Deere & Company and The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of Monsanto Company, signed definitive agreements for Deere to 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 FieldView platform.
According to Monsanto, the agreements represent the industry’s first and only near real-time in-cab wireless connection to John Deere equipment by a third party.
“To maximize the value of digital agriculture, farmers need solutions for simple and seamless collection of in-field agronomic data,” says Mike Stern, The Climate Corporation president and chief operating officer. “As a result of these milestone agreements, farmers will experience the fastest, most frequent and highest resolution third-party connectivity between John Deere’s equipment and the Climate FieldView platform.”
Under the terms of the agreements, Deere will purchase Precision Planting while Climate Corp. will retain the digital agriculture portfolio that has been integrated into the Climate FieldView platform. The acquisition is subject to closing conditions, including the approval of the relevant antitrust authorities to the extent required.
John May, Deere president of agricultural solutions and chief information officer, shares that these agreements allow John Deere to extend the range of retrofit options available from Precision Planting to many more products and into new geographies.
The companies report that customers will have the option to share their current and historical agronomic data between the John Deere Operations Center and the Climate FieldView platform and seamlessly execute agronomic prescriptions with John Deere equipment.
“This strategic acquisition expands the John Deere precision agriculture business and accelerates our momentum as a market leader,” May says. “Strategic use of information is an important factor in successful agriculture.”
Stern adds that, “Our agreements enable farmers to combine the industry-leading technology of John Deere equipment with Climate FieldView, the platform that offers farmers the broadest equipment connectivity in the industry backed by data science. This connectivity allows farmers to collect and directly share data to the Climate cloud, enables data visualization in the cab and supports the development of customized data science-driven insights.”
