# Elders partners with Octopusbot to give farmers AI crop forecasts > Source: > Published: 2026-07-30 06:11:12+00:00 # Elders partners with Octopusbot to give farmers AI crop forecasts Growing up in Chile, Carolina Ferreira watched her grandfather, a corn farmer, struggling to make ends meet as he battled unpredictable prices in a valley more famous for its red wine than crops. Now living in Sydney – and with 15 years of experience as an electrical and industrial engineer – Ferreira has discovered a solution to take some of the guesswork out of farming, and has struck a partnership with Australian agribusiness giant Elders. She co-founded and developed Octopusbot, a product that harnesses artificial intelligence to deliver near-perfect grain forecasts and help strengthen global food security. Octopusbot already has almost 100 customers around the world and has raised more than $1m from Folklore Ventures and No Brand to accelerate its global expansion and gain a slice of the $US13.3bn ($19bn) precision farming market. The technology taps into datasets across the world and burrows down to a regional level, which Ferreira says allows Octopusbot to forecast crop production, supply, demand and price to 95% accuracy up to seven months before harvest. **Levelling the playing field** She said the technology aimed to level the playing field between farmers and commodity traders and catapult an industry – where many have often staked entire livelihoods on weather, instinct and hope, like her grandfather did – into the modern era. “I grew up seeing my grandad struggling with all the uncertainty in agriculture,” Ferreira said. “One season it was the weather, it wasn’t very good, but then next season the weather could be good, and he got a good yield, but the pricing was not good. “And professionally, I worked over 15 years implementing technology for large corporates, and once AI started to become more practical, I saw an opportunity to apply it in agriculture because of its ability to process thousands of variables at once and move fragmented data into objective forecasts that could really be beneficial for farmers and agribusinesses.” The technology feeds weather, satellite data, historical yields, planted areas, global supply-and-demand indexes and commodity market signals through “thousands of interconnected AI models”. It starts at the local growing region, then consolidates the estimates to state, country and global level. Ferreira said the company began by predicting the ASX wheat price, then realised it first had to predict Australian production, then production worldwide, then drill down to the individual region. “If we really want to go to the next level of accuracy, we need to not only predict country level production estimates. We need to go to the local region level,” Ferreira said. Co-founder Rodrigo Cortes brought experience in supply chain, procurement, commodity markets and treasury – the buy side that would put the forecasts to work. Ferreira said the production models hit 95% accuracy seven months ahead of official estimates in the 2024-25 season, climbing to 97.4% on the final read. The Elders deal has helped validate the technology, providing the boots-on-the-ground agronomy that an algorithm cannot, and Ferreira is mindful about where the machine stops. **Supporting the expertise** “We are not replacing local agronomists or local expertise. It’s more about providing more accurate intelligence to support that expertise in a better way.” Ferreira says the platform also helps strengthen food security, with the certainty handed to the grower flowing up every link of the chain and keeping them in business. “By giving the grower more certainty about the risk ahead of the season and how they can translate that into decisions is going to make their farm more secure and more sustainable. “You are starting with that sustainability from the bottom up. And then you provide early visibility at every step of the supply chain.” Folklore Ventures managing partner Alister Coleman said: “Agriculture is one of the most important industries in the world, but many decisions are still made with incomplete or delayed information. “The Octopusbot forecasting platform has more than 10,000 AI models processing millions of complex data points daily to quantify risk, measure probability and surface gains. This leads to better decision making for customers, and more predictable outcomes in markets that have historically been driven by historical data and sentiment. “Folklore’s proud to support Carolina, Rodrigo and the team. The upside of AI and advanced system usage in forecasting technology in making agricultural decisions is large, both for Aussies and those around the world.” The company runs two products on tiered subscriptions. The first, a market forecasting platform, targets traders, brokers, animal feed makers, fertiliser companies and global food giants. The second builds a bespoke model for a single farm, blending its historical yields with local weather to tell a grower whether to plant before a seed hits the ground. *This article first appeared in The Australian as **Elders partners with AI start-up Octopusbot to give farmers near-perfect crop forecasts**.* ## Related Topics ### UNLOCK INSIGHTS Discover the untold stories of emerging ASX stocks. Daily news and expert analysis, it's free to subscribe. By proceeding, you confirm you understand that we handle personal information in accordance with our [Privacy Policy](https://stockhead.com.au/privacy-policy/).