Two major Ag companies sign a deal to expand precision and digital agriculture options. Deere and Company and The Climate Corporation signed a multi-year deal.
It is an agreement that Deere will acquire the Precision Planting LLC equipment business and to enable exclusive near real-time data connectivity between certain John Deere farm equipment and the Climate FieldViewTM platform.
In a press conference Tuesday, The Climate Corporation?s COO Mike Stern said this is a milestone.
?The reason we call these agreements a milestone is because they represent the industry?s first and only near real-time in cab wireless connection to John Deere equipment by a third party. With these agreements farmers will experience the fastest, frequent, and highest resolution in the industry. They can only get that third party connectivity between John Deere?s equipment in The Climate FieldView platform,? Stern said.
A major concern among farmers is the security of data. Climate Corporation?s Senior Vice President John Raines says policies fall into three distinct categories.
?One is that any data generated by farmers and their equipment in the field first and foremost the farmer owns that data. Number two, if the farmer chooses to work with climate we have a fiduciary responsibility to help them understand how we use that data to create new value for them on their farm. Third, at any point in time that the customer wants to delete that data and not do business with us that is absolutely at their discretion,? Raines said.
Raines adds this does not move data from The Climate Corporation to Monsanto. Monsanto acquired The Climate Corporation in 2013. He says the data privacy agreement is between The Climate Corporation and the farmer.
