Combining Yara's Agronomic Knowledge with IBM's Data Expertise
The two companies' joint platform can cover 100 million hectares of farmland.
| Future integration with IBM's blockchain 'Food Trust'

Mineral fertilizer company Yara announced on the 2nd that it will collaborate with IBM to build a digital farm platform and provide digital services and farming advice based on its extensive agricultural knowledge.

Yara and IBM Services will collaborate to develop and commercialize digital farming solutions that leverage their complementary capabilities to help increase global food production.

Yara boasts unrivaled agricultural knowledge, backed by a global pool of over 800 agronomists and over 100 years of accumulated experience, while IBM has expertise in digital platforms and services, AI, and data analytics.

The joint global digital farm platform from both companies applies AI, machine learning, and field data to provide farmers with new insights. The platform, which will be deployed globally, will cover approximately 100 million hectares of farmland—twice the size of Spain and nearly 7% of all agricultural land, including millions of smallholder farms worldwide.

As a first step in their collaboration, the two companies will establish joint innovation teams that will collaborate in digital hubs in Europe, Singapore, the United States, and Brazil. Innovation teams in each region are collaborating with IBM researchers to develop new capabilities, including visual analytics and machine learning, to gain insights into crops. The first services are expected to be released in late 2019.

Yara and IBM's partnership focuses on farm optimization, particularly in climate data, a critical factor in agriculture. The joint platform, which combines IBM's AI solution Watson Studio and data analytics platform PAIRS with Yara's agronomic expertise and modeling capabilities, will provide hyper-local weather information tailored to specific regional requirements and provide real-time, actionable recommendations tailored to individual fields and crops.

Going forward, the two companies plan to expand their digital farm platform and integrate it with IBM's Food Trust, a blockchain-based food value chain network. This will enhance comprehensive traceability capabilities and supply chain efficiency, providing solutions to address food fraud, waste, and sustainability. Building on this foundation, Yara and IBM will collaborate to build a holistic approach to food production that connects farms across the food value chain, from farm to plate.

“This collaboration is designed to revolutionize agriculture,” said Terje Knutsen, Yara’s Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “To effectively meet population growth, we need to increase food production on existing farmland without further deforestation.”

“Yara and IBM will collaborate to develop digital solutions that will enable professional large-scale farmers as well as smallholder farmers around the world to optimize their agricultural practices to sustainably increase yields, improve crop quality and increase income,” he added.

“As the world’s population grows and the demand for food grows, digital agriculture platforms will play a key role in increasing global agricultural production in a sustainable manner,” said Luq Niazi, director, Global Consumer Products Industry, IBM. “This collaboration is the symbiosis of IBM’s AI, big data management and blockchain technologies with Yara’s agronomy knowledge, farmer-centric digital innovation and proven expertise in advancing agriculture around the world.”