OREANDA-NEWS. BASF today announced plans to expand its services and initiatives for growers and agricultural professionals worldwide. This double-digit million euro investment will drive the development of unique, integrated IT tools that will support growers to make agronomic decisions, manage their business operations and better connect to the global agricultural community. The company plans to launch first integrated tools in key agricultural markets around the world by the end of 2014 with additional markets and tools to follow.

"The business of farming is increasingly complex and, at the same time, so interlinked that growers need more and more sophisticated technology to make precise, efficient decisions," said Markus Heldt, President of BASF's Crop Protection division. "This is a global strategic area for us, and we know that such services and initiatives make the difference for our customers."  

With this investment, BASF will expand its open innovation approach by offering dynamic social networking capabilities for growers, researchers and agricultural professionals. BASF will also launch new tools for field scouting and field documentation to support on-farm decision-making and reporting.

"This initiative is both exciting and challenging, and it gives us an opportunity to build on our existing agricultural data across a global platform," said Robert Blackburn, President BASF Information Services and Supply Chain Operations. "We are not starting from scratch and already have an experienced team in place to leverage cutting-edge processes, tools and infrastructure."

As part of this investment, BASF is establishing strategic partnerships with agricultural service and data providers, with particular focus areas in data management, predictive analytics and information processing.