Weenat is innovating to help everyone in the agricultural sector optimize water management
Weenat, the French leader in monitoring agricultural soil water content, is innovating to help everyone in the agricultural sector anticipate the effects of climate change and optimize their water management.
Using Europe’s largest network of soil sensors as well as satellite imaging and artificial intelligence, Weenat’s deep tech will monitor soil water content in plants’ root zones over every km², in real time, throughout Europe.
This data will help everyone in the agricultural sector anticipate the effects of climate change and optimize water management.
This large-scale technological and scientific project was recognized by i-Nov, a competition dedicated to innovative projects with strong potential for the French economy.
Water management: a major environmental challenge
Climate change is happening, and managing water resources is proving to be a major environmental challenge for the coming decades. Hotter summers bring increased droughts: this means water is becoming scarcer.
This situation has serious repercussions for all agricultural branches, who are adapting by changing sowing dates, choosing hardier varieties, or by opting to keep a protective plant cover for soil and water.
Still, agriculture currently represents 70% of global freshwater withdrawals (Source: United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), more than half of which are used inefficiently from a lack of suitable tools.
Instead of blaming the world of agriculture, Weenat will provide key data to save water resources.
The challenge for farmers: accurately knowing the state of their soil
“Knowing what’s happening in the soil is the biggest challenge for irrigators.
Because if there are several solutions, none of them will be perfect. On one hand, soil sensors are very accurate but inconvenient to deploy on a large scale. On the other, satellite data is global but lacks accuracy. The result? The technology is still little used by agricultural professionals,” explains Jérôme Le Roy, founder of Weenat.
The goal: to support ALL European irrigators
So with this innovative project, Weenat is taking an ambitious step aiming to support nearly one million irrigators throughout Europe in their operational management of irrigation.
The goal is to move from selective data collection measured by sensors or calculated via satellite images, limited to a few centimeters of soil depth, to an overall assessment of water content in the root zone per square kilometer across the whole European continent. This assessment will take place in real time and cover a period of ten years.
The innovation will allow irrigators to have easy access to information on developments in their soil’s water content. As for cooperatives, seed and agro-industrial companies, they will have high-quality water data on a large spatial and temporal scale.
This data will help to calibrate agronomic models, analyze past seasons, manage the current season and develop strategies for future ones.
A research & development process combining data science and agronomy
The model’s construction principle consists of comparing very large volumes of data from multiple sources. The process begins by acquiring data with various origins: 20,000 Weenat sensors, weather data, satellite data, soil and agronomic data.
After validation to ensure consistency and quality, this data is organized, standardized and stored. This step is followed by calculation of the root layers of the soil’s water content, using satellite, meteorological and soil data.
This calculation is performed using an artificial intelligence algorithm previously trained on thousands of datasets, combining sensor information with agronomic observations on the ground. Finally, the soundness of the results is enhanced by recalibrating the water content values calculated in the previous step using observational data from Weenat’s network of soil sensors.
Data science, agronomy & meteorology
The R&I work carried out as part of this innovative project draws on a broad spectrum of scientific expertise ranging from data science to agronomy, via meteorology. This expertise is combined in the R&I team at Weenat. As of 2021 and the acquisition of Weather Measures, the team has 5 PhDs and 20 engineers passionate about weather and agriculture.
“Our team of researchers is dedicated because everyone understands the stakes involved with water management. What’s more, initial tests of our AI model allowed irrigators to reduce their water consumption by 20% on average. Imagine what that could mean on a Europe-wide scale,” says Emmanuel Buisson, Director of Research and Innovation at Weenat.
Water saved: around 12,000 Olympic swimming pools in 2023
Deep tech is already demonstrating its ambition to contribute to the transition towards more water-efficient agriculture. In 2023 alone, Weenat sensors installed in France and Europe have already allowed 32 million cubic meters of water to be saved. That’s around 12,000 Olympic swimming pools.
The company now hopes to go even further with this innovation, which represents an investment of over 2.5 million euros. This should allow Weenat to consolidate its position as the French market leader and in 5 years be a major player in monitoring agricultural soil water content in Europe.
“Weenat teams are dedicated and proud to participate in this innovative project that reflects our company’s mission: to help all professionals in the world of agriculture to optimize their water resources,” Jérôme Le Roy concludes.
