

Mnubo, a venture capital-backed Canadian data analytics company, will provide cloud support for Grain Systems Incorporated’s (GSI) poultry and swine digital control platform EDGE.
The company develops technology to collect and analyse data from cloud-connected products. It raised $6 million in venture capital funding in April 2015, in a raise led by tech-focused White Star Capital and joined by investor McRock Capital.
Precision irrigation company Hortau has a similar agreement with mnubo for its irrigation management hardware products, and mnubo chief executive Fred Bastien told Agri Investor that it has several finalised and planned partnerships with agtech and agricultural equipment makers.
“Agricultural technology is one of the pillars that support our business strategy,” said Bastien. “The return on investment for analysing and transforming the data is almost instantaneous. And I think that’s been a key catalyst for the growth in this sector.”
The new partnership works on a subscription model. Users of GSI’s EDGE hardware will have access to mnubo’s cloud data collection and analytics services, which Bastien said can predictive trends and improve operational efficiency for farmers. EDGE is a control platform linking ventilation, cooling, heating and watering systems for swine and poultry operations.
“This partnership with mnubo will propel our protein technology solutions to enable data-driven decision making for producers,” said GSI director of protein technology Adam Weiss in a statement. “Mnubo’s out-of-the-box insights and suite of analytics libraries allowed GSI to deliver enhanced customer value within a few weeks of integration.”
Technologies that use data to increase yields and minimise inputs occupy an increasingly busy space in the agri investment landscape. Hortau, Agrible, Understory, Farmers Edge and Farmlink, have all drawn funding in 2016 to build on business models that rely on analysis of farm-level data to try to improve operational efficiency for agri producers.
GSI, a subsidiary of New York Stock Exchange-traded AGCO, manufactures equipment for grain and protein production.