On Thursday, TELUS announced the launch of TELUS Agriculture, a new business unit dedicated to providing solutions to support the agriculture industry with connected technology.

TELUS Agriculture optimizes the food value chain by leveraging data in new ways to increase efficiency, production, and yields, delivering better food outcomes for businesses and the end consumer. The business unit currently supports more than 100 million acres of agricultural land, backed by a team of more than 1,200 experts across Canada, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Armenia, Germany, China, and Australia.

“The launch of TELUS Agriculture reflects TELUS’ unwavering commitment to our social purpose to leverage our world-leading technology to create remarkable human and social outcomes as, together, we help to protect and improve the global food system,” said Darren Entwistle, President and CEO of TELUS. “By means of our technology innovation, artificial intelligence and human compassion, we will help farmers and ranchers produce food for the world’s ever-expanding population more efficiently, safely and in a more environmentally friendly manner. Our efforts to optimize food production will contribute to a better yield of food supply to meet the ever-growing requirements of our hungry planet.”

Over the course of the last year, TELUS has completed several key acquisitions, assembling a suite of assets.

“TELUS Agriculture is tackling agriculture and agri-food’s complex data management challenges by linking systems together in new ways. Connecting the value chain and building solutions that make it convenient and valuable to shift to digital will help our customers drive industry-wide profitability while delivering better, healthier products to the consumer,” said Francois Gratton, EVP and Group President TELUS and Chair TELUS Health and TELUS Agriculture.

In addition, TELUS Agriculture announced the aquisition of AFS Technologies and SaaS farm management platform Agrian. With the addition of AFS and Agrian, TELUS Agriculture now has customers in more than 50 countries.

TELUS Agriculture has built up a billion acres of historical acre data and 170 million acres of real-time data across the most diverse crop markets in the world that can be leveraged to build industry leading AI and machine learning-based insights.

At launch, the companies acquired include:

Acquisitions

AFS Technologies - Florida, USA - Comprised of AFS, Exceedra and Ignition, a global leader in supply chain management, and sales and distribution
AGIntegrated - Pennsylvania, USA - Seamless API integration
Agrian - California, USA - Unified management platform for precision, agronomy, sustainability, analytics, and compliance
Decisive Farming - Alberta, Canada - Precision agronomy and farm management expertise
Farm At Hand - British Columbia, Canada - Simplified farm management software
Muddy Boots - Ross-on-Wye, United Kingdom - Farm-to-food traceability and supply chain management
TKXS - North Carolina, USA - Custom data and program management
Feedlot Health Management Solutions* - Alberta, Canada - Critical insights and data-based knowledge

Partnerships

Hummingbird - London, United Kingdom - Advanced imagery analytics

*TELUS has entered into an agreement to acquire Feedlot Health Management Solutions. Transaction closing is subject to satisfaction of certain conditions precedent.