Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems

Grateful to have received the Regional Under 30 Entrepreneur award from the Kansas Department of Commerce for my team’s hard work at Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems! Ad Astra ✨!

Pelican Spray has landed in the USA! 🇺🇲 Heinen Brothers Agra Services, one of North America's largest privately-owned aerial application service providers, is now the first U.S. customer for Pyka's autonomous electric crop protection aircraft, Pelican Spray. This partnership follows the Federal Aviation Administration's groundbreaking authorization of Pelican Spray for commercial use, making it the largest ever #UAS to achieve this status and enabling us to offer the safety and cost-saving benefits of our technology to American farmers. Lukas Koch, CTO at Heinen Brothers, shared, "Pelican Spray is a game-changer for both us and the industry. This aircraft will enable us to begin augmenting our fleet, prioritizing our pilots' safety while significantly increasing efficiency in the field. We’re thrilled to partner with Pyka and lead the way in the future of Ag aviation." ➡ Read the press release: https://lnkd.in/gSHTDABE Stay tuned for Pelican Spray in-the-field updates from Heinen Brothers Agra Services! #AgTech #Automation #FlyPyka #PelicanSpray #HeinenBrothers #Pyka

An unmanned aerial systems (UAS) agricultural commercialization company headquartered in Kansas has been approved for the use of a 49,000-square-mile unmanned aerial systems test range that covers partial areas in four states including Kansas. 

What I learned this week..... We have a food system horizontally optimized for price, not health. Each value chain component is optimized for process efficiency, not product innovation. Consumer preferences are changing. More and more, consumers will price their food decisions based on a calorie and health basis. They will still eat cheap calories, but only when they can’t find affordable nutrition. The supply chain is catching on. ABCD and the CPGs need to catch up on food science, nutrient density, nutritional variability, and supply chain optimization. Every SKU in grocery needs to consider if its cheap calories or affordable nutrition. In a convergence called Food is Health. The cross-product of AgTech and HealthTech. The companies that catch traction in H2 2024 and H1 2025 are positioned to be the best vintage year returns in the sector’s modern history. 1) The CrossFit community is an important early adopter of affordable nutrition. 2) Fairlife is one best-case example of vertical optimization to improve nutritional density. Fairlife succeeded because it improved every step in the value chain, including brand. Fairlife is about 10 SKUS of 60K SKUS in a large grocery store. is every other SKU ripe for a similar vertical optimization? 3) Heritage grains seem like a small market, but perhaps not in aggregate. Non-trait weed control, improved processing, improved soil health, and improved genetics are speeding to a tipping point. Underestimated? 4) Our appendix may have been a critical store for bacteria. As a backup supply of bacteria to refill our digestive system after a pathogenic attack. Could it be a future vessel for microbiome health? 5) There is an opportunity to palletize grain and meat processing equipment. Specifically to help producers grow nutritionally dense grains and livestock. The size of truck containers. Who is the Elon Musk of this market? (Mad Agriculture) 6) At least 35M acres of US farmland are held by institutional investors. These institutional investors should be active investors in agtech solutions that increase asset value. Are investment banks/startups targeting these LPs for growth equity and cross-over funds? 7) There is really only one FAA certified test bed for agriculture unmanned systems. It is based in Kansas (Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems). These test beds are essential to test interoperability and to develop new business models. (Lukas Koch) 8) Foliar application of micronutrients may increase throughput 100x versus soil application. If you tie this to some combination of analysis from EarthOptics, Miraterra Inc., and Edacious, PBC, we might have a closed-loop approach for in-season crop nutrient density. 9) Little Tech’s move to the right likely has less to do with social ideology and more to do with reducing friction. Moving “Little Tech” back to the forces of creative destruction and capitalism.

162. Software is Feeding the World 1. Autonomous and 100% electric crop spraying company Pyka and SLC Agrícola S.A. announce deal for crop spraying in Brazil with some inputs from Volker Fabian, Chief Commercial Officer at Pyka There seems to be potentially a large market for aerial spray using technology like Pyka's but challenges with density of customer base, battery life, and charging time will have to be solved Image is of a Pyka spraying airplane 2. Moa Technology and Nufarm announce licensing deal for an herbicide with a new modes of action. Given the cost and time needed to bring products to market, startups working in the herbicide discovery phase will have to work with established agrochemical companies to bring products to market 3. Do you hate seeds in your blackberries? Well, Pairwise might have a solution for you in a few years by using CRISPR technology driven by "Divine Discontent" 4. We are starting to get more real data on herbicide savings using spot and spray technology. The per acre cost of spot spraying give us some benchmarks on minimum input savings needed to make the spot spraying technology viable #agtech #foodtech #artificialintelligence #agriculture Link in the first comment