Yara IBM
The Digital Farming Platform, built incorporating world-class IBM technology, will allow Yara to create digital twins of the farmers’ fields and give farmers actionable insights to drive the improvements through advanced analytics, weather data and satellite images. Source: IBM
Yara International, a global leader in crop nutrition, and IBM today announced an agreement to build the world's leading digital farming platform, providing holistic digital services and instant agronomic advice.
Yara and IBM Services will jointly innovate and commercialise digital agricultural solutions that will help increase global food production by drawing on the two companies' complementary capabilities: Yara's unrivalled agronomic knowledge, backed by more than 800 agronomists and a century of experience, and IBM's digital platforms, services and expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics.
"Our collaboration centres around a common goal to make a real difference in agriculture. To be able to responsibly feed a growing population, it is critical that farmers increase food production on existing farmland to avoid deforestation. Yara and IBM will develop digital solutions that empower professional and smallholder farmers to optimise farming practices to increase yields, crop quality and incomes in a sustainable way," said Terje Knutsen, EVP Sales and Marketing in Yara.
The joint global digital farming platform will apply artificial intelligence, machine learning and in-field data to unlock new insights for farmers. The digital platform will have worldwide coverage and aspires to reach 100 million hectares of farmland – which is equivalent to twice the size of Spain or close to 7% of all arable land worldwide (according to World Bank figures) including millions of smallholder farms.
"As demand for food rises along with the world's population, the digital farming platform will play a key role in increasing global farming yields in a sustainable way. The collaboration is a perfect symbiosis of IBM's capabilities in AI, big data management and blockchain technology and Yara's agronomic knowledge, farmer-centric digital innovation, and proven track record in improving farming across the globe," said Luq Niazi, IBM Global Managing Director Consumer Industries.
As a first step, Yara and IBM will establish joint innovation teams, collaborating at digital hubs in Europe, Singapore, the US and Brazil. The teams will work closely with IBM researchers to develop new capabilities, such as visual analytics and machine learning techniques for crop insights. The first services are planned for end 2019.
Advancing the digital frontier of farming
The Yara/IBM partnership will focus on all aspects of farm optimisation. One specific area of collaboration will be weather data. The ability to respond optimally to weather conditions is critical for farming. By merging analytical insights from IBM's Watson Studio, IBM PAIRS technology, The Weather Company and other services, with Yara's unrivalled crop knowledge and modelling capabilities, the joint platform will not only provide hyperlocal weather forecasts but will in addition give real-time actionable recommendations, tailored to the specific needs of individual fields/crops.
As the joint digital farming platform expands, the teams will explore innovative business solutions to integrate the joint platform into the IBM Food Trust, IBM's blockchain-enabled network of food chain players. This will allow for greater traceability and supply chain efficiency as well as ways to tackle food fraud, food waste and sustainability. It will firmly link the farm into the full food chain, creating a holistic approach to food production from farm to plate.
The contract was signed in April 2019.
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