In 2012 agribusiness giant Monsanto purchased an obscure data startup for an amount just short of a cool one billion dollars. Its new acquisition, The Climate Corporation, was a digital provider of weather and climate information to crop insurance companies. As far as anyone could tell, it had nothing to do with genetically engineering seeds, mixing pesticides or the other activities for which Monsanto is notorious. Many observers were left scratching their heads: a billion dollars for a weather forecaster? – what on earth was afoot?
The answer may lie in the biggest technological shifts in industrial agriculture since the end of World War Two. Today Monsanto claims they are not so much a seed company as a data company. The Climate Corporation now stands at the centre of a fundamental reorganization not just at Monsanto but across the entire agribusiness sector, precipitating a wave of mega-deals. As Monsanto merges with Bayer, DuPont with Dow Chemical, and Syngenta with ChemChina, the $400 billion agricultural inputs market is suddenly crystalizing into a highly concentrated three-way monopoly in anticipation of a further merger wave. This new cartel sees neither seed, soil amendments nor sprays as its key product but trucks instead in big data, coupled to artificial intelligence (AI) and new automation capabilities that are reshaping farming and the food system.
