Minnesota Ag Connection - Cargill Announces Strategic Equity Investment in Agriness

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Cargill Announces Strategic Equity Investment in Agriness
Minnesota Ag Connection - 09/18/2018

Cargill and Agriness, the technology leader in Latin America swine production, today announced a strategic partnership that will foster industry-wide transformation and bring emerging digital technologies to customers around the world to improve animal production and farm profitability. Terms of Cargill's minority equity investment were not disclosed.

Agriness, the market leader in Latin American swine technology, currently manages more than 2 million sows through its S2 farm management software, continuous improvement methodology, training/mentoring programs and industry benchmarking. This month, the company will introduce Agriness 365, a scalable, cloud-based digital farm production management platform that will provide real-time data and insights through a series of business applications, environmental sensors, voice recognition, advanced analytics and a mobile-based application.

Farmers and farm integrators can track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as the number of piglets per sow, piglet weight gain, how well the piglets and sows are performing and production cost per animal. Through analysis of these KPIs, farmers can quickly pinpoint performance issues and improve them. In addition, management can identify the root cause of problems and solve them more precisely, including sending a technical adviser to work directly with the farmer to make improvements.

"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."

Cargill and Agriness intend to bring these swine solutions to new geographies, as well as expanding to other species, including poultry and dairy over the coming months.

"This partnership is a perfect fit for both companies. We share a vision of delivering new innovations and value to the customer, with a similar purpose of helping the world thrive. This sits at the center of how our cultures will work together," said Everton Gubert, founder and CEO, 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."

Cargill is committed to investing in technology and cultivating talent to deliver data and analytics innovations that address some of the greatest challenges in the agriculture space. The Agriness investment, which significantly boosts Cargill's digital capability and comes on the heels of our equity investment in Cainthus, adds to the company's portfolio of farmer-focused technology and digital services, including Dairy Enteligen, Poultry Enteligen and iQShrimp, that enable our customers to make more precise farming decisions and improve the efficiency and overall productivity of their operations.

"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. "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."

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