Unlock Higher Cannabis Profits: Agtech Tools You Need to Know

Agricultural technology (agtech) has come a long way. Today, many of bio365’s clients run sensor-based automation systems, which can be an important greenhouse technology.

During a panel at Indoor AgCon 2024, experts shared insights about the possibilities that automation and AI will bring to controlled environment agriculture (CEA) to help improve productivity, reduce operational costs, and enhance crop quality and yields.

For example, a number of companies and startups are actively trying to bring artificial intelligence (AI) to agtech with a goal of taking in all of the available grow data and allowing the AI to make decisions. The grower will no longer have to interpret the data. Instead, the AI will do it all in real-time. Think of it as growing with algorithms.

The key takeaway from the panel was simple – AI will fundamentally change agriculture by offering advanced technological solutions to automate and optimize various aspects of the cultivation process, including decision-making, crop monitoring, precision farming, harvesting, and more.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of agtech and some of the opportunities available to cannabis growers to leverage technology solutions for profit.

Uses and Benefits of AgTech Tools for Cannabis Growers

Agtech tools help cannabis cultivators monitor their operations, automate tasks, make decisions, and more. Here are some of the most common uses and benefits for cannabis growers today:

Monitoring and Control

Lighting, watering, nutrients, energy efficiency – all of these critical functions can be monitored automatically and remotely thanks to agtech. These tools use sensors to collect and deliver data to growers who analyze it and use it to make decisions to optimize their crops.

Cannabis growers with smart operations in place can monitor temperature, humidity, light, CO2, HVAC levels, and so on and adjust to ideal conditions automatically as needed. This level of real-time control ensures maximum growth and energy efficiency that increase profits and cut operational costs.

Crop Health

There are a variety of agtech tools available to help growers optimize plant and crop health. For example, there are tools that use sensors and imaging technology, like cameras and drones, to monitor health and growth.

These tools can detect early signs of stress, nutrient deficiencies, pests, or diseases, so growers can proactively protect their crops, reduce the need for chemical intervention, and minimize losses.

Inventory Management and Reporting

Agtech solutions can track crop growth stages, quantities, and harvest schedules so growers are able to optimize their production schedules, manage supply chains, and ensure consistent production and quality.

Some AI-powered inventory management systems track and analyze data related to seed-to-sale processes, including cultivation, harvesting, processing, packaging, and distribution, in order to optimize the entire supply chain.

By improving supply chain and inventory management and reporting, growers can minimize waste, reduce costs, and ensure they’re in compliance with regulations, which helps them avoid fines or legal issues.

Decision-Making

Today, agtech tools collect data on many aspects of cultivation. Growers interpret that data to make informed decisions based on real-time analytics. As a result, they should be able to improve efficiency and increase yields.

Taking the use of data a step further, some agtech solutions use AI, predictive analytics, and machine learning algorithms to collect and analyze data about environmental conditions, cultivation practices, plant genetics, crop performance, and more. With this data, growers can better forecast crop yields and plan production cycles in order to get more predictable outcomes and improve profitability.

AI algorithms can even analyze genetic data to identify desirable traits in cannabis plants, such as potency, yield, and resistance to pests and diseases. This information helps breeders develop new cultivars with improved characteristics, tailored to meet current market demands and regulatory requirements.

2 Inexpensive, Must-Have Agtech Tools

The bio365 team highly recommends two essential agtech tools to indoor cannabis growers: a tensiometer and a chlorophyll meter.

Tensiometer

A tensiometer measures how much water your cannabis plants can actually access from your growing media, which could be very different from the volume of water in the growing media at any given time.

In simplest terms, a tensiometer acts like an artificial root by mimicking the root in the plant and measuring if there is water available to the plant – and how much – right now. This is extremely important because the amount of water (i.e., the volume) in the growing media is less important than how easy or difficult it is for the plant to extract that water.

You can measure the ease or difficulty for the plant to access water based on root tension. The tensiometer reads how much tension the plant root has to use to suck water from the growing media, and it’s the most accurate way to tell whether or not your cannabis plants need water.

A tensiometer is an inexpensive but very accurate tool that you can buy for less than $100.l With just a few tensiometers, you can gauge what’s happening in an entire grow room.

RELATED READING: Learn How to Use a Tensiometer and Why

Chlorophyll Meter

Measuring the amount of chlorophyll in your plants is the most accurate way to manage feeding during the critical first six weeks or so of the plant cycle when the process of plant growth is driven by nitrogen. You can get an accurate measurement with a $200-$300 chlorophyll meter – a tool used to measure how much chlorophyll is in a plant’s leaf.

The amount of chlorophyll in your plant directly correlates to the amount of nitrogen in the plant, and nitrogen is what drives feeding decisions in the first half of a cannabis plant’s growth cycle. Therefore, a chlorophyll meter takes the guesswork out of feeding because you’ll know in real-time and with great accuracy if you’ve overfed or underfed your plants.

A low percentage of chlorophyll in your plant tells you that you’ve been underfeeding while a high percentage of chlorophyll tells you the plant has enough nitrogen and continuing to feed would be wasteful, possibly dangerous for your plant. The goal is to get to maintain a stable number so your plants have the right amount of nutrients to achieve optimal growth.

When you know exactly when your plants really need to be fed, you’ll save a significant amount of time and money on labor and fertilizer costs, and your plants will grow healthier. This is especially important in the early stages of growth when you need to get plants established and get the right root structure.

RELATED READING: Learn How to Use a Chlorophyll Meter and Why

What’s Next for Agtech and Cannabis Cultivation?

Ultimately, smart farms and AI will win in the future when it comes to legal commercial cannabis cultivation at scale. Data-driven cannabis cultivators will lead the way in the future, and agtech will be critical to their success.

To learn more about agtech and your growing media, contact the soil experts at bio365!