- Robin Saluoks is cofounder and CEO of eAgronom, a climate technology company based in Estonia that helps farmers break into sustainable production.
- In a recent interview with Insider, Saluoks gave us a bird's eye view of his company's journey and his approach to driving innovation.
- This article is part of Innovation Leaders, a series examining how business leaders view their role in driving tech innovation.
Robin Saluoks is cofounder and CEO of climate technology company eAgronom, which helps farmers build more sustainable businesses using AI and other innovative technologies. The company has more than 1,500 agribusiness customers managing 1m+ hectares of land across Europe. In a recent interview with Insider, Saluoks gave us a bird's eye view of his company's journey and his approach to driving innovation for local farmers:
What is the biggest business challenge you're facing at the moment, and how are you tackling it?
One of the biggest business challenges we face is finding ways to better connect stakeholders working on genuine climate targets with partners who work on projects that sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. More specifically, we are working with farmers who want to bring sustainable changes to their farms but struggle to do so in a way that makes sense for them in the short term and profitably.
How does tech help you drive innovation?
We are developing tools to calculate emissions on farms and verify if the data is correct to produce carbon credits aligned with guidelines. Our core technology revolves around data collecting and data verifying tooling for land use management, which is easy for farmers to plug in and perform their own data analysis for measuring, reporting, and verification (MRV). We also integrate machine learning and satellite monitoring into our platform to make data more robust.
What are your current growth plans?
Earlier this year, we raised a Series A round of funding to help us optimize the farmer onboarding process, set up new global dealerships, and launch the eAgronom Carbon Program. We have also launched a program to finance high-quality carbon sequestration projects by pre-purchasing the credits, so that farmers and landowners no longer need to wait for five years or more to receive the funds and can get started on future-proofing their farms today.
Who do you partner with internally and externally to drive business and tech decisions?
As a climate tech working in farm management, we have always believed that it should be farmers first. As we scale and partner with other business stakeholders, we continue to work hand-in-hand with farmers to understand their needs and deliver practical solutions. Dealing with solutions for the climate, we also work with scientists from different universities and data experts to avoid greenwashing and strengthen genuine climate commitments. We are engaging with highly-credible external auditors to verify the Carbon Removal Units (CRUs), as well as organizations that set carbon accounting standards.
How excited are you about the technology of the future and what it means for your business and your sector?
As an optimist, I see enormous growth opportunities ahead in the agritech and climate tech sectors. Brilliant solutions are being developed across the industry — from carbon sequestration and storage to green energy solutions — and not just on the technology side. We are also seeing a major integration of agroecological knowledge in the industry. For me, this is an excellent sign that more people from different backgrounds are collaborating to produce solutions ready to be used in the market.