Built in public, in the field
The 7am report that walks your field before you do
A morning note for one farmer in Foggia today, with sensors in the soil. Three more regions monitored by satellite while we get this one right.
Yesterday morning, on the Tavoliere plain
Tuesday, 06:38. Giuseppe is on his second espresso when his phone buzzes. Not an alarm. Solco.
“Field 2, west half: soil moisture at root depth dropped from 24% to 19% over four days. The sensor is colder than the air by 3°C at dawn — that is a stress signal your wheat reads before it shows on the leaf. Sentinel saw the same strip drop 0.11 NDVI in the last image. Forecast: dry for six days, no rain before Sunday. Consider irrigating Wednesday evening. We will re-check tomorrow at 07:00.”
He does not walk the whole farm today. He walks field 2.
The morning note, three forms
A normal Tuesday
Field 1: stable. Field 2: stable. Field 3: stable. No rain expected until Thursday. No action.
A morning when something is shifting
Field 3, north strip: NDVI has dropped below your usual range for the third day. No stress signal yet. Forecast is dry for five days. Worth a walk tomorrow morning.
A morning when you should act
Field 1, west half: heat stress likely Thursday and Friday — 34°C forecast, soil moisture already at 19%. Consider irrigating Wednesday evening. Field 3 holding steady.
All three are written in the farmer's language, in the words a local extension officer would use.
How it gets to your phone
- 1
A satellite passes over your field. Sentinel-2, free and open, every two to three days. We pull the new image.
- 2
The sensor in your ground speaks every fifteen minutes. Moisture and temperature at root depth, the layer the satellite cannot see. This is the only way to know what the plant feels, not what its leaf looks like.
- 3
We compare both to your field's own history. Not your neighbour's. Fourteen days of normal for this field, this crop, this time of year.
- 4
We cross it with the next seven days of weather. Open-Meteo forecast, pulled fresh each morning.
- 5
A short, deterministic check runs on the edge. No LLM in this path. The same inputs always produce the same report.
- 6
We write it in your language. Five languages for the pilot. The words your local agronomist would actually use.
- 7
It is in your Telegram, WhatsApp, or webchat by 07:00. Whichever one you opened it in yesterday.
Where Solco is on the ground
Solco started the actual pilot in one place: the Province of Foggia, in Puglia. Three more regions are watched in parallel — but only one has sensors in the ground.
The live pilot
Province of Foggia, Puglia, Italy
Wheat, vegetables, and olives on the Tavoliere plain. Sensors in the ground measure moisture and temperature at root depth every fifteen minutes. Solco compares those readings to Sentinel-2 NDVI from above and the Open-Meteo forecast for the next seven days. The morning report that arrives at 07:00 is built on all three — what the satellite sees, what the sensor feels, what the weather is bringing. This is the only place where Solco runs against real, in-ground truth every day. The pilot farmer is here because we are also from here, and the first version of this product has to work for the person we can drive to.
Monitored, not piloted
Bavaria, Bordeaux, Wielkopolska
We run the satellite and forecast pipeline for these three regions in parallel, so we can watch what happens to wheat in Bavaria, vineyards in Bordeaux, and rapeseed in Wielkopolska at the same time we are running the live pilot. But no sensors are in the ground there yet, and no farmer in those regions is reading the report over breakfast. They are the next doors to open, in that order, once Foggia has earned the right to call the morning report honest.
What we believe
The satellite already sees it. The sensor in the ground feels it. The hard part is translating both into three sentences a farmer can act on.
A good morning report is not a dashboard. It is a decision.
Your field's data stays your field's data. We do not train models on your neighbour's field using your readings.
One farmer, one place, thirty days, sensors in the ground. That is more honest than a thousand signups.
Who is building this
Solco is built by Rocco Russo, alone, from a small town in Ordona in the Province of Foggia — the same plain where the sensors are. Software engineer by training, agronomist by accident. The project is in public — every commit, every weekly note, every wrong turn is on the blog. No investors, no headcount plans, no “AI will save farming” manifesto. Just a person in Puglia writing software that has to work for a person on the same plain.
Try the pilot
Be the next region after Foggia. Or be the second farmer on the Tavoliere. We work closely, in your language, in your field.