Long an industry leader in developing digital tools that enable growers and their advisors to make sound agronomic decisions, Premier Crop Systems has received a capital investment from Syngenta Ventures, the company’s venture capital arm, which will aid in the delivery of innovation to Premier customers.
“With additional capital from Syngenta Ventures, we will be better able to develop and deliver new tools to growers, their advisors and the research community,” says Dan Frieberg, Premier Crop Systems CEO.
The Syngenta Ventures investment will help Premier Crop Systems expand its team of agronomists, data scientists and customer support staff to accommodate new and existing customers.
“Premier Crop Systems is the perfect fit for Syngenta Ventures” says Syngenta Ventures investment director Gabriel Wilmoth. “Our minority investment provides capital to help bring the benefits of their technology to more growers, advisors and researchers.”
Enhanced Learning Blocks
The investment will also help accelerate the launch of Premier Crop Systems’ newest innovation, Enhanced Learning Blocks, an extension of the highly successful Learning Blocks platform.
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“Our new Enhanced Learning Blocks system represents a breakthrough in generating new agronomic knowledge cost-effectively, and on a much larger scale than ever before possible,” says Frieberg.
In the spring of 2017, Syngenta Research and Development evaluated Enhanced Learning Blocks in multiple field trials.
“Premier Crop Systems’ Learning Blocks provide a novel and simple way to validate treatments in grower fields,” says Chuck Foresman, digital agriculture R&D lead for Syngenta. “The addition of randomization and replication within those treatments is exciting to an R&D-driven company like Syngenta because it opens the possibility of scaling scientific field research.”
The Proof is in the Field
“Growers want local trial results, and you can’t get more local than each of their own fields,” says Kevin Kruize, Precision’s ag lead at Central Farm Service in southern Minnesota, which conducted Enhanced Learning Block field trials in 2016.
“Premier Crop Systems has harnessed the technology in the cab – which my growers have already purchased – to enable us to scale our local research trials,” says Mike Manning, program lead at Aurora Cooperative in Aurora, Neb.