Ofir Schlam: From Garage Startup in Israel to Global Player in Precision Ag

Editor’s note: Taranis’ Ofir Schlam is one of the recipients of the 2020 PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence. Here he shares how he got started in precision, what he finds most rewarding, and how his AI platform is helping growers worldwide farm and harvest more efficiently.

Crop Adviser/Entrepreneur Award Recipient | 2020 PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence

Ofir Schlam, Co-Founder and CEO, Taranis

Ofir Schlam, Co-Founder and CEO, Taranis

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In just five years, Ofir Schlam helped take Taranis from a three-person garage start-up in Israel to what is today a global force in precision agriculture.

A digital agronomy solution that combines AI with ultra-high-resolution field imagery to identify and analyze crop threats at the earliest stages and prescribe precise treatments, Taranis is now a 100-employee company based in Silicon Valley with 17 offices globally, 19,000 customers, 20 million acres of land under management, and $30 million in funding.

Most rewarding, he says, is the feedback he gets from satisfied customers and the opportunity that Taranis ag imaging solutions, dubbed UHR and AI2, has provided to gain valuable insight into their fields to build more successful farming operations.

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“Our customers like the imagery provided to them not because it’s just a nice, colorful picture, but that it shows actual threats found on the leaf,” he tells PrecisionAg. “It’s a tool for (crop consultants and agronomists) to be really engaged with their grower-customers and have them made the best prescriptions.”

Schlam’s vision of how precision agriculture can improve farming worldwide has motivated a range of industry players to hop on board. Over 60 world-class agronomists have combined their expertise on crop health and proper treatments onto the Taranis platform. Sixteen of the world’s top 20 agricultural retailers – including Wilbur-Ellis, John Deere, BASF, and ADAMA – have partnered with Taranis to make their tech available to agricultural businesses worldwide.

His career began on his family’s cotton farm in northern Israel near the Sea of Galilee, the country’s only source of surface-level freshwater. Growing up, he would rise at dawn to inspect fields by hand. He saw how farmers struggled to detect early signs of threats such as weed growth and diseases and infestations invisible to the naked eye, and how they often harmed other parts of their fields with imprecise treatments such as under or overwatering and pesticide application.

Going on to learn computer science and develop software, Schlam realized technology could optimize crop production in the face of troubling growth conditions and rising food demand.

By offering farmers a comprehensive understanding of crop health and prescribing data-backed, precise treatments, Taranis ensures that farmers use resources, such as water and herbicides, in proper quantities to protect crops and resources while reducing negative environmental impact.

“Farmers globally can use the Taranis precision AI platform to farm and harvest more efficiently, regardless of the location or season. From climate change to the rise of pesticide-resistant weeds, threats to agriculture are growing worldwide,” says Juliette Bergwerk, Schlam’s nominator. “Taranis is taking precision agriculture to the next level to help farmers combat those difficulties.”

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