The Climate Corporation is a digital

agriculture Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...

company that examines weather, soil and field data to help

farmers A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mi ...

determine potential yield-limiting factors in their fields.

History

The company was founded as WeatherBill in 2006 by two former

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

employees,

David Friedberg David Albert Friedberg (born 1 June 1980) is an American entrepreneur, businessman, and angel investor. He founded and was chief executive of The Climate Corporation, whose $1.1 billion sale to Monsanto in 2013 made it the first unicorn in the ...

and Siraj Khaliq. The company began as a startup focused on helping people and businesses manage and adapt to climate change, by providing

weather insurance Weather insurance insures against weather variations. There are two insurable types of weather insurance: conditional weather insurance and weather cancellation insurance. Weather cancellation insurance Weather cancellation insurance reduces ...

ski resort A ski resort is a resort developed for skiing, snowboarding, and other winter sports. In Europe, most ski resorts are towns or villages in or adjacent to a ski area – a mountainous area with pistes (ski trails) and a ski lift system. In North ...

s, large event venues, and farmers. In 2010, it decided to focus exclusively on agriculture, and launched the Total Weather Insurance Product in fall 2010 for

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

and

soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu an ...

s. In late 2010 and early 2011, SV Angel invested in WeatherBill's Series B. On October 11, 2011, WeatherBill changed its name to The Climate Corporation. In June 2013, the

U.S. Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of com ...

's Risk Management Agency authorized the Climate Corporation to administer federal crop insurance policies for the 2014 crop year. In October 2013,

Monsanto The Monsanto Company () was an American agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology corporation founded in 1901 and headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri. Monsanto's best known product is Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide, developed in th ...

announced that it was acquiring the company for approximately $1.1 billion. In November 2013, the company launched Climate Basic and Climate Pro, a set of advisory tools for farmers utilizing

data science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

to help farmers make optimal decisions. In February 2014, the company announced it merged with Monsanto’s Integrated Farming System and Precision Planting divisions. In February 2014, the company also acquired Solum, a

soil testing Soil test may refer to one or more of a wide variety of soil analysis conducted for one of several possible reasons. Possibly the most widely conducted soil tests are those done to estimate the plant-available concentrations of plant nutrients, i ...

company based in

Ames Ames may refer to: Places United States * Ames, Arkansas, a place in Arkansas * Ames, Colorado * Ames, Illinois * Ames, Indiana * Ames, Iowa, the most populous city bearing this name * Ames, Kansas * Ames, Nebraska * Ames, New York * Ames, Ok ...

Iowa Iowa () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the ...

. In December 2014, the company acquired 640 Labs, an agricultural technology startup based in Chicago. 640 Labs created the Drive device (later renamed the Fieldview Drive) that reads data from the CANBUS of tractors and connects to an iPad or iPhone. In July 2015, the company sold its crop insurance business to

AmTrust Financial Services AmTrust Financial Services, Inc., is a New York City-based multinational property and casualty insurance company, offering workers’ compensation, general liability, business owners policies (BOP), cyber liability, employment practices liabilit ...

, enabling The Climate Corporation to focus exclusively on its digital agriculture platform. Details of the agreement were not disclosed. In September 2015, the company re-branded its Climate Basic and Climate Pro products as Climate FieldView. In November 2015, the company signed a definitive agreement with

John Deere Deere & Company, doing business as John Deere (), is an American corporation that manufactures agricultural machinery, heavy equipment, forestry machinery, diesel engines, drivetrains (axles, transmissions, gearboxes) used in heavy equipment, ...

to sell

Precision Planting Precision, precise or precisely may refer to: Science, and technology, and mathematics Mathematics and computing (general) * Accuracy and precision, measurement deviation from true value and its scatter * Significant figures, the number of digi ...

LLC. In March 2016, the company announced data connectivity agreements with several

agronomic Agricultural economics is an applied field of economics concerned with the application of economic theory in optimizing the production and distribution of food and fiber products. Agricultural economics began as a branch of economics that spe ...

retailers and retailer software systems through the use of

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

s. In May 2017, the agreement to sell Precision Planting LLC to John Deere was terminated. In August 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice had filed a lawsuit to block the sale, arguing the deal could make it more expensive for farmers to use fast, precise planting technology. Precision Planting CEO Michael Stern stated: "We just didn't see that there was a clear path going forward, that the DOJ was going to approve the transaction. We have a valuable business and people in limbo and it was just time to move on."

Products

Formerly Climate Basic and Climate Pro, the Climate Corporation re-branded its product to Climate FieldView, making the announcement at the 2015 Farm Progress Show. The Climate FieldView Platform uses data science to provide farmers insights and data of their fields based on historical crop, field, and weather data. Field Health Advisor provides farmers satellite images of their fields depicting crop health and vegetation maps. Script Creator allows farmers to create variable-rate prescriptions before planting. Climate FieldView Drive is a

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

enabled device that plugs into a tractor or combine and reads machine data during planting and harvest. The data is displayed in real-time to the Climate FieldView Cab app. Climate FieldView Prime includes weather and scouting. It allows farmers to see a weather forecast up to three hours in advance, and provides the ability to scout potential issues in the field. Farmers can drop a pin on that location on the map to scout the precise location throughout the season.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Climate Corporation Agricultural organizations based in the United States Companies based in San Francisco Technology companies established in 2006 American companies established in 2006

History

Products

Further reading

References

External links