A Mindanao startup tested a farm's soil and found 7 times the fertilizer it needed

GreenVisionsPh, an agriculture technology startup based in Mindanao, is using AI to read what is actually in a farm's soil so farmers stop buying fertilizer they do not need. Founder and chief executive Lorilyn P. Daquioag told BusinessWorld the tool checks soil condition and crop disease, then tells the farmer what to do next.

On one farm assessed during a dry spell, the farmer had been spreading fertilizer every 10 days. The test showed the topsoil already held seven times more fertilizer than the crops needed. The company told him to stop, saying the nutrients sitting in the ground would feed the plants for up to two more months. He saved the money he would have spent.

Daquioag compares the setup to a mobile hospital for farms. The soil test is the lab work, the recommendation is the prescription. Results go into a system the company calls AIMS, short for Agricultural Intelligence and Monitoring System, which also tracks expenses and sales. She says some farmers working more than five hectares keep no expense records at all, or write them on a calendar.

Why it matters

Fertilizer is one of the biggest costs in Philippine farming, and the timing is bad. State weather bureau PAGASA expects a strong El Nino, a long dry stretch, by the third quarter, possibly turning very strong by October and running to January. The Department of Agriculture has warned farm output could fall 20% to 30%. In that kind of season, throwing more fertilizer at dry soil mostly burns cash, because the crop cannot take it up.

The startup, which launched in 2021, has assessed about 300 farms in Mindanao and wants to reach 1,000 by the end of the year. It also sells soil treatments, including a compost activator it calls eCAS and a fungus-based product called Trico+.

The catch to watch

The headline savings come from the company itself. GreenVisionsPh says farmers using its products cut costs by as much as 50%, with savings reaching 4.1 million pesos a year on a 20-hectare farm, and that 52% of farmers it surveyed got bigger, healthier harvests. Those are the seller's own numbers, from its own survey, with no outside audit in the report. A soil test that saves you one fertilizer run is easy to check on your own receipts. A 50% cost cut across a whole farm is a much larger claim, and 300 farms is still a small sample for a country with millions of them.