How did your career path at E-TERRY begin and what is the vision that you bring to the company?
I grew up on a farm that my family had for generations and even though I completed my bachelor's degree in international business, I have always been attracted by the agricultural sector, especially in relation to sustainability. In 2020, I stumbled upon a recruitment ad for E-TERRY and from the first second I read their presentation I knew that job was for me. Our company's mission is to rethink agriculture machineries and automate all the processes to make this sector more efficient and sustainable.
What are the characteristics that differentiate your robot from other products already in the market?
From the very beginning, our goal was to build a small scale, lightweight robot that is easy to transport and to customize according to the specific needs of the farmers. It has only three wheels, so we can adjust the track width and height in order to operate on very diverse fields. Its main purpose will be to remove weeds from vegetable crops - which is one of the most time-consuming tasks in agriculture, amounting to 200 to 300 hours of work.
Unlike conventional farming where the use of pesticides is a common practice, organic farmers are relying only on manual work since they do not have any automated options, yet. As we already know, 70% of farmers do not find enough workforce to manage their processes on the field. Moreover, the EU needs 16% more organic farmland (26 million hectares) and the reality is that we are short both on staff and on equipment. As a result, we believe that the E-TERRY robot will offer a viable solution to make organic farming competitive to conventional methods in terms of final costs or work input.
What is the status of the manufacturing process and how do you plan to commercialize the robots?
Presently, we are still in the development phase and we are testing some robots out in the fields. By next year, we plan to have a pilot fleet of four products ready. The plan is to use the already existing infrastructure of agriculture service providers so that farmers can book E-TERRY per hectare. We are working with two partners that will manufacture the robots but we intend to keep the ownership of the product.
The segment of the market that you are entering is highly competitive and it requires serious investments. How do you envisage your progress in that regard?
The big players usually have mammoth machines that are not exactly in accord with sustainability goals. We are pitching a completely different farming concept, which is not yet common, but that we believe has a great chance to change the way we do organic farming. We are confident that the market is diverse enough to accommodate many different companies and solutions. Indeed, all the development processes are very capital intensive and without external investment it would be impossible to build such a complex robot fit for outdoor applications. Luckily, last year we have been able to raise a seven-digit amount of external investment and we are already looking for new investors for our second round, which will aim at $4 million.
What are the objectives for E-TERRY in the next couple of years?
Starting with 2025, we plan to internationalize our footprint as we are seeing a lot of potential in the Netherlands, France and Spain. Our robot was designed as an equipment carrier for precision agriculture and in the long-term, we aim to integrate more applications. Since we already fitted it with computer vision technology and the monitoring of crops garners so much potential, we are thinking to pursue applications like nutrient tracking, growth stage analysis or yield prediction.
We really believe that if agriculture is done right, we have the power to sequester carbon into the soil and give a helping hand in the fight against climate change. Our goal is to build a companion that could empower farmers to have a superior performance while taking the most advantage of the individual plant data that is provided.
