German chemical giant, BASF, is to buy US-based company ZedX, a digital agricultural intelligence developer.
ZedX’s expertise is centred on developing agronomic weather, crop, and pest models which can rapidly translate data to help farmers improve production efficiency.
BASF’s takeover is expected to be completed within four weeks.
It will help growers take advantage of the increasing amount of big data generated in farming and beyond.
The chemical company’s crop protection division, which had sales totalling more than $8 billion last year, has already had a three-year relationship with ZedX.
They combined the technology company’s modeling expertise with BASF’s chemistry knowledge in areas such as identifying the right application windows for BASF herbicides after assessing important weather and environmental conditions.
ZedX chief executive officer, Keith Wheeler, said his company saw itself as “the ones connecting the dots”.
“We develop innovative products and solutions by finding the shortest path between data, analytics, knowledge management, and decision-making.”
In a time when digital transformation is changing many business approaches, BASF sees agronomic insights and recommendations from digital solutions helping its customers make more informed farming decisions.
“BASF is playing an active role in the digital transformation of agriculture,” said crop protection division global strategic marketing senior vice president, Jürgen Huff.
“We are constantly evaluating how digital solutions can help our customers.
“ZedX’s experts impressed us with their extensive and deep know-how in agronomic models.
“We are very pleased to incorporate their knowledge into our offers to serve farmers’ needs through innovative products and services.”
Headquartered in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, ZedX was founded in 1987, building a data platform offering agronomic models, visualisation tools, and tailored analytical solutions.
Joe Russo, ZedX’s founder, said collaboration between the two companies had already shown great results as weather conditions, soil temperature and wind speed were factors which could influence the performance of crop protection products.
The ZedX acquisition would allow BASF to further help farmers use their resources more efficiently and sustainably.
Mr Huff said it would complement BASF’s online platform offer Maglis.
“The smart use of digital solutions can open up all sectors of the economy to many new opportunities, and farming is no exception,” he said.
“ZedX is a great fit to our growth plan. We will strengthen our sales by offering targeted advice, insights and recommendations and by interacting more closely with our customers.”