Sustainable, satellite-based agriculture: BayWa promotes innovative ideas and technologies

BayWa's Smart Farming Challenge enters its second round after last year's successful kick-off: As part of the international Copernicus Masters competition, start-ups, research teams and students, but also private individuals can now apply with their innovative ideas, projects and technologies which help make agriculture based on satellite data more efficient and sustainable. BayWa and its subsidiaries will support the winner of the Smart Farming Challenge in further developing its winning innovation and in facilitating its use by farmers. The application deadline is June 30.

'Agriculture is of utmost importance in satisfying the growing world-wide demand for foodstuffs. The challenge is being able to feed the ten billion inhabitants of this planet despite the impact of global warming and the reduction of farming space,' says Klaus Josef Lutz, CEO of BayWa AG.

BayWa already offers satellite-based solutions for resource-friendly sowing, fertilization and irrigation - not just in their home market of Germany, but also in places like Africa, for example. 'The Smart Farming Challenge is a promising means for us to further develop or supplement existing applications, or to develop entirely new approaches to satellite-based agriculture,' says Jörg Migende, Head of both Agricultural Sales and Digital Farming at BayWa. Of particular interest is the early detection of plant diseases, for example.

Applicants can submit their innovations online by June 30 at copernicus-masters.com. Experts from BayWa and its FarmFacts and Vista subsidiaries support the winners as mentors, for example in developing a go-to market strategy and creating field trials. Access to company knowledge, to the market, to the Next Farming software as a platform and an award of €5,000 rounds out the winner's prize. Sponsored by the European Commission, the winner also receives usage rights for satellite data worth €10,000.

The Copernicus Masters is an international competition initiated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Oberpfaffenhofen Application Centre AZO. BayWa first participated in the Copernicus Masters in 2018 with their own 'Smart Farming' category. In the end, a group of researchers from the Italian National Research Council prevailed among 29 applicants. 188 innovations were submitted to the Copernicus Masters across all categories in 2018.

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