Digital Tools and Data Science for Agriculture

Microsoft and Bayer recently announced a strategic partnership to build a new cloud-based set of digital tools and data science solutions for use across the food and agriculture sector. These new capabilities will be available to businesses – from startups to global enterprises – to accelerate innovation, boost efficiency and support sustainability across food value chains. Through this partnership Bayer will work with Microsoft to co-develop new solutions that address critical industry scenarios such as farming operations, sustainable sourcing, manufacturing and supply chain improvement, as well as ESG monitoring and measurement. In this session, representatives from Bayer and Microsoft will share more about the new partnership and how it's poised to benefit food, agriculture and adjacent industries.

Transcript

Phil: 0:07

Digital transformation is the key to the future of food and agriculture today on our RDBA's, The Morning Fix, we meet with Bayer and Microsoft who have entered into a strategic partnership to, and advance digital capabilities for food, for feed, for fuel and for the fiber value chain. And we will find out why and what that means for us of all Ranveer Chandra is the CTO of Microsoft Azure, global, where he's leading a team driving innovation across different industries. Ranveer started the farm beats project of Microsoft research back in 2015 and has been leading it since he was invited to the U S D A to present his work on farm beats, including to the U S D A secretary. His work was also very proudly. He featured by bill gates in gates notes. Sachi Desai is a member of Bayer''s corporate strategy and portfolio management organization, and is focused on digital farming. He leads the development of platform strategy, forging alliances that bring new innovation to farmers who use climate field view as well as digital partnerships across Climate LLC and Bayer, and the company's digital farming strategy. Gentlemen, welcome to The Morning Fix.

Sachi: 1:37

Hi, Phil.

Phil: 1:39

Sachi. Can you tell us a bit more about the Bayer/Microsoft partnership?

Sachi: 1:43

Sure. Uh, first I wanna just say I'm excited to be here with, RDBA on the Morning Fix and, excited to talk with Ranveer about this. I think m y, u h, t he friendship we forged about four years ago w as the catalyst for l ive. W hat we ended up evolving into a partnership in a much more formal way. So late last year in the fall, Jeremy Williams of, u m, a nnounced, w ith Microsoft that we entered into a partnership to develop and commercialize a new set of solutions and capabilities to help the food a nd agricultural sectors. As you started this convers, this discussion right around the term digital transformation, it sounds like a catch a ll i n a b oogieman sometimes when you hear it. And what really we're laying out here is helping the industry with a set of tools to provide better services and better capabilities for farmers at the farm g ate, where buyers primarily focused, but also to work with Microsoft to help support the entire industry across the full value chain, to digitize, to meet the needs of, o f a growing world and the new demands of a growing world to be more sustainable in an optimized way.

Phil: 3:00

So Ranveer, I look at Microsoft huge company. You guys have your fingers in just about everything, and at some point you had to think about food. Why'd you think about food? Why'd you think about agriculture and how Microsoft should be involved? And tell me about your lens on this partnership.

Ranveer: 3:23

Yeah, so Phil, uh, thanks again for having us on the show. And it's great to see Sachi here, as Sachi mentioned, we've known each other for a while. So at Microsoft, we are building various tools and capabilities around data, around artificial intelligence, around technology, things like cloud things like internet of things. And what we believe is that these technologies will shape the future of different industries. Be it financial services, be it retail, be it, uh, energy and agriculture and food. And as you know, agriculture and food is such a fundamental problem. The world needs more food to feed the planet, and it's not just about growing more food. We need to grow good nutritious food. So then the question is, how do you grow all of this food without harming the planet? And towards that at Microsoft, we have been working on bringing all the latest in technologies around data, around artificial intelligence, to agriculture. And that is one of the projects, which you mentioned farm beats was about that. But as we started building these capabilities around digital agriculture, we realized that it is the basis of many other industries, like for example, CPG companies and retailers, they, they be, they would benefit from knowing more about how was grown consumers would benefit because consumers want to make sustainable choices as well. Farmers would benefit through these digital tools. And that was the basis of this partnership with Bayer. That is, we are not an agriculture company, Microsoft, but we work. We built tools for our partners in this case with Bayer corporation. And in particular, as part of this partnership, what we are looking to do is to work with mutual customers, to identify the workloads that can be transformed with cloud and AI. And we want to bring the right partners together to enable this transformation of the workloads. And what we do is once we've come up with that work with Bayer to commercialize these solutions. So if you think of what, what this partnership would enable is it'll help our partners. Our customers build on a standardized platform, things that Bayer and us are building together, it will help them outsource most of the components. For example, how do you get all of this data in one place so that they can then focus on this differentiated capability of building, of building their AI, of building their insights on top, as part of this partnership, we are also very excited to bring the latest in technology that we are building at Microsoft, think of new cloud technologies, new internet of things, technologies. So you, so that you can get data. Customers can get data that they didn't have before. And we bring it with the agricultural expertise at Bayer to the entire agricultural community.

Phil: 6:13

So Sachi, I wanna build on something that Ranveer mentioned, uh, about consumers, you know, consumers, especially since the pandemic, want to know much more about their food, where it comes from, you know, E everything about food. They, they never heard the term supply chain, uh, before the pandemic. You know, now they're insisting to know everything about it. What what's, Bayer's vision for this partnership? Where can you take this and bring it down to the consumer?

Sachi: 6:45

Yeah, I think, I think, you know, pandemic highlights a few things, as you mentioned, right? Knowing where your food comes from because of the supply chain stock that we saw in the pandemic, uh, becoming more, uh, cognizant where our products come from and more cognizant of what's in it. We, we want more, right. And we believe we deserve more now with, um, being able to look up, you know, book a car from my phone or book a ticket from my phone, like why can't I know where my, uh, corn, ethanol food, et cetera have come from. And so, well, we really wanted do, when we see what this vision is Reve was saying is the ag industry, the food value chain from the farm gate, all the way to the, uh, end consumer should all be connected. There's no reason it can't, it's all digitized in some fashion. So our goal is to empower that entire value chain empower every, uh, point of, um, uh, significance there from the farmer to the supplier, to the processor and et cetera, uh, to be able to inform that value chain, be able to make a decision on it and that in the long term, uh, be able to give all that information that's most critical to a consumer making a decision. So if you want to, um, purchase a food item, let's say a granola bar, you should be able to know where your ingredients for that granola bar came from. You should be able to understand how sustainably produced that granola bar was, and you can make your decisions you want. And so, as Ranveer said, we're looking to provide the building blocks where Microsoft world class digital delivery and engineering paired with Bayer's world class agronomics and agricultural, um, competency are put together to provide the tools, to allow the folks across this industry in value chain to make that vision reality. There's no reason the farmer who's already, uh, very advanced in digitizing. All their information cannot participate more downstream, right, and help a consumer make a better decision, make, make a more sustainable choice, or make a more informed decision on what, where their crop comes from or, or their product, their eating comes from, et cetera. And so we we're working together to build that, that vision. Um, as we laid out, uh, we were both on this journey separately, right? So Ranveermentions some of the work Microsoft was doing, and we were with the purchase of Climate LLC. About nine years ago, we also were set off on a digital journey in ag. And over the course of that time, we, a lot of startups came into the space. A lot of work has happened, but not at the pace you see in some other places, uh, for various reasons. And so the combination of both of us, we believe we can help accelerate that and help lower the barriers. So you of more innovation occur by, um, others that you don't necessarily see right now in the space, just because of the challenges you face from gathering the data, cleaning the data, et cetera.

Phil: 9:46

So I think you mentioned this already Sachi um, but to be honest with you, and I know you guys are friends, so I'm gonna put you on the spot. Why did you choose Microsoft with all the technology companies that are out there? And Microsoft certainly is, is one of the leading ones, if not the leader. Um, but what made you choose, you know, Microsoft as the partner to make this all happen?

Sachi: 10:14

So, um, I think this is a really easy question to answer actually, when we, uh, and maybe I'm being glib about this a little bit too much, but, um, four years ago when I joined, uh, Bayer and we started having these conversations around, um, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna accelerate our digital capabilities as Bayer? We started talking to a lot of different entities. Uh, you know, you could probably figure out who they are, various companies. And what it became clear to us was not often was the, the vision they portrayed to us or the, the way they wanted to work with us aligned with our own vision. It was, uh, it was, it was NEC until we talked to Microsoft that's um, when we spoke with Microsoft and they laid out the vision, they see for agriculture, where they see agriculture heading, how they see Bayer in that vision, how they see they could work with Bayer. It became clear. We were already aligned before even really engaging or working together. So I made the decision to work together pretty easy. To be honest, we realized we're share, we share the same vision, which is we wanna impact positively the farmer and the grower, which is, uh, core to our belief here at Bayer. And Microsoft shared a similar vision that they wanna make sure the customer is at the center of, um, everything they do and everything, every benefit they create. And so based on that, the technical stuff became a lot more easier to talk through because we were heading on the same road in the same direction. It was just now we've decided to be in the same car.

Phil: 11:45

So Ranveer, I'm gonna ask you to build on that. What does, uh, what does Sachi and Bayer bring to the party for Microsoft?

Ranveer: 11:55

Yeah. And as, uh, Sachi said for us too, so, you know, as I had mentioned earlier, Phil, Microsoft is not an agriculture company, even though we have been doing farm beats and working with farmers, we are not the agricultural experts. Uh, we needed to work with the company that knew about agriculture and in this case, uh, that's what we do even with different industries. If you look at how we are working in retail, in, in financial services and other industries, we work with partners who know a lot about that industry, and we are building the tools for that industry. It was the same case here where Bayer knows a lot about agriculture. They are the largest input company. Uh, climate car was the first ag tech unicorn. It, uh, it also has more than 180 million acres under management where works with multiple suppliers and customers. And at Microsoft, if we are, if we have to really make a difference in agriculture, in the future of food, fiber, fuel, and feed, we have to work with the leader in this space, and that is Bayer. So that's why we are super excited about bringing the depth of expertise, not just in the Bayer technical side, but the Bayer sales matters and all, all our partnership with Microsoft. If we have to make a real difference in this space, and that's what we, that's what made it, uh, clear that we have to partner with Bayer. If we have to make progress in this future to food

Phil: 13:15

Now y ou, y ou mentioned that whole supply chain, let's bring it down to grocery retail. What are the benefits of everything that we're talking about to that, you know, g rocer, if you would, u m, as they're putting products on the shelf.

Ranveer: 13:33

Yeah. And, uh, so grocers would benefit a lot from this data driven agriculture, this data driven agriculture and food supply chain. That is when we think of the entire food supply chain, all the way from the farmer to the, to the logistics companies, the warehouse companies, the distributors, the food manufacturers, the retailer, every entity in the food supply chain would benefit from data and data driven insights. They would improve their efficiencies. But if this data could be shared across the food supply chain, it would light up new insights that didn't exist before and new business models, new scenarios, which would impact the downstream users, the grocery retailers, the consumers, much more. For example, there are many new scenarios that could be laid up. One of them is around transparency, food transparency. You can do track and trace when there is an outbreak, you can know where that food came from and you can issue a recall much more efficiently. It would light up new scenarios around sustainability. The thing that Sachi was mentioning that is consumers and even retailers and food manufacturers can know where did that food come from? How much water was used, whether it was sustainably produced, what was the emissions, how much carbon was sequestered? All of that information is can now be gathered by a consumer. In fact, you could go a step more around nutrition that is as many of us know the nutrient content of the produce of the things we eat depends a lot on how it was grown. The unfortunate thing is right now, we don't get that information. Once you start making the entire supply chain more digital, the, the farm gate, more digital, you can start lighting up all of these scenarios. And so that's why we are very excited about the impact of this partnership on the entire food supply chain, in particular, with the grocers, with the retailers, with the consumers, because data can start adding much more value added services on top of the products that they sell. And the consumers can know a lot more about the food that they consume.

Phil: 15:36

So Sachi, our audience, retail dietitians are at every retailer, every grocery retailer, every drug retailer, every mass market retailer in the nation. And in Canada. Um, as, as they're listening to this, I'm sure their ears are pricking up and they're saying, huh, I wanna know more. So how can they learn more and how can they get involved in this?

Sachi: 16:03

So they can reach out to me or, um, my counterparts at Microsoft. So I can provide my email address, Sachi dot desai@ bayer.com As Renveer said, there's a lot of opportunity here and we're just at the, uh, the early stages of that race.

Phil: 16:20

So gentlemen, thank you for being on the Morning Fix this morning and thank you for helping food and agriculture reach to the next level. We appreciate it.

Sachi: 16:29

Thank you, Phil.