Fieldin is a US-Israeli agtech company building a smart farming operations platform for large, high-value crop growers - the people who run California's almond orchards, lettuce fields and vineyards. It stitches together IoT sensors, mobile apps, a cloud control center and, since acquiring Midnight Robotics, retrofit autonomy kits that turn ordinary tractors into self-driving machines. The pitch: connect every spray, harvest and tractor pass to real-time data so growers can cut costs, prove compliance and eventually take the driver out of the cab.
James Paterson is the co-founder and CEO of Aerobotics, a Cape Town-based precision agriculture company that turns drone and satellite imagery into AI-powered, tree-by-tree insights for fruit and nut growers. Raised on a family citrus farm and trained as a mechatronics engineer at the University of Cape Town before a masters at MIT, Paterson pairs first-hand farming instinct with aerospace-grade robotics. Since founding Aerobotics with Benji Meltzer in 2014, he has grown it into a global player that now analyzes a large share of the Florida citrus crop and has raised roughly $30 million, insisting the company is 'a farming company, enabled by technology' rather than a tech company that dabbles in farming.
Aerobotics is a Cape Town-founded agritech company that turns aerial and smartphone imagery into tree-level intelligence for fruit and nut growers. Using drones, satellites and machine-learning algorithms feeding its Aeroview platform, it counts trees, flags missing or sick plants, tracks pests and disease, and forecasts yields with size, color and quality measurements - helping growers across roughly 18 countries protect crop value and make data-driven decisions.