Agriculture is a thirsty industry, Consumption of 70% of all fresh water used throughout the world. In some countries, reminiscent of India or Chile, it might probably be over 90%.
For Mario Bustamante, who lives in Chile, the problem hits near the house. “Lack of water is a big problem here,” said Techcrunch.
Bustamante betting that artificial intelligence will help use water on farms around the world. His startup, Instacrops, was originally founded for the implementation of Things (IoT) Internet sensors on farms to warn farmers from damage to frost, but when the equipment was formed, the company is cut into software and water.
Now Instacrops helps 260 farms reduce water consumption to 30%, while increasing the yield by as much as 20%. The company is part of the Battlefield startup and will look at TechCrunch disturbing this month in San Francisco.
The transition from equipment to artificial intelligence modified the company to the head, enabling it to act with fewer employees and when processing more data.
“We process – more or less – 15 million data points per hour. Almost 10 years ago, this was the amount for a year,” said Bustamante. “We reduce costs, team members and generate greater influence with a smaller one.”
Instacrops can install latest IoT sensors or hook up with the existing farm network and collect data from them to advise farmers when they irrigate different areas. LLM startup models eat over 80 parameters, including soil humidity, humidity, temperature, pressure, crop and NDVI efficiency, a measure of plant efficiency from satellite images.
TechCrunch event
San Francisco
|.
October 27-29 2025
These suggestions are sent to farmers’ mobile phones. Instacrops offers a chatbot application, but also integrates with WhatsApp. “I think that the following year we will be 100% WhatsApp, because it is a universal tool for every farmer,” said Bustamante
He said that on farms that are more technologically advanced, instacropies can directly control irrigation systems.
Instacrops focuses on high -value crops in Latin America, including apples, avocado, blueberries, almonds and cherries. Farmers pay an annual fee per hectare of arable field to gain access to insight of the startup irrigation.
The startup was part of the Y combinator Summer 2021 partyAnd he received investments with SVG Ventures and Genesis Ventures.