For the last four years, Planet and Corteva, a global pure-play agriculture company that provides a diverse mix of seed, crop protection and digital solutions to farmers around the world, have been building and providing joint solutions to growers allowing them to more seamlessly monitor crop health and boost productivity. In July 2021, Planet entered into a definitive merger agreement with dMY Technology Group, Inc. IV (NYSE: DMYQ), a special purpose acquisition company, to become a publicly traded company.

The collaboration began even before the formation of Corteva Agriscience and has grown in large part due to the collaboration and the chance Corteva Agriscience and Planet took on one another.

“If we look back at the beginning, the focus was about how we were going to create value for the agriculture industry together, specifically, for the grower. Today, we still have that same mentality that we are figuring it out together,”

said John Davidson, Senior Director of Product at Granular, a wholly owned subsidiary of Corteva Agriscience.

To date, the companies have accelerated technology offerings side-by-side, working together and co-developing big ideas and visions to create a mutually beneficial relationship.

“It’s been about collaboration and that spirit of trying to achieve and create unique value into the agriculture sector,”

said Davidson.

“It is hard to do what Planet is doing. There are a lot of hurdles to getting so many satellites in orbit. Beyond that, we have walked into this collaboration with a strong set of expectations. We have numerous use cases that echo our customers’ needs and have pushed Planet to meet the requirements for data to serve those use cases,”

said Dr. Christopher Seifert, Vice President of Data Science at Granular.

One of the ways this collaboration has grown is through the sheer scale of imagery Corteva consumes, here Corteva has played a key role in pushing Planet to expand its scale on a daily basis across all industries.

“We may not be the largest consumer, but on a daily scale basis, I think we are consistently pushing the limits of the scalability of the services,”

said Davidson.

During this time, Planet has scaled not only its offerings but also the customer base as well, serving more than 600 customers and 200 partners, always keeping the customer experience at the forefront. This relationship has enabled both companies to expand as big players in each of their respective markets. Through the years, Corteva and Planet have collaborated to optimize Planet’s products and data for the greatest output.

“We’re definitely maturing in the view of where Planet data is the best fit for much of what we’re doing. Research and development (R&D) has driven some of that, previous geographic expansion of the offerings has also driven some of that. It took us a while to get moving and really consume a lot of the Planet data and figuring out how to leverage it, and then it took off pretty quickly,”

said Seifert.

“Right now, we’re using Planet imagery in Argentina, Brazil, the EU, Canada, and all over the world with some of our seed production as well,”

said Davidson.

Since the Corteva team has shown the growers how to look at the data, the number of applications from the growers and farmers has grown substantially. As a farm operation becomes larger or more geographically spaced out, the ability to see what is going on quickly becomes important.

“A lot of our farmers have many thousands of acres that they’re working with and they may be spread out over multiple counties. They’re trying to understand and figure out what to do very quickly. Both PlanetScope and SkySat enable growers to see what is happening and detect actual problems,”

said Davidson.

“And this is what we do with our directed scouting product: enable growers to detect changes in their fields to help them understand what is going on and which ones to tend to first. Being able to go and be that trusted advisor for the farmers that they work with is critical. This is one of the tools that they must be ahead of the game. It allows them to use their time more wisely and pinpoint the areas most critical to look at,”

said Seifert.

For growers, the most crucial data to pair with satellite data is historical yield data.

“Growers can see the differences in their fields versus where it was a few days ago or a week ago and determine if the field is historically high-performing, or low-performing. Having that knowledge in Granular® Insights is exceedingly useful as well as planted data. To know what you planted in various places and see if there’s some troubleshooting you can do. Every additional data layer that you can add to Planet data is a way of troubleshooting problems that you might be seeing. You can look at Planet on one side and you can look at what crops you planted or even look at the historical harvest without ever stepping foot in the fields. It’s pretty miraculous just looking at all this data they have and being able to process it really quickly and understand how it all fits together,”

added Davidson.

“We’re tracking large swaths of the planet on a daily basis to detect changes as quickly as possible. There are parts of the world that are exceptionally cloudy and so being able to pull different data sets together creates the potential for real value. Using fusion to fix those problems could open up some very productive parts of the globe for us,”

said Seifert. He added:

“Planet, with its innovation and setting up smaller satellites to get more frequent data collection, helps boost the ability to innovate and to help provide value for farmers in a number of areas.,”

Through this collaboration, Corteva and Planet have maintained a strict focus on enabling progress in the agriculture sector. With this shared focus, Planet continues to expand its offerings to new and existing markets, making change visible, accessible, and actional to industries across the globe.

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This technical and commercial partnership will leverage Planet’s near-daily satellite imagery and data to further inform smart farming decisions through Solinftec. With Solinftec, farmers and ag retailers have access to live agronomic insights while on-the-job, which helps inform complex, daily farm activities and ag retailer services. The integration of Planet’s satellite data adds a new layer of vital information into the algorithm, to guide a wide variety of crop management decisions.

“Farmers today make decisions with their entire operation in mind –constantly considering a wide variety of factors that can change day-to-day,”

said Henrique Nomura, chief technology officer of Solinftec.

“We are focused on incorporating the latest information, which now includes data from Planet—to inform smarter decisions at key stages of the crop production cycle.”

Planet’s satellite imagery can be used to cover large growing areas, deliver field-level detail to observe spatial variability and ensure data is up to date across the season. This partnership between Solinftec and Planet helps bridge the gap between data sources in the cloud and agricultural decisions on the ground.

“Planet’s imagery is helping to enable Solinftec to scale globally as they expand their digital agriculture solutions to reach farmers in more than 10 countries and growing,”

states director of business development at Planet, Zara Khan.

“This partnership will provide invaluable data to farmers allowing them to track historical trends and inform real-time decisions for crop health monitoring and nutrient management.”

Solinftec and Planet’s global partnership centers around real-time insights – a factor that differentiates both companies within their respective industries.

“Real-time support for smart decision-making is in our DNA,”

said Guilherme Guine Pinto Ferreira, Solinftec head of product, Brazil.

“That’s one of the characteristics that immediately drew us to Planet. Our customers
expect frequency without sacrificing quality and that’s what they get with this partnership.”

Solinftec’s partnership with Planet is one of several recent partnerships which feed its platform with quality information, in an effort to increase its connection with the highest quality data providers.

Source: World Agri-Tech

The post Solinftec and Planet Together for a New Global Partnership appeared first on North America FarmQuip Magazine.

“Every single day, ADM is focused on keeping its employees healthy and safe while simultaneously ensuring we are continuing to support the world’s food supply,”

said Chairman and CEO Juan Luciano.

The new goals follow on ADM’s original “15×20” plan, unveiled in 2011, in which the company committed to per-unit improvements in energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, water and waste to landfill by 2020. After meeting those goals ahead of schedule, ADM engaged WSP Global, one of the world’s leading engineering professional services firms, to conduct an in-depth feasibility study to help shape a new set of commitments to combat climate change. WSP’s study, identified several pathways toward success, including:

• Purchasing renewable electricity;
• Increasing use of biomass fuels;
• Transportation fleet changes;
• Equipment changes in some locations.

Our new goals are ambitious yet achievable. The greenhouse gas emissions we’ll save will be the equivalent of those from charging every single smart phone on the planet 250 times. This is going to have a real impact, and is a key way in which we’re going to continue to give our customers an edge in meeting the market challenges of today and tomorrow.

In addiction, ADM’s Board formed a new committee on Sustainability and Corporate Responsibility in 2019, offering guidance, leadership and oversight at the highest level for its sustainability and corporate citizenship efforts.

The company is increasingly using technology – such as satellite imagery – as it maps its supply chains. And in December, ADM was shortlisted as a Sustainability Champion by the Food Ingredients Innovation awards for its work promoting and supporting sustainable agricultural practices among more than 12,000 smallholder farmers in Brazil and Paraguay.

Sources: Business Wide; ADM

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