Indigo Ag has expanded its innovation platform, Indigo Research Partners. Originally launched in 2017 as Indigo Partners, the platform collaborates with 50 growers and agronomic experts to evaluate agricultural technologies. The platform will now support growers through “real-time, farm-specific insights collected from commercial-scale testing” of technologies such as sensors, drones, and weather stations, accelerating the adoption of new technologies.
“We’re currently generating over a trillion data points each day on Indigo Research Partners farms. With this kind of perspective, farms become powerful laboratories for determining the precise conditions in which new products can add value, as well as where they cannot,” Indigo Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer Geoffrey von Maltzahn wrote in a recent blog post.
The amount of information being collected will allow growers to manage any number of environmental and field conditions, including cold and wet stress to heat and water scarcity. “Traditional agriculture has never had access to this level of information,” said Jeremy Jack of Silent Shade Planting Company, a Mississippi Delta-based Advisory Board Member and Indigo Research Partner. “The data I am seeing on my farm through Indigo Research Partners allow me to make key decisions to improve our profitability and understand the truth on my farm. These are insights we can trust to make a difference on our farms.”
David Perry, Indigo’s president and CEO, recently spoke at GAI’s AgTech Nexus USA conference in Boston, at which he outlined five forces that will shape future of agriculture: focus on sustainability, advancement of microbiology, application of data sciences, modernization of logistics, and de-commoditization.
In announcing the expanded role of Indigo Research Partners, he touched on several of those key areas. “We are developing a new approach to agricultural R&D that will enable data-based decisions and promote continuous improvement across technologies,” he said. “Ultimately, Indigo Research Partners will serve as an open-source data platform for all growers, delivering insights that can improve the profitability and sustainability of their farms.”
By David Nitchman, GAI Media