Cargill Invests in Swine Production Technology

September 18, 2018

Cargill has made a strategic investment in Agriness, a technology leader in swine production in Latin America. Through this minority stake partnership, Cargill and Agriness will foster an industry-wide transformation through emerging digital technologies designed to improve animal agricultural production and farm profitability.

Founded in Brazil in 2001, Agriness is currently engaged in managing more than two million sows through its S2 farm data platform; serving 90 percent of Brazil’s pig farms, as well as farmers in Colombia and Argentina.

Later this month, Agriness and Cargill will be launching Agriness 365 – a scalable, cloud-based digital farm production management platform that will provide real-time data and insights via a series of business applications, environmental sensors, voice recognition, advanced analytics, and a mobile-based app.

Through this new service, farmers and those connected with the business of swine production will be able to track key performance indicators (KPIs) including the number of piglets per sow, piglet weight gains, production cost per animal, and how well each sow and piglet is performing. This will in turn enable management to rapidly identify issues needing attention, and their root causes, in order to be precisely addressed, including the deployment of a technical advisor to work directly with a farmer.

“We are working together to build a digital ecosystem that combines Cargill’s scale and customer intimacy with the technical skills and capabilities of partners like Agriness to address challenges at the farm level with new and innovative technologies,” said SriRaj Kantamneni, managing director for Cargill digital insights. “Agriness’s solution will not only enable farmers and integrators to make proactive decisions to improve efficiencies,  it will also enhance animal well-being and increase farmer profitability.”

Together, Cargill and Agriness plan to expand this platform by both geography and by species, including dairy cows and poultry over the coming months.

“This sits at the center of how our cultures will work together,” said Everton Gubert, founder and CEO of Agriness. “The combination of our breakthrough technology and Cargill’s animal production expertise, industry knowledge and deep understanding of customer needs will help us bring this technology to farmers around the world and enable them to run more productive and successful operations.”

This partnership with Agriness adds to Cargill’s growing network of agtech tie-ins. In January of this year, Cargill announced its investment in Cainthus, an Irish startup developing computer vision recognition technology for the livestock industry.

Co-founded by brothers David and Ross Hunt, Cainthus is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and has offices in Ottawa, Canada, and San Francisco, California. The company uses predictive imaging and cow facial recognition based on hide patterns and facial characteristics to monitor the health and well-being of livestock; tracking data based on water intake, behavioral patterns, and heat stress detection – all factors that can affect milk production, reproduction, and health.

Stemming from Cargill’s commitment to fund and advance innovation in data and analytics that will solve some of the most challenging issues facing agricultural production today, over the past year the company has released a number of investments spanning the livestock, poultry, and aquaculture sectors, including Dairy Enteligen and iQuatic (both platforms that facilitate production documentation). It also has additional projects in its pipeline scheduled for the second half of 2018.

“It’s important for us to invest in emerging digital technologies that drive value for our customers and for the industry,” said Scott Ainslie, vice president and group director, Cargill Animal Nutrition. “Cargill is fulfilling our purpose of nourishing the world safely, responsibly and sustainably by using innovations like these to address some of our industry’s greatest challenges, such as food safety, food security, sustainability and transparency.”

-Lynda Kiernan 

Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.

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