Microsoft plants seeds in the agriculture industry

From small startups like Halter to large corporations like Microsoft, traditional, non-agricultural tech companies are searching for inroads to invest in farming operations.

In Microsoft’s case, it has been developing a suite of farm-focused solutions called Project FarmVibes to offer farmers data to, ideally, build more efficient operations, from monitoring and planning for planting conditions to weather data and harvesting metrics.

Ranveer Chandra, managing director for research for industry and CTO of agri-food at Microsoft, told Tech Brew that Project FarmVibes is designed to “help a farmer augment their decisions” using data sources like heat maps, temperature and soil sensors, and satellite imagery.

“It’s for three key goals. The first is they can produce more, they can grow more food to help solve the world’s food problem. Second, to make them profitable; that is, they can reduce costs, they use less chemicals, they use less water. And the third is to help them practice sustainable agriculture,” Chandra said.

Within Project FarmVibes, FarmVibes.Connect is focused on capturing data from farms, while FarmVibes.Edge processes data collected in the field, which is then analyzed and turned into insights for farmers via FarmVibes.AI. FarmVibes.Bot is a chatbot that can relay that information—and more—back. The four subsections of Project FarmVibes are designed to take data streams and flip them into a connected operation where farmers can monitor how fields, crops, and equipment are performing.

Project FarmVibes is part of a larger strategy, according to Chandra. Microsoft, he said, is building tools specifically designed for industries like retail, sustainability, and finance, and it is now building tools specifically designed for the agriculture industry. By building tools for farmers and researchers alike, and by focusing on open-source, Chandra said that Microsoft is aiming to “make advances in democratizing data driven agriculture.”

Growing money trees

Microsoft is approaching the agricultural industry through indoor farming, too: It partnered with Canadian indoor-farming company GoodLeaf Farms, which is integrating Microsoft Solutions into its operations.

According to Chandra, GoodLeaf uses Microsoft’s tech to automate workflows within its vertical farm, and is using Microsoft research to tune its algorithms and machines in an effort to improve productivity and efficiency within the business. GoodLeaf did not respond to Tech Brew's request for comment by the time of publication.

Currently, Project FarmVibes isn’t being monetized by Microsoft. Chandra noted that Microsoft hasn’t developed an Industry Cloud for agriculture yet, and is still working collaboratively on developing business models that can scale with its partners.

“In the future, we want to drive the right business models around it. In the end, business models are required to keep things sustainable, and the right business models for society are needed. Agriculture is such a place where we need to figure out what that business model is,” Chandra said. “I don’t think people have figured it out.”