About Bitwise Agronomy

We’re farmers ourselves, so we understand the challenges that growers face every season.

Fiona Turner, CEO of Bitwise Agronomy, talking about GreenView AI

In the media

Meet the Founders

The Founders story

Fiona had been working in the global tech world for years, specialising in Industry 4.0 projects to deliver the smart cities, smart factories and smart wineries of tomorrow. However she always knew she wanted to get back to her farming roots. 

After years in the tech world, a lifestyle change beckoned, and in 2016 Fiona and her partner bought Jinglers Creek vineyard in Tasmania, Australia. 

Swapping ‘tech board rooms’ for ‘cellar doors’ took some adjustment. Life was busy, and the vineyard quickly got out of control.

“I always missed the windows to do certain jobs around the vineyard and it was really stressful – everything took twice as long, and was twice as expensive, it felt like we were ploughing money into the ground rather than being efficient.” – Fiona Turner

Fiona hired consultants but then realised she couldn’t give them the information they needed to actually help her. She knew there had to be a better way to understand her crop and bring some data-driven structure to her farming.

And from those early challenges at Jinglers Creek vineyard, Bitwise Agronomy was born.

“I knew it was possible to use some of the technology I’d used in my past tech roles, like sensors, robotics and agtech cameras, to solve some of these real-world problems I was facing on my vineyard.” – Fiona Turner

Fiona also knew this task was bigger than one person.  

Aran and Fiona had worked together at AECOM in Queensland for 5 years, and when Fiona called, Aran immediately saw the potential in the idea. They worked nights and weekends for a year trialling everything from farming sensors to vine rover robots to swarms of drones to scare away birds.

“Really our heart was always set on using AI and neural nets. After lots of testing and trialling we thought we had enough data to make it work. Fiona took some initial imagery with a GoPro in her vineyard and away we went. When we put the neural net on LinkedIn it just blew up.” – Aran Elkington

That was in 2018 and the rest, as they say, is history. 

From that first neural net and months of development, Fiona and Aran moved to incorporate Bitwise Agronomy in late 2019. In March 2020 they brought on their first paid customer, and by June 2022 the Bitwise Agronomy GreenView AI system was being used in 72 sites around the world. 

This is just the beginning for Bitwise Ag. 

Fiona and Aran find inspiration every day in conversations with growers who never thought they’d have access to systems like GreenView AI. They’re motivated to develop new ways to help farmers, improve food security and positively impact global food production.

Bitwise Ag is now global team with one mission: to transform farming with cutting-edge technology.