When Agri-Expo and South Africa Wine were honored at the 2026 Western Cape Economy Innovation Awards on Monday, 1 June 2026, the accolades celebrated more than organizational excellence. Organized by the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI), the event marked a triumphant milestone for a homegrown scientific breakthrough changing how South African farmers interact with their land.
At the absolute heart of this shift is Dr. Tara Southey, founder and CEO of TerraClim.
For the country’s agricultural sector, TerraClim has become an essential tool for survival in an era of climate volatility. Yet, long before it was an award-winning platform recognized with a top Industry Innovation Award, it was a burning academic question in the mind of a young researcher at Stellenbosch University.
Rooted in the Soil
To understand Dr. Southey’s approach to agritech, one must look past the complex algorithms to the open landscapes of Victoria West. Raised on a sheep farm in the Karoo, Southey grew up intimately acquainted with the heavy demands of farming in an unforgiving climate.
That upbringing shaped her academic trajectory. Enrolling at Stellenbosch University in 2004, she completed her undergraduate and Master’s degrees in viticulture and oenology. Her early research focused on how micro-climates and soil water altered grape development. By the time she earned her doctorate in 2016, she had spent over a decade mastering open-source data modeling and climate analysis.
Solving the Data Crisis
“TerraClim started trying to solve problems in the wine industry, a big factor being the inaccessibility of weather station and terrain data,” Dr. Southey reflects.
Weather and terrain drive every biological system. Historically, capturing this data required expensive physical hardware, leaving many producers blind to the precise conditions of their own fields.
Southey’s scientific breakthrough bypassed hardware bottlenecks through mathematical interpolation. Launched in January 2022, TerraClim integrates data from over 1,400 physical weather stations with 44 environmental layers, including elevation, slope aspect, and distance to the coast. The system calculates how these layers interact, creating millions of virtual weather stations that provide a new temperature value roughly every 40 meters.
“Instead of having one weather station on your farm, you now have a comprehensive temperature map,” Southey explains. Updating hourly, this allows farmers to track micro-climate thresholds and make definitive decisions regarding irrigation and planting layouts.
National Modernization
While the technology was proven in Western Cape vineyards, Dr. Southey quickly recognized that her research extended far beyond wine.
“We realized more and more that this intelligence is needed in every agricultural commodity,” she says.
In early 2026, TerraClim partnered with the Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation (DSTI) to lead the South African System of Systems for Agricultural Modernisation (SASSAM) initiative. The pilot program brings these digital, climate-smart tools to 50 farms across the Eastern Cape.
“We are taking credible knowledge from the ARC, CSIR, and universities, and bringing it into a connected system,” says Southey. “Our vision is to accelerate modernization across South African agriculture.”