Farmer Charlie brings information and data to the field at an affordable and competitive cost. Our sensors are easy to deploy, to use and maintain. They detect data on soil humidity, temperature, NPK, luminosity and transmit it to the growers. Thanks to their user friendliness and adaptability, they are particularly suitable to urban farmers, either home gardeners, community or allotment growers.
There is growing interest in home and family gardening in cities and towns. In 2030, the world's population will rise to 8.6 billion. By 2050, it will reach 9 billion, with 68 % of it living in cities. The need for increased food production and locally produced, self-sufficient food is constantly recognised; attention to and interest in it are raising.
In 2021, 7% of UK households had a garden; the amount spent on gardening products in the UK per year is expected to reach over £6.5 billion by 2025; 36% of individuals in the UK grow their own herbs, fruit, or vegetables in their gardens (Horticulture Magazine, 2022).
Growing your own or local short food production chain is a way to reduce dependence on large farming or imports.
This attention to urban horticultural growing, increased by the success of communal and roof gardening and allotments, makes our sensors particularly useful, as they have 3-year battery life, detect soil values and provide users with remote information and monitoring that are especially welcome when people are travelling or growing crops in plots that are far from their place of residence.
With the help of machine learning and artificial intelligence, we aim to provide users with information that ultimately could help them regulate input, irrigation and times of growth and harvesting. Budget savings could be achieved by using Farmer Charlie's sensors and app (77.8% increase in fertiliser costs over the past years). The efficient use of fertiliser, pesticide or water is not a mere economic need; it is also an environmental benefit, to which Farmer Charlie can contribute within the ongoing conscious move towards organic and eco-friendly products, with 46% gardeners using organic fertilisers instead of those filled with chemicals (2018).