How Elemental Agronomy's FIRA USA Award Is Transforming Our Precision Agriculture Solutions

The FIRA Team asked Bart Peintner, founder and CEO of Elemental Agronomy to share his experiences, feedbacks and tell us more about this past year post-FIRA.

FIRA | As the current winner, please share with us your feedback!

BP | Attending FIRA led to meaningful changes in our understanding of agtech and our plan for rolling out our first product. The event gave us meaningful feedback from farmers and investors, introduced us to multiple vendors that we have since adopted, and provided many examples for ways a young agtech company can approach the market. The speakers at the event were stellar: our understanding of the investment climate specific to agtech improved dramatically.

FIRA | What prompted you to apply for the Call for Pitches in 2024?

BP | An agtech VC made it clear that FIRA USA is a must-attend for an ag robotics company like ours. Our main goal in applying was to gain access to the conference and to get feedback on our concept and plan from the best minds in robotic agriculture. We had validated our ideas with many Midwest farmers, but we needed a better sense of how our tech compared to the rest of the ecosystem.

FIRA | What do you expect from FIRA?

BP | FIRA gives us an effective way to learn from the successes and mistakes of other companies in our space. The FIRA USA conference brings together companies from across the world that address automation across all crops, giving us awareness of similar, non-competitive companies willing to share ideas and tech. In the conference and website, thought leaders in the industry give us a macro perspective on farmer viewpoints, agtech investment trends, and efforts to lobby governments for change.

FIRA | How did winning the FIRA USA Start-up of 2024 benefit you?

BP | After winning the competition, it was clear that the FIRA organization had significant reach in the industry. The number of reachouts from investors, large ag companies, and potential hires spiked soon after the announcement. The award gave us credibility with investors who believed in the idea but could not judge how our approach was viewed by the agtech ecosystem. We believe it was a key factor in closing our funding round soon after.

FIRA | What does automation in agriculture mean to you?

BP | For our row-crop farmers, automation unlocks otherwise-infeasible practices that benefit the soil and the farm. Regenerative farming, minimal application of fertilizers, and targeted deployment of chemicals are long-held desires for most farmers, but acquiring the data and models needed to implement these optimizations are too expensive without automation. In our approach, we gather data while performing tasks such as weeding and fertilizing. Furthermore, we believe our small, fully autonomous machines operating 24x7 in a single field is a better long-term solution than having farmers move larger machines from field to field.

You want to be the next FIRA USA Start-ups Award winner? Apply now