Q&A: What BASF’s Latest Foray into Precision Ag Means For Growers

In late April, BASF agreed to acquire U.S. precision ag player ZedX, a leader in the development of agronomic weather, crop, and pest models that can rapidly translate data into insights for more efficient agricultural production.

We sat down with Jeffrey Spencer, BASF’s Development Lead for the Digital Farming Group to discuss what the acquisition means for both growers and the German chemical giant.

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Can you tell us more about the products being acquired, and are they considered “add-on” products that will fit existing BASF products?

First, maybe a little bit of perspective: What we call digital farming externally – our digital farming brand – is Maglis. We began working on Maglis, and its development and conceptualization in 2013. At that time we started looking for different development partners. Whether it be in the case of ZedX, a partner to deliver modeling and help answer questions for farmers, or suppliers of various data sources. We came into touch with ZedX back then and have been partnered together closely since 2013. As to the question whether it is an add-on to existing solution, ZedX has actually already delivered many  different types of solutions to us, and one of those is directly into Maglis. So the types of things you would see are decisions and support tools around crop protection products – how can we best time an application to help make it the most efficient for the grower. That could be weather modeling, it could be crop modeling, or pest and disease modeling, so that’s really where we see that strong fit within Maglis.

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Will BASF then be applying the complete portfolio of ZedX products?

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ZedX has been in the ag industry, specifically in the area of digital farming, for many years, and they have a lot of different products. Some of them are certainly complementary to ours. We would look to integrate them into our digital farming solutions, such as their crop and pest and disease models. Other solutions they have we would evaluate on a case-by-case basis. They have drift modeling tools, and even their own digital farming platform called AgFleet. We definitely would be acquiring all of those tools and all of the technology they have generated over the past 30-plus years, and look for best places to continue to use it, or, if it’s a direct overlap with one of our tools, maybe we collaborate together based on what we’ve learned on our paths thus far. With AgFleet, which is an example of a farm management or precision farming tool, and Maglis, there’s a good chance we can learn from each other in terms of what we’ve seen in the market and how we can improve.

How important would the drift modeling tool you mentioned considering the new 2,4-D and dicamba technologies debuting?

In addition to programs like our On Target Application Academy, the drift modeling tool has the potential to become another resource from BASF to assist growers with proper and successful application. The tool is still in development, but it helps the growers with the application timing. The tool will look at environmental conditions to make sure that when a grower is making an application they do it the most sustainable way, number one, making sure conditions are ideal for an application. Then number two, the tool will help make sure they get the highest yield benefit. It connects ZedX’s expertise in crop protection together with the application of products, and then looks for the right conditions to ensure a safe application, while also delivering maximum benefit for the grower.

Will BASF begin writing and delivering agronomic recommendations directly to growers via Maglis, or will you use the ZedX integration to enable retail chain partners via Maglis to access the data layers to write recommendations?

We have a few different tools within Maglis. The one we launched last year in the U.S. is called Maglis Customer Navigator. The tool allows our innovation specialists in the U.S. to work together with growers and their preferred partners to create product recommendations. It’s a tool where we’d approach a grower and then work with them to tailor recommendations. We also piloted a tool in Canada called Maglis Crop Plan – this is where we could have a potential opportunity not only for a BASF person to go reach out to one of our growers, but it also enables an option where retailers, agronomists or advisers can also be a part of that discussion.  The clear answer is, we are looking at different tools that enable all of the key decision makers that a grower would talk to, whether it be us directly as BASF or somebody else that they may depend upon to help make those decisions – a retailer, agronomist, farm manager, or whomever it may be.

Read the full story on CropLife.com’s sister site AgribusinessGlobal.com.

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[…] BASF and Proagrica have signed a development and operation agreement to bring one of the first farm management system interfaces to market. Growers will benefit as they will be able to connect BASF’s digital offer Maglis with different digital farming applications, including their preferred farm management system. […]