S4: De-risking Agricultural Production Via Data Analytics and Satellite Imagery

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The objective of the project is to mitigate and manage climate risks affecting agricultural production. It purpose is to support the development and market adoption of a non-conventional climate-risk management solution based on satellite imagery, vegetation and other Indexes advanced by "S4". Through an equity investment, the project will support S4, an early stage company that is leading the innovation in this field in the Region to consolidate its operations in Argentina and expand regionally, starting with Brazil. S4 has an innovative, technology-based platform that uses remote sensing satellite data, deep learning techniques, and proprietary algorithms, to construct Enhanced Vegetation Indexes (EVI) that recognize and classify different crops and phonological periods, which correlate their growth with yields, as well as indexes that account for excess water in production areas. With project support, S4 will design and refine EVI-based climate-risk hedging products that aim to provide crop risk protection from systemic weather events (i.e. yield loss due to droughts or floods). The hedging products will be commercialized through different channels, including over the counter futures markets and aggregators (such as input supplier companies), with the backing of insurance and reinsurance companies.