ESTEDE was founded in 2007 by Jeroen ten Dolle and Franklin Stump. In the early years we started out with importing and distributing of measuring equipment from Spectrum Technologies for the European market. Over the years products from other manufacturers like Horiba, Agreto and Innoquest were added to our portfolio. In 2015 we started developing our own FieldGuard Stations and Tracis Software. This line of wireless stations in combination with our sophisticated Tracis Web Portal was quickly adopted by Dutch Fruit Growers, and used for monitoring Soil Moisture at different depths and location in their orchards. Soil Moisture was quickly followed by other important growth parameters such as rain, leaf wetness, air temperature and humidity etc. Nowadays we measure all important growth parameters for crops and use this data to provide irrigation models, disease models and (frost) alerts for different types of crops.
In 2018 we started to collaborate with Delphy (a Dutch agricultural consulting organization) and Meeuwse Water Technics (a Dutch Irrigation company) to develop our FieldGuard Smart Irrigation System. This web based irrigation systems communicates with local FieldGuard Irrigation Controllers in the field to provide conditional irrigation and fertigation asks based on sensor data directly from this orchard, weather forecast and the Delphy QMS irrigation models.
When you buy a FieldGuard System from our company, then collaboration doesn’t stop after you paid the invoice. FieldGuard Stations in general have a lifespan between 5 to 10 years. During this period we tend to have contact with our customer to see if all systems work accordingly and to see if the customer has the information from his fields that he needs to make better decisions. Each year at the beginning of the season we contact our customers to see if stations are up and running for the new season or if batteries for example need to be replaced and sensor data is as expected that time of the year. Together with our customers we interpret data in order to optimize yield and quality when harvesting your crops, but also to improve sustainability of you company by reducing the amount of water, fertilizers and pesticides used by your company.