By Jacob Bunge
Google Inc., dipping its toes into an emerging agricultural
sector, is investing in a computerized farming network that
crunches data on seeds and soil to help farmers grow more crops and
save money.
Farmers Business Network Inc. on Tuesday closed a $15 million
investing round led by Google's venture-capital division, which the
startup intends to use to expand its field-analysis service into
more states and crops.
The San Francisco-based company, launched in January 2014 and
co-founded by a former Google program manager, uses computer
systems to evaluate public and private data on crop yields, weather
patterns and planting practices. The company sells advice to
farmers on how to increase their crop yields and cut wasteful
fertilizer or pesticide use.
"Data is a tool for driving the next wave of productivity gains
in the [agriculture] space," said Andy Wheeler, general partner at
Google Ventures, who will join Farmers Business Network's board
alongside the investment. "We're at the beginning stages of
harnessing that data."
Google and other investors, including venture-capital firm
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an earlier investor in
Farmers Business Network, are backing the company in a fast-growing
sector that links Silicon Valley computing power with increasingly
high-tech seeds and equipment that have spread across the U.S. Farm
Belt.
Sifting vast quantities of data on weather and crop performance
can help farmers grow more bushels of corn, soybeans and other
crops per acre and cut back on unnecessary applications of
fertilizer or pesticides, according to companies and farmers.
The push has attracted some of the biggest players in
agriculture, including biotech-seed giant Monsanto Co., which has
spent more than $1 billion on acquisitions in recent years to build
its precision-agriculture division. One of the companies Monsanto
bought, Climate Corp., was co-founded by former Google executives
and had received an investment from Google Ventures. Food
conglomerate Cargill Inc. is developing its own service and
seed-and-chemical maker DuPont has said it expects to generate $500
million in annual revenue from data-driven farming services over
the coming decade.
Startups such as Farmers Business Network, Farmobile LLC and
FarmLink LLC are touting their independence from large
agribusinesses as they jockey for a share of farmers' spending at a
time when many farmers' incomes are being pinched by a sharp drop
in grain and soybean prices since 2012.
Farmers using Farmers Business Network's $500-a-year service
submit to the company their farms' data on past crop yields, which
seeds were planted, fertilizer use and other practices. The company
standardizes the data and analyzes it based on submissions from
other farmers and the company's own database. It then returns to
the farmer an analysis showing how his or her crops fared against
farms working with similar soils and seeds, and suggests tweaks to
planting and crop rotation. Tools to evaluate pesticide and
fertilizer use also are under development.
"With more transparent information, we think there's a better
way to farm," said Charles Baron, Farmer Business Network's
co-founder and vice president of product and previously a program
manager at Google who worked on energy projects.
Mr. Baron said the company's service will become more powerful
as more farmers enroll. Currently it covers 7 million acres of
cropland in 17 states, mainly in the U.S. Midwest, and analyzes 16
crops, including corn, soybeans, wheat, sunflowers and garbanzo
beans. The funding raised Tuesday will help the company expand
further in the U.S., add more crops and develop more services, Mr.
Baron said.
The investment also expands Google's handful of stakes in food-
and agriculture-focused startups. The company has invested in
Impossible Foods, a Redwood City, Calif., company that is
developing plant-based burgers and cheeses, and Granular Inc., a
San Francisco-based firm that makes farm-management software.
Google is evaluating other possible investments in platforms
that gather climate and field-level data, which systems like
Farmers Business Network can interpret for crop producers, Mr.
Wheeler said.
"As we look at the world population continuing to increase,
we're going to continue to need to get higher and higher
productivity out of our existing agricultural assets," he said.
Write to Jacob Bunge at jacob.bunge@wsj.com
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