CNH Adds AgDNA

Amidst a flurry of news today, that included splitting it’s on-highway and off-highway groups into separate operations, as well as making an investment into Nikola, the highly publicized emerging truck manufacturer, CNH Industrial also announced its agreement to acquire AgDNA, a provider of farm management information systems (FMIS).

The acquisition will enable CNH Industrial’s customers, and those of third party agricultural machinery, to benefit from AgDNA’s single point data integration, mapping and analytical tools, the company said. Paired with CNH Industrial’s agricultural brands’ fleet management telematics, the combined solution is designed to help farmers and agribusinesses to consolidate a range of agronomic data streams, arising from a range of inputs such as machine, agronomic and third party data – including crop prices and weather information – into a single platform, to facilitate expedited decision making.

As this is an open platform that works across data sources and brands, it is expected to effectively standardize all data inputs, making it possible for mixed fleet owners to view all data in a uniform manner in one place.

CNH said farmers will continue to control all data utilized by the system as well as maintaining the ability to use the variety of in-house and third-party applications that suit their farming operation. Furthermore, the acquisition of AgDNA complements CNH Industrial’s existing range of precision farming software solutions partnerships.

FMIS will be commercialized from the fourth quarter of 2019 onwards, initially in North America, through the Case IH and New Holland Agriculture dealer networks. It enhances the agronomic feature-set capabilities of Case IH AFS Connect and New Holland MyPLM Connect and represents another step in bringing the brands’ dealer networks closer to their customers enhancing overall farming productivity through decision-making efficiencies.

CNH said the acquisition forms part of CNH Industrial’s roadmap to enhance and extend its precision farming offering, in line with its commitment to delivering increasing digitalization and servitization in agriculture to add value for both customers and shareholders.