Farmable was founded in 2018 by Lars Blikom, the co-owner of Norway’s largest fruit farm, who had recognised that while the horticultural industry had focused heavily on the development of hardware such as robotics, there was a missing piece in terms of the software platforms being offered to the industry.
As a result, Farmable set out on a mission to reinvent how fruit farmers gather, organise and use their data to prepare them for future technological advancements.
The result? In less than two years, the team has brought a user-friendly, mobile app to the global horticulture market with a focus on operational data capture for tree crops.
Launched in January 2020, the app is free for growers and agronomists this season, and is designed to improve management of field operations and increase collaboration with internal and external stakeholders.
“Firstly, one can map fields, manage scout notes, plan and delegate crop treatment activities, automate log keeping while offering the farm manager a real-time progress view of the work being done using the GPS technology in the phone,” explains Blikom, chief executive of Farmable. “Secondly, growers can collaborate seamlessly within their team as well as with external team members, such as advisors. In the last week of April, we launched our Advisor tool that allows collaboration between horticulture agronomists and their growers.”
Farmable is focusing on fruit and tree crop growers, and advisors in the horticultural industry, with more than 400 commercial fruit farms already using the platform across countries such as the UK, Germany, Norway and Australia.
Looking ahead, the company is looking to widen its services, by launching a web portal called the ‘Farmable Workbench’ at the end of the European season, where growers can access a user-friendly tool for organising data and analysing trends.
“This will also be a portal for integrating data streams such as satellite images, local weather station data or soil sensor data streams,” adds Blikom. “By the end of the year, the Farmable Workbench will be extended into a marketplace where users can choose to integrate services from our partner companies.”
