Danish Agro’s digital mantra - think big, start small
12/02/2020
Danish Agro has come a long way with its digitalisation strategy, which was launched in 2018, where digital tools for agriculture were made a strategic focus area for the group.
Henning Haahr, Group CEO of Danish Agro, is satisfied with the tools that are already now assisting farmers, and he looks forward to providing even more such tools in the years ahead.
“Our strategy is based on the mantra ‘Think big, start small’. We have been very focused on entering into partnerships and investing in companies that have solutions that provide an immediate value for operations, but at the same time, there is great untapped potential that we can continue to work with,” he says, and continues:
“In this context, our investment in FieldSense is a really good example. FieldSense weather stations have been a big success, and today there are 1,000 weather stations on farmers’ fields in Denmark. This provides the farmers with a deep insight into the weather, and the weather data, which is combined with satellite images in the FieldSense platform, helps to ensure the preparation of even more valuable allocation maps for precision agriculture. The weather stations are also now increasingly being used in other countries, for example, Sweden, Finland and Estonia,” he says.
The same line of thinking is behind Danish Agro’s investment in Grainit, which is an app that makes inventory management of crops, fertiliser, plant protection products, fodder, etc. easy and intuitive for the farmers. The app has become increasingly popular among Danish farmers, and during the 2019 harvest, 600,000 tonnes of crop inventory was managed via Grainit.
“Grainit, which we have had a strategic partnership with for a few years, is a strong tool for the farmer who wants an easy and intuitive overview of his farm operations. And the app has proven itself during the harvest of 2019. As a new co-owner, we see great potential in contributing to the further development of Grainit and offering it to even more farmers,” says Henning Haahr.
And as something new, Danish Agro will in 2020 offer Danish farmers a far more precise analysis of their fields via the partnership with the Canadian company, SoilOptix.
“FieldSense, Grainit and SoilOptix are three good examples of digital tools that, each in their own area, add value to farm operations. Based on practical experience and further development of the products and related services, our objective is for each of the individual tools to create even more value by being able to support each other to a high degree,” he says.