Messium co-founder: Using space data to enhance sustainable food production

Agri-tech innovator Messium, which has developed a platform that uses hyperspectral satellite imaging and AI crop models to eliminate nitrogen fertilizer and help inform farmers in the field, has netted £3.3 million (US$4.5 million) in seed funding to scale operations.

Messium’s platform focuses on boosting yields, cutting waste, and supporting sustainable farming at scale. It offers farmers field-specific recommendations, helping them cut costs and boost sustainability. The technology can predict exactly what the crop will need and when.

It comes after a British satellite imaging start-up conducted trials last year, finding that over half of the fields were incorrectly fertilized.

AI analytics to improve crop management

The UK-based satellite farm imaging start-up is already working with 75 farms in the UK and Europe while running pilots in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US.

The technology improves farmers’ crop management by detecting how much nitrogen is present in each part of a field. This data, along with information about weather, soil, crop health, and nutrients, is analyzed.

Speaking to Food Ingredients First, Vishal Soomaney Vijaykumar, CTO and co-founder, explains how this technology gives farmers an edge, and how UK Space Agency programs support the company’s research in hyperspectral remote sensing, machine learning, and crop growth modeling to build something “radically new.” 

“The big breakthrough is accuracy. Our satellites measure crop nitrogen and biomass at a level that’s 90% as accurate as a lab test. Imagine running a lab test on every 5x5 square meter of a field – that’s what we can now do from orbit. It’s a complete step change.” 

Space agency backing 

Strong backing from the space sector, which is a unique funding path for agri-tech, has also shaped your product development and go-to-market differently from more traditional ag-tech start-ups.

Vijaykumar says strong backing from the space sector has kept the company laser-focused. “Our strategy has always been to do one thing exceptionally well: recreate lab-level accuracy for nitrogen measurement at scale. Too many ag-tech companies try to do ten things at once and dilute their impact. We’re staying sharp on one use case until it’s nailed, and that’s been our edge.” 

“Messium has the largest ground-truth hyperspectral dataset in the world for this use case, over 20,000 samples. Each one goes to a lab at around €30 (US$35) a sample, so we know precisely the nitrogen and biomass levels. We match those GPS-tagged samples back to the satellite imagery.”

“We also have world-class expertise in-house, including a Cambridge PhD in spectroscopy and machine learning. By combining that with cutting-edge AI methods, our models are currently 87% as accurate as a lab test - but applied across an entire field, every week.” 

This latest round of funding will help Medium scale, and Vijaykumar confirms the company is already in discussions with major European retailers. “They want their farmers using Messium to help hit Scope 4 emissions targets, and they’re prepared to pay for it. That’s where sustainability and traceability meet commercial incentive.” 

The seed funding round was co-led by UKI2S and Expansion Ventures.