Ten Years of Spacenus: Learning, Adapting, and Leading in AgTech

This December, Spacenus turns ten.

I don’t see this anniversary as a celebration of longevity. I see it as proof of relevance—earned by staying close to real problems while entire waves of technology, terminology, and expectations came and went.

My journey started before Spacenus, during my master’s research in remote sensing. That’s where I encountered a finding that permanently shaped how I think: a one-degree increase in global temperature can significantly reduce food production, and that decline can increase the risk of armed conflict by around 20%. Climate change was no longer an abstract environmental issue—it was about food, stability, and people.

That insight pulled me into agriculture. Not out of idealism alone, but out of urgency.

Before founding Spacenus, I worked on a strategic digital and remote sensing initiative for one of the world’s largest agrochemical companies. The objective was straightforward: use data to improve decision-making and strengthen market performance. The work delivered clear results—better targeting, higher adoption, and measurable commercial impact.

That experience became a proving ground for a lesson I still carry today: solutions that do not work commercially do not scale, no matter how noble their intent. If technology cannot survive inside real business constraints, it remains theoretical.

Spacenus was born from that realization.

In the early years, we focused on the fundamentals the industry lacked: reliable field boundaries, machine-to-system connectivity, and APIs that enabled variable-rate applications. We became an AgTech API company—rarely visible, but deeply embedded in how modern agricultural systems began to operate.

As satellite capabilities matured, so did our ambition. Together with the European Space Agency, we developed nitrogen fertilizer recommendation systems by combining satellite imagery with soil productivity maps and farmer-facing applications. This brought us closer to the field—and closer to farmers.

That phase sharpened our understanding of scale. Farmers are the foundation of the system, but agribusinesses, cooperatives, and value-chain actors are often the ones who can operationalize change across thousands of fields. Rather than replacing existing relationships, we learned to strengthen them.

As precision agriculture matured, the market itself evolved. What was once scarce became abundant. Maps turned into commodities. Value shifted away from visualization and toward decision relevance, integration, and outcomes.

At the same time, our customers’ questions changed.

They were no longer asking how to see fields better, but how to account for carbon, soil health, and long-term resilience—credibly and at scale—without exploding costs or complexity. That shift led us naturally into soil organic carbon mapping, where we combined satellite data with limited, well-designed soil sampling to deliver scalable and credible SOC baselines.

This work expanded into regenerative agriculture and carbon MRV. Again, together with ESA, we built tools for practice detection, sampling strategies, and baseline establishment—this time not as experiments, but as operational components for real projects.

As carbon markets developed, another pattern became clear. Carbon project developers, agribusinesses, and brands all needed similar data—but for different reasons and under different constraints. Technology alone was not the bottleneck. Alignment across the value chain was.

That insight proved decisive.

Food and textile companies began using our tools not just to quantify carbon, but to understand their Scope 3 emissions at field level—and, more importantly, how to reduce them without forcing disruptive change on farmers. Insetting, not offsetting. Reduction, not just reporting.

That is where we are today, in 2025: building infrastructure for Scope 3 emission monitoring and reduction across food and textile value chains.

Looking back, Spacenus did not pivot randomly. We iterated toward where value concentrates as systems mature. In emerging domains like AgTech and carbon, focus does not mean standing still—it means following the signal as it becomes clearer.

For the first ten years, our customers led us. Machinery companies, agribusinesses, farmers, carbon developers, food brands—each exposed a different fracture in the system. We followed those fractures deliberately.

Now, it is time for us to lead.

We can lead because we have seen what fails at scale. Because we have lived through multiple hype cycles. And because we have built data infrastructure that works across them—from global farm mapping and field-level input optimization to SOC baselines, practice verification, and carbon impact measurement.

Everything starts with the farmer.
No farmer means no food.
No food means no raw material.
No raw material means no market—regardless of ambition or branding.

The next chapter for Spacenus is not about adding more tools. It is about connecting what already exists—linking farmers, agribusinesses, and food and textile companies into a coherent system where climate action, farm resilience, and commercial performance reinforce each other.

Ten years ago, Spacenus started with a scientific insight and a sense of urgency. Today, that urgency remains—but it is tempered by experience.

This is not a conclusion.
It is a transition.

If you believe credible climate action must start at the field and end with the consumer, then the next decade is one we should build together.