DuPont, Deere Team on Farm Technology

   By Jacob Bunge 
 

DuPont Co.'s (DD) agricultural-seed unit struck a partnership with machinery maker Deere & Co. (DE) to sell data to farmers to help them increase productivity, the latest push in so-called precision farming.

The companies' move to use wireless technology to provide faster soil analysis and planting advice aims to help farmers make earlier decisions about buying fertilizer and positioning crops to boost harvests, the companies said Friday.

The effort follows Monsanto Co.'s (MON) $930 million deal last month to buy farm-analytics firm Climate Corp., part of a strategy by the world's largest seed company by sales to expand into data services. Seed companies pitch high-tech analysis and prediction tools as another way for farmers to get more crops from their land and mitigate the impact of bad weather.

The collaboration between Deere and DuPont Pioneer will rely on Deere machinery to collect information on crop yields, moisture and location, which is then transmitted to Deere-operated servers. If farmers sign on to the program, an analyst for Pioneer will examine the data and deliver reports that could help farmers plan seed and fertilizer purchases. Previously, combines collected such information on data cards that needed to be handed off to Pioneer analysts in order to prepare reports.

Pioneer and Deere expect to roll out the service next year.

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