Yara and IBM to develop world's leading digital farming platform

Yara International, a global firm specializing in agricultural products and environmental protection agents, has signed an agreement with IT major IBM to build a joint digital farming platform to empower professional and smallholder farmers around the world.

As part of the agreement, Yara and IBM will establish joint innovation teams and will work closely with IBM researchers to develop new capabilities, such as visual analytics and machine learning techniques for crop insights. 

By merging Yara's unrivalled agronomic knowledge and IBM's digital platforms and expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics, the companies will jointly innovate and commercialize digital agricultural solutions that will help increase global food production. The partnership will focus on all aspects of farm optimization.

"Our collaboration centres around a common goal to make a real difference in agriculture. Yara and IBM will develop digital solutions that empower professional and smallholder farmers to optimize farming practices to increase yields, crop quality and incomes in a sustainable way," said Terje Knutsen, EVP Sales and Marketing in Yara.

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The digital solution will have worldwide coverage and aspires to reach 100 million hectares of farmland. As the joint digital farming platform expands, the teams will explore innovative business solutions to integrate the joint platform into the IBM Food Trust, IBM's blockchain-enabled network of food chain players. This will allow for greater traceability and supply chain efficiency as well as ways to tackle food fraud, food waste and sustainability, Yara said in a release.

Founded in 1905, Yara has taken the lead in developing digital farming tools for precision farming and works closely with partners throughout the whole food value chain to develop more climate-friendly crop nutrition solutions.