{"id":379761,"date":"2025-12-31T12:39:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379761\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T12:39:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T12:39:26","slug":"2-germantown-teens-turn-classroom-idea-into-global-ai-farming-tool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/379761\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Germantown teens turn classroom idea into global AI farming tool"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two Germantown, Maryland, teens turned a classroom idea into a tool that is helping thousands of farmers worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>This page contains a video which is being blocked by your ad blocker.<br \/>In order to view the video you must disable your ad blocker.<\/p>\n<p>2 Germantown teens turn classroom idea into global AI farming tool<\/p>\n<p>Two Germantown, Maryland, teens turned a classroom idea into a tool that is helping thousands of farmers worldwide.<\/p>\n<p>Rudrojas \u201cRudra\u201d Kunvar, 16, is still a junior at Poolesville High School, and Jacob Lee, 18, graduated last year and is now a freshman at Stanford University. Together, they launched a startup called <a href=\"https:\/\/evion.tech\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Evion<\/a> while they were classmates at Poolesville. The idea came after talking to farmers during the school\u2019s Tractor Day.<\/p>\n<p>The two asked a farmer if they knew how healthy their farmland was, and the answer surprised the teens.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said, \u2018We don\u2019t know. We\u2019re guessing,&#8217;\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n<p>At that moment, an idea was born.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe narrowed this down to the root cause of the technology to solve this problem does exist. It\u2019s just technically arduous and not very cost-efficient, which leads to a lot of these smaller-scale farms not being able to access this level of analysis,\u201d Lee said.\n<\/p>\n<p>Evion uses artificial intelligence to examine photos from basic drones, looking at both the color and reflection of the plants captured. The AI then returns a color-coded crop health map. Green means healthy, orange is moderate and red signals stressed crops. It is technology that normally requires sensors costing thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe wanted to make an alternative that, like, would, in a sense, go directly against these large ag (agricultural) monopolies, and, you know, provide this technology to low- to midscale farms,\u201d Kunvar said.<\/p>\n<p>It has had an impact as small and mid-sized farms, according to the USDA, account for 36% of the total value of farm production in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>The tool has already reached more than 2,000 farmers across Asia and the U.S. Lee said farmers told him, \u201cThis is going to save us a ton of money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Kunvar said they have turned down opportunities to sell their tool because they want it to remain accessible to smaller farms, including several in Montgomery County that use it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of farmers that we have personal connections with, a lot of farmers that have helped us out in various different ways. And we wanted to find a way to give back to them,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n<p>The teens hope to expand Evion beyond agriculture into industries such as forestry and construction, making advanced analysis affordable for everyone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"single-page__signature bottom\">Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up <a href=\"https:\/\/wtop.com\/newsletter-signup\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"single-page__signature bottom\">\u00a9 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Germantown, Maryland, teens turned a classroom idea into a tool that is helping thousands of farmers worldwide.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,33752,181,507,185617,37520,5641,110463,185618,12883,185619,185620,185621,74],"class_list":["post-379761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-tool","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-evion","tag-farmers","tag-farming","tag-farmland","tag-jacob-lee","tag-mike-murillo","tag-poolesville-high-school","tag-rudra-kunvar","tag-rudrojas-kunvar","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}