A new joint venture between Deere & Company and Greenwood Village’s DN2K aims to get more farmers into the cloud to make growing crops more efficient and productive.
Financial details were not disclosed but Moline, Ill.-based Deere — a.k.a. John Deere — will own a majority stake in the new SageInsights, to be based in Denver.
While Deere sells tractors and equipment that can collect data and offer Internet access, DN2K, which stands for Data Into Knowledge, stores the data in the cloud to share with consultants who know what to do with it.
“You won’t believe how many hats a farmer wears — weather, agronomy, machinery. He can’t be an expert in everything. However, if he can make sure a machine is set up to collect the data that he needs and the consultant needs, it will be less wear and tear on him or her,” said Barry Nelson, a spokesman for John Deere’s Agriculture & Turf division. “And here was DN2K with this great software.”
Farmers use consultants to find better ways to irrigate, discover new seed varieties or target areas of their acreage that need more fertilizer. Using GPS, sensors and other technology, the results can be exact — so much so that it’s called precision agriculture. It can help farmers learn, for example, that a spot was less fruitful because a hill blocked the sun. Consultants then adjust the seed-planting map for the following year.
But it’s not like farmers are behind the times. The agriculture world has been collecting digital data since at least the 1990s, when farm equipment had built-in GPS and USB ports. The big problem was remembering to regularly remove the flash drive and transfer data to a computer, said Paul Schrimpf, executive editor of PrecisionAg, an industry publication.
“It wasn’t practical. Some growers would have two to three years of yield data,” Schrimpf said. “The industry can take the blame for not really having identified any value for the data. If it had a lot of value, the guys would be bringing them in (each night).”
Investors and wireless technology changed that. Today’s agricultural equipment — including new John Deere tractors — are part of the Internet of Things and are connected via cellular service.
“One of the huge issues of agriculture is labor,” Nelson said. “If a farmer has 20 combines, he can sit in his farm office and tell you where each combine is operating, if there are any issues with it and he can remotely look at the diagnostics.”
However, Schrimpf added that there is concern about the data itself.
“Growers are very concerned about data privacy and ownership and who they are sharing their data with,” Schrimpf said. “If they manipulate the data and send it back to you, who owns it now? (Growers) are looking for a way where they can control every aspect of it.”
The value of farm data has grown — at least in the eyes of Silicon Valley investors. With the lure of collecting all that data, venture capitalists are considering the market potential. One site, AgFunder.com, tracks ag-tech companies raising money.
In July, AgFunder said the total ag-tech investment in the first half of 2015 hit $2.06 billion over 228 deals ranging from food e-commerce to precision irrigation. It’s on pace to reach $4 billion this year. Last year, the total was $2.36 billion.
DN2K, which started in 2011 to tackle the oil and gas industry, pivoted a year later to focus on agriculture technology.
“We met a grower in Indiana who has 22 different technology systems to manage their farm. At the same time, we met with a data service provider who creates planting maps and yield maps for 800 growers,” DN2K president and CEO Susan Lambert said.
“Not only is it difficult to get your data, it’s difficult to share it with someone,” she said. “Our platform lets a single grower use it or someone who is managing 1,000 different properties.”
Lambert said that she expects her team of 45 employees to double in the next year because of the Deere venture.
Tamara Chuang: tchuang@denverpost.com or @Gadgetress
