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TELUS Agriculture aims to connect ag industry through technology

Telus has launched Telus Agriculture, a new business unit dedicated to providing innovative solutions to support the agriculture industry with connected technology. Telus Agriculture aims to optimize the food value chain by leveraging data to increase efficiency, production and yields, delivering better food outcomes for businesses and the end-consumer.

“By means of our technology innovation, artificial intelligence and human compassion, we will help farmers and ranchers produce food for the world’s ever-expanding population more efficiently, safely and in a more environmentally friendly manner,” said Darren Entwistle, president and CEO of Telus. “From farm to fork, by digitizing the entire value chain and linking these technologies together for the first time, we will facilitate a secure exchange of information to allow farmers and ranchers, agri-business organizations, the agri-food industry and the consumer to make smarter decisions.

“We are striving to provide innovative solutions to advance the agriculture sector on a worldwide basis, whilst positioning Canada as a preferred global supplier of safe, sustainable food.”

Over the course of the last year, Telus has completed several key acquisitions, assembling a suite of agriculture industry assets. Under Telus Agriculture, the group has the ability to connect every participant in the agriculture value chain, from seed manufacturers and farmers to grocery stores and restaurants.

Telus Agriculture currently supports more than 100 million acres of agricultural land, backed by a team of more than 1,200 experts across North America, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Armenia, Germany, China, and Australia.

“Telus Agriculture is tackling agriculture and agri-food’s complex data management challenges by linking systems together in new ways,” said Francois Gratton, executive vice-president and group president, Telus, and chair of Telus Health and Telus Agriculture. “Connecting the value chain and building solutions that make it convenient and valuable to shift to digital will help our customers drive industry-wide profitability while delivering better, healthier products to the consumer.”

In addition, today, Telus Agriculture announced their acquisition of AFS Technologies (global sales and distribution solutions based in Tampa, FL) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) farm management platform Agrian, based in Fresno, CA. With these additions, Telus Agriculture is now global, with customers in more than 50 countries.

By bringing together innovative companies at each stage of the value chain, Telus Agriculture is positioned to transform collaboration across the global agriculture industry. This includes a billion acres of historical acre data and 170 million acres of real-time data across diverse crop markets, which can be leveraged to build AI and machine learning-based insights. At launch, the companies acquired include:

Acquisitions

• AFS Technologies (Florida): Comprised of AFS, Exceedra and Ignition; global supply chain management, and sales and distribution;
• AGIntegrated (Pennsylvania): API integration;
• Agrian (California): Unified management platform for precision agronomy, sustainability, analytics and compliance;
• Decisive Farming (Alberta): Precision agronomy and farm management;
• Farm At Hand (British Columbia, Canada): Simplified farm management software;
• Muddy Boots (Ross-on-Wye, UK): – Farm-to-food traceability and supply chain management;
• TKXS (North Carolina): Custom data and program management;
• Feedlot Health Management Solutions* (Alberta): Critical insights and data-based knowledge.

Partnerships

• Hummingbird (London, UK): Advanced imagery analytics.

For full details about Telus Agriculture, please visit telus.com/agriculture.

*Telus has entered into an agreement to acquire Feedlot Health Management Solutions. Transaction closing is subject to satisfaction of certain conditions precedent.