The emergence of COVID-19 has posed new and complex challenges for the nearly $130 billion U.S. agriculture industry, placing new strains on production and supply chains and creating new economic challenges for farmers and ag retailers. These new challenges fall on top of existing hurdles like climate change, trade issues, market volatility and an evolving workforce.
For many of these challenges, we believe the solution involves harnessing the latest technologies to improve agricultural productivity, profitability and sustainabily, while also creating a more efficient agricultural supply chain. In an effort to build the most comprehensive, effective and compatible suite of digital tools for our farmers and retail-owners, Land O’Lakes, Inc. recently announced a slate of new and exciting partnerships that will open up many new opportunities throughout our system.
This new series of alliances with cutting-edge technology and agriculture partners is designed to help deliver the necessary digital connectivity, compatibility and tool flexibility to provide a strategic advantage for our network of retail owners and farmers.
Working with Microsoft to pioneer new innovations in agriculture and rural communities
Land O’Lakes, Inc. and Microsoft Corp. announced a multiyear strategic alliance to pioneer new innovations in agriculture and enhance the supply chain, expand sustainability practices for farmers and the food system and close the rural broadband gap. Combining Microsoft’s trusted cloud technologies and AI capabilities with our ag tech tools such as WinField United’s R7® Tool Suite, Answer Tech Data Silo® and Truterra™ Insights Engine, our companies will deliver solutions through our ag retail network that will help farmers’ profit potential and adoption of on-farm sustainability practices.
Through the partnership, we are also launching pilots to address the lack of broadband access in rural communities. By combining Microsoft’s Airband program and specific locations within the Land O’Lakes owner network, we can deploy broadband to rural communities along with services including telehealth, educational resources and digital skilling.
WinField United connects Climate FieldView™ to its cloud-based data-management system
WinField United’s new partnership with Climate FieldView, the flagship product of The Climate Corporation, Bayer’s digital farming arm, will allow farmers in the U.S. and Canada to leverage on-farm data in new ways through the recent addition of Climate FieldView™ to the WinField® United Answer Tech Data Silo.
The Answer Tech Data Silo securely stores and allows WinField United to be the aggregator of data for the locally-owned and operated retail system, helping farmers make data-backed decisions throughout the season to drive profitability on their operations. By integrating one of the first and most broadly connected digital farming platforms, all FieldView users doing business with a WinField United-affiliated retailer will have the option to connect their FieldView and Data Silo accounts, eliminating the need for duplicative data entry and giving farmers the option to integrate data into multiple in-season crop management tools.
Truterra and Syngenta collaborate to support growers with cutting-edge stewardship advancement capabilities
Truterra has teamed up with Syngenta to leverage the combined power of both companies’ data analytics platforms to make stewardship more accessible and streamlined across the food and agriculture supply chain. This technology-based alliance will make use of data analytics from both TruterraTM Insights Engine and the Syngenta AgriEdge® platform.
The combined power of insights and expertise will help assess and improve soil health, carbon sequestration, GHG emissions, livestock lifecycle assessment and water management on American farms. Through this collaboration, growers will receive insights on what practices would be beneficial in advancing their stewardship efforts and understand the implications on each field’s profitability potential.
The agriculture industry is facing many existing and emerging challenges that requires significant investment in innovation to overcome. Land O’Lakes and its partners have long worked together in recognizing that technology and agriculture are two industries that are becoming increasingly intertwined. With these new partnerships, we are reiterating our efforts to pioneer cutting-edge solutions to ensure the longeivity of our system, the industry and rural communities for years to come.