🛰️🌾 UCD Spin-out Proveye signs €900k contract with European Space Agency 📰 @NovaUCD Spin-out @ProvEye has signed a second contract with the @esa, valued at €900,000. 👇 The remote sensing company uses satellite and drone image processing and AI to monitor land use for biodiversity and food production. This new contract with the ESA, awarded under the ARTES Business Applications and Space Solutions Programme, will allow the company to advance its pioneering platform to find nature-based solutions for carbon removal in the world's grasslands. Headquartered at NovaUCD, Proveye was founded by Jerome O'Connell and Professor Nick Holden as a spin-out from the UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering.  🗣️ Jerome O’Connell, CEO, Proveye: "We are excited to build on our previous success with ESA and continue advancing our technology to support the pressing need to produce more food in a more sustainable manner." “Grassland ecosystems are under significant pressure from climate change and intensive agriculture. Our platform empowers farmers to manage grasslands more efficiently, give actionable insights to project owners and provide investors and corporates with empirical evidence on the impact of their nature capital investments.” “Frequent and accurate metrics are critical to the widespread adoption of nature-based solutions and given the lack of significant financial commitments being secured at COP29 highlights even more the pressing need for platforms such as ours to give investors the assurance of impact on their investments.” According to the Rangeland Atlas, 54% of the world’s land surface is covered by grass, shrubs, or sparse, hardy vegetation. These plants store over 20% of the Earth’s soil carbon and play a key role in global food production. Many see The world’s grasslandsas an undervalued source of climate resilience and food production primarily due to the difficulty of measuring and monitoring at vast scales. 🗣️ Paul Kennedy, CCO, Proveye: “Proveye’s second collaboration with ESA highlights the company’s pivotal role in shaping the future of sustainable food production and climate resilience.” “This contract is expected to have far-reaching impacts, not only in Europe but globally, by driving efficiencies in habitat and grassland management and contributing to broader sustainability targets for all stakeholders in food production, natural capital and biodiversity restoration."

Securing the funding through the ARTES 4.0 Downstream Applications Demonstration Fund, Proveye will use it to support the commercialisation of its grassland management platform, which it hopes to bring to market in 2023.