With soil health ranking among the priorities in European policies, Polish SME QZ Solutions positions itself as the right mediator between the needs of farming and the opportunities offered by new precision agriculture technologies. “We have solutions – says the company’s CEO Zbigniew Kawalec – with strong impact on almost all aspects of soils, including fertility, nutrients management, disease prediction, and more. Most of our solutions are based on cutting edge hyperspectral imaging, a specific area in which we acquired a competitive advantage on our competitors, several years ago”.
QZ Solutions chose to specialise into precision farming in 2017. “Until then – explains Zbigniew – we were a relatively large software company to which clients would outsource pretty standard IT development. Of course, we had expertise on farming management systems, and at a certain moment we realised the time had come to shift to our own products, to invest in our intellectual property. After 8 years of hard work we can say we have won our bet, although it has not been easy. We have shrunk from 100 to about 30 people, but we are now living on high added value services and on more interesting return on investment”.
QZ Solutions runs operations in five countries today, from Poland to Germany and France, serving typically large agricultural holdings that require a certain intensity of data driven services based on high precision measurements. The company develops models based on a combination of remote sensing and in-situ and measurements capturing chemical or biophysical indicators, which can be supported also by historical data. “Hyperspectral data – adds Zbigniew – are at the core of our solutions. Back in 2017 we knew that with the advances in AI and machine learning it would become easier to obtain images and data from space. At the same time, we observed that not many companies were focusing on soil. There were, and still are, many solutions for vegetation, sometimes very similar to each other. But few people were addressing soil issues, like fertility or nutrients’ balance. Interestingly enough, the EU also started in those years the legislative process for the Soil Monitoring and Resilience Directive”. One of the most promising solutions by QZ Solutions is called SOIL-EO, a process that accelerates and optimises the production of prescription maps for soil treatment.
Even with European law being implemented in the different member states, borders are still borders. “Differences are everywhere – continues Zbigniew – in legislation, culture, habits. We learned this the hard way in Czechia. We thought it would be the perfect market, with the largest farmlands in Europe, but legislation proved to be a serious obstacle. In Romania, another interesting country, farms are usually smaller, but they rely on efficient cooperation models consolidating demand from several businesses, which simplify their access to technology”.
For a company that offers data driven solutions, the future looks very interesting. “We need to keep the head in the sky – jokes Zbigniew – as the availability of data from satellites will grow. We are already working on future satellites, using synthetic data to generate models that we can later adjust based on real data input. And we want to intensify our collaboration with space agencies, and more in general with partners bringing expertise and models from other countries. When I think of a new project – he concludes – I always think of Europe”.