Proveye, a Dublin-based agri and climate tech company, has secured a major new contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to complete and deploy its precision fertilizer solution ProvVari. The project targets the dairy and beef sectors, aiming to enhance grassland productivity, reduce input costs, and cut the environmental impact of fertilizer use across Europe. The award, made under the competitive ESA Spark Funding initiative, positions Proveye as a key player in the shift toward data-driven, nature-positive agriculture.
ESA Backs Nature-Positive Fertilizer Innovation
For decades, synthetic fertilizers have underpinned European food production, but their intensive use has driven nutrient loss, water pollution, and rising greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. ProvVari is designed to tackle these entrenched problems by guiding farmers to apply fertilizer only where and when it is needed most, at rates tailored to local conditions. By linking agronomic performance with environmental outcomes in a single platform, the solution supports both farm profitability and national climate and biodiversity targets.
Space Data at the Core of ProvVari
ProvVari is built on Proveye’s ProvGrass platform, which fuses satellite imagery from ESA’s Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 multispectral missions with high-resolution drone data collected directly over fields. This rich information is combined with GNSS guidance, soil measurements, and localized meteorological datasets to generate variable rate fertilizer maps for each paddock and parcel. The output enables farmers to reduce waste, protect water quality, and manage nutrients in line with increasingly strict European regulations on emissions and runoff.
Industry Engagement and Vision
Proveye chief executive Jerome O’Connell said the platform has already attracted strong interest from agri-advisors, machinery manufacturers, and seed and fertilizer companies, as well as a growing group of progressive Irish farmers. He argued that the appetite for such tools reflects mounting pressure on agriculture to deliver food security, maintain farm incomes, and restore ecosystems at the same time. O’Connell stressed that Proveye sees minimal trade-off between farming and nature, and that its products are built to allow both to thrive in the long term.
Support from ESA Space Solutions Ireland
Peter Finnegan, Manager of the ESA Space Solutions Centre Ireland, which administers ESA Spark Funding, welcomed Proveye’s latest contract and underlined its strategic relevance. He described ProvVari as a timely innovation that can help farmers increase productivity while limiting the sector’s environmental footprint and compliance costs. According to Finnegan, the project illustrates how space technology and data can translate into practical digital tools for one of Europe’s most resource-intensive and politically sensitive industries.
Rollout Across Ireland and Beyond
Proveye plans to introduce ProvVari in Ireland in the first quarter of 2026 before expanding to wider European and international markets. Beyond farm gates, the platform will equip regulators and policymakers with granular, near-real-time data to monitor and manage fertilizer use more effectively at regional and national levels. In doing so, it aims to support healthier soils, cleaner water bodies, and more resilient rural landscapes across Europe’s grassland regions.
By combining satellite data, remote sensing, and field intelligence in one integrated system, Proveye is positioning ProvVari as a bridge between high-yield farming and environmental stewardship. The ESA contract gives the company both validation and resources to scale its solution from targeted pilot projects to broad commercial deployment with industry partners. As climate, biodiversity, and regulatory pressures intensify on food systems, precision tools such as ProvVari may become central to how Europe’s dairy and beef sectors operate over the coming decade.