MachineryLink

AGCO Corporation has announced a technology and commercial partnership with Solinftec, an international developer of digital ag solutions. Solinftec was founded in 2007 in Sao Paulo, Brazil and today does business in 10 countries, including the United States.

Solinftec's software and analytics systems connect people, machines and weather to find production values that might otherwise be lost due to time and less-than-efficient logistics, AGCO said in a press release. Solinftec specializes in finding bottlenecks -- especially those real-time, day-to-day bottlenecks that arise from weather delays and machinery availability.

"By converging communication telemetry operations and climate conditions, we turn large volumes of data into action -- allowing for more informed and intelligent decision making and adding ultimate value to your operation," Solinftec explained in an online explanation of its work. Its technologies are designed to assist farmers in making start-stop decisions during planting, spraying and harvesting operations, in providing hyper-local weather data and in tracking crop development, pests and diseases.

"Solinftec's software and hardware solutions work especially well in narrow production windows," said Darren Goebel, Global Farm Solutions and Agronomy director for AGCO. For example, the window to apply fungicides for wheat scab is open for a day or two -- three, at best. Solinftec's customized solutions give the wheat producer recommendations on how to best deploy his spraying resources, given local weather conditions and crop maturity.

The Solinftec-supplied hardware and software package includes on-board computers, weather stations, soil sensors, telemetry networks, proprietary algorithms and the real-time insights into operational efficiency.

"(But) these are not solutions in a box," Goebel said. Solinftec provides solutions on a couple of levels, he explained. On one level, Solinftec offers the hardware, telecommunication and software products that address commonalities across all crops and all regions. Solinftec's technologies also bore in on local realities, offering real time and specific solutions by crop and for regions.

AGCO is especially interested in Solinftec's voice recognition technology. This would be ALICE. ALICE, said Solinftec, is a unique artificial intelligence assistant designed to work with farmers to process data from machinery, people, climate and other external inputs. ALICE calculates producers' ultimate objectives and delivers real-time recommendations. Data-based recommendations are delivered to mobile devices, on board computers and by way of a web platform.

Solinftec has significant market presence in production agriculture. The technology developer stated its platform processes in real time granular sensor data from 18 million acres, more than 30,000 agricultural machines, and from an array of remote sensors and external data sources. It has captured 60% of the Brazilian sugarcane market with its technology and analytics.

The smart ag provider is interested initially in the U.S. corn and soybean markets. Goebel believes that in time, Solinftec's services will be available for the wide range of crops grown throughout the United States. Solinftec has offices in West Lafayette, Indiana and is cooperating with researchers at Purdue University and area farmers in its work.

AGCO says Solinftec's offerings are being added to its fleet and farm solutions available through AGCO's Fuse smart farming portfolio. New solutions products will be launched in Brazil this year for growers of sugarcane, soybeans, corn and cotton. The U.S. launch is set for 2020, targeting first the nation's corn and soybean sectors.

Neither Solinftec nor AGCO have released U.S. pricing information for their products and services.

For more information go to: www.AGCOcorp.com/Fuse or http://solinftec.com/…

Dan Miller can be reached at dan.miller@dtn.com

Follow him on Twitter @DMillerPF

(ES)

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