April 14, 2020

By Lynda Kiernan

CIBO has launched a land intelligence platform that gives farmers access to science-based, objective data about nationwide U.S. farmland at the parcel level, which will modernize how farmland is assessed and evaluated.

Co-founded by Flagship Pioneer and renowned agriculture expert with Michigan State University, Dr. Bruno Basso, CIBO serves as a “Zillow for farmland”, generating proprietary insights including land and lease valuation (including a price for every single parcel of farmland in the continental U.S.), productivity, stability, elevation, and environmental impact data on a per-parcel basis.

With offices in Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Boston, CIBO uses crop simulation, computer vision, and data science on an unprecedented scale together with machine learning, satellite images and scientific modeling to understand “how plants grow”.

The platform also centralizes publicly available data (sourced from the USDA and other government agencies), including owner information, tax data, weather data, satellite images, and soil maps for farmers, investors, financiers, and stakeholders in the U.S. agricultural and rural land base. 

“As the scientific founder of CIBO, I shared Flagship’s vision and was able to bring the highly proven ecosystem simulation technology from Michigan State as the starting point,” said professor Basso. “CIBO has invested heavily in scaling this technology and making deep science consumable by all users.”

CIBO further provides both past and in-season management practices and yields, along with the impact quantification of the impact of management practices and weather on future productivity of each parcel. This data – valuation, predicted yield, crops planted, and environmental impact – can all be aggregated at a portfolio, county, state, or national level.

“The CIBO team has a shared vision of delivering an industry-changing solution that will benefit all stakeholders in the farmland ecosystem by providing objective information about land,” said Daniel Ryan, CEO, CIBO. “The depth and scale of the information has not been available to individual users, and we are excited about the prospect of enabling new market efficiencies.”

Beyond information about the land itself, CIBO is also able to generate deep insights into the ecological effects of farming, calculating the impact of greenhouse gas emissions, nitrate leaching, and carbon sinking in the soil over time. Together, this data is collated to create a quantified sustainability footprint for each parcel of farmland that can drive regenerative agricultural production methods, resulting in benefits for both the environment and society.

“Flagship Pioneering founded CIBO with the intention of utilizing science and data science to deliver objective information about land at scale, in order to enable market efficiencies for land, related services, and sustainable use,” said Ignacio Martinez, general partner, Flagship Pioneering. “CIBO’s platform is unique in the industry in being able to deliver on this vision.”

CIBO offers multiple searches that are free for farmers, managers, and lenders without requiring users to share any of their own data – greatly increasing the transparency of what was once a rather nebulous system of assessing, leasing, buying, and selling farmland. Once these free searches are exhausted, there is a nominal fee of $9.99 for further insights.

– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to the GAI News and Agtech Intel platforms. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.