December 8, 2017

Monsanto subsidiary The Climate Corporation announced it has partnered with Canadian full-service drone data company, Deveron, to combine Deveron’s aerial imaging capabilities with The Climate Corporation’s powerful analytics services through its Climate FieldView digital agriculture platform.

Deveron has a growing fleet of drones that have the ability to conduct between five and eight flights per day to collect, analyze, and deliver data-driven insights to Canada’s farmers – providing support that enables more informed decisions, and results in higher yields and reduced production costs.

Although The Climate Corporation already offers satellite imagery tools to their clients, advanced aerial imagery technologies such as Deveron’s will provide on-demand data at higher resolution and frequency compared to satellite technology.

“As remote sensing through advanced imagery continues its fast-paced development, drones are increasingly playing an important role to help farmers gain deeper insights into crop performance at scale,” said Mark Young, chief technology officer for The Climate Corporation. “Deveron has built a broad network of drones and sensors across North America to provide farmers with more data solutions to manage field variability, and we look forward to working with them to equip more farmers with data-rich imagery insights to make the best decisions for their operations.”

Over the course of the 2017 growing season, The Climate Corporation and Deveron conducted a successful pilot program in Ontario, Canada, that offered farmers the chance to use a platform that integrated the technologies of both companies through their Climate FieldView accounts. As we enter the 2018 growing season, aerial imagery data from Deveron’s drone fleet will be able to be accessed through a farmer’s Climate FieldView account upon request. This addition will give farmers a deeper understanding of how their crops fared throughout the season, and will provide greater insight into planting and yield data.

After first announcing the launch of Climate FieldView in Eastern Canada in September 2016, gaining nearly one million acres of farmland coverage, The Climate Corporation went on to announce the platform’s expansion into Western Canada on October 25 of this year. And as The Climate Corporation moves to extend its services across Canada, Deveron has plans in its pipeline to expand across the U.S. Corn Belt in the near future.

“Partnering with the Climate FieldView platform will further our ability to bring low cost, high-resolution imagery to more farmers so they can zero in on exactly what’s happening in their fields and gain actionable insights to help them achieve the highest return on investment,” said David MacMillan, president and chief executive officer, Deveron.

Since its launch in 2015, the Climate FieldView platform has grown to cover more than 120 million acres of farmland, and to engage with more than 100,000 farmers across the U.S., Brazil, and Canada, making it the most connected platform in its category. Building on this success, the company announced the pre-commercial launch of Climate FieldView  into regions of Europe on November 13 of this year. Prior to this announcement, The Climate Corporation had conducted field trials across Germany, France, and Ukraine.

“Farmers around the world are experiencing the value of the Climate FieldView platform on millions of acres, and soon farmers in Europe will have the opportunity to bring their field data to life,” said Mike Stern, chief executive officer for The Climate Corp, in a release announcing the expansion.  “Farmers will be able to seamlessly collect data, quickly visualize it, and gain personalized insights to optimize agronomic practices and make critical management decisions that impact sustainable crop production.”

The Climate Corporation, however, is not only expanding across new geographies and increasing its integration of aerial drone technologies, but also strengthened its platform in regard to water issues and irrigation when it acquired Colorado-based HydroBio for an undisclosed amount this past May.

With its established presence in Europe, and with the added heft of HydroBio, The Climate Corporation plans to expand its Climate FieldView across the European market, followed by expansion into Australia, Argentina, and South Africa within coming few years.

This vision for the future is also shared by the team at HydroBio.

“We at HydroBio are very excited to join The Climate Corporation to bring our scalable irrigation management offering to more farmers in the future,” said Barrett Mooney, co-founder and chief executive officer for HydroBio. “We’re looking forward to collaborating with the great team at Climate to enhance the Climate FieldView platform and introduce new, digital tools that transform how technology is used on the farm.”

-Lynda Kiernan