle for SoilSense to ramp up their global efforts.