The Climate Corporation Acquires VitalFields to Expand Digital Agriculture Innovation for European Farmers

Today, The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of Monsanto Company, announced the acquisition of VitalFields, a European farm management software company based in Tallinn, Estonia. The VitalFields team will join The Climate Corporation, strengthening the company’s efforts to deliver industry-leading digital technologies to farmers around the world.

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Founded in 2011 and available in seven European countries, VitalFields offers an easy-to-use tool for farmers to plan, manage and analyze their field activities, including simplified tracking and reporting of all crop inputs to help ensure compliance with European Union environmental standards.

“At Climate, our vision is to deliver one centralized digital agriculture platform to provide farmers with the tools they need to optimize their operations,” said Mike Stern, chief executive officer for The Climate Corporation. “VitalFields has built a successful business spanning multiple European countries, and we see how their digital tools will complement our Climate FieldView™ platform offerings in the future. This acquisition marks Climate’s first step into the European market, and we’re looking forward to working with VitalFields to grow and enhance their current tools to help farmers maximize their return on every hectare.”

VitalFields’ tools will continue to be sold in Europe. Climate plans to expand the VitalFields user base to help European farmers uncover valuable field insights and use field data to improve productivity.

“We share The Climate Corporation’s vision of providing one connected digital ag platform for farmers across the globe,” said Martin Rand, chief executive officer and co-founder for VitalFields. “We look forward to the opportunity to expand the availability of the tools we’ve developed to help more farmers across Europe broaden their experience of the value digital tools can provide toward greater efficiency and sustainability.”

Prior to this acquisition, Monsanto Growth Ventures (MGV), the venture capital arm of Monsanto Company, saw promise in the developing company and was an early investor in VitalFields, incorporating it into the MGV portfolio that includes a wide-range of independent companies active in key areas of agricultural productivity.

Backed by the most powerful data science engine and most extensive field research network in the agriculture industry, The Climate Corporation’s industry-leading Climate FieldView platform delivers customized insights that help farmers make data-driven decisions with confidence to maximize yield potential, improve efficiency, and manage risk. Officially launched in 2015, the Climate FieldView platform is now on more than 95 million acres across the United States and Brazil, with more than 100,000 U.S. farmers engaging in Climate’s digital tools. In less than two growing seasons, Climate FieldView has quickly become the most broadly connected platform in the industry and has continued to expand into global regions, including recent expansion into Canada and Brazil.

The terms of the agreement were not disclosed. The VitalFields team will continue operating in Europe.

For more information about The Climate Corporation and the Climate FieldView platform, visit www.climate.com.

About The Climate Corporation

The Climate Corporation, a subsidiary of Monsanto Company, aims to help all the world's farmers sustainably increase their productivity through the use of digital tools. The integrated Climate FieldView™ digital agriculture platform provides farmers with a comprehensive, connected suite of digital tools. Bringing together seamless field data collection, advanced agronomic modeling and local weather monitoring into simple mobile and web software solutions, the Climate FieldView platform gives farmers a deeper understanding of their fields so they can make more informed operating decisions to optimize yields, maximize efficiency and reduce risk. For more information, please visit www.climate.com or follow the company on Twitter @climatecorp.

About Monsanto Company

Monsanto is committed to bringing a broad range of solutions to help nourish our growing world. We produce seeds for fruits, vegetables and key crops – such as corn, soybeans, and cotton – that help farmers have better harvests while using water and other important resources more efficiently. We work to find sustainable solutions for soil health, help farmers use data to improve farming practices and conserve natural resources, and provide crop protection products to minimize damage from pests and disease. Through programs and partnerships, we collaborate with farmers, researchers, nonprofit organizations, universities and others to help tackle some of the world's biggest challenges. To learn more about Monsanto, our commitments and our more than 20,000 dedicated employees, please visit: discover.monsanto.com and monsanto.com. Follow our business on Twitter® at twitter.com/MonsantoCo, on the company blog, Beyond the Rows® at monsantoblog.com or subscribe to our News Release RSS Feed.

About VitalFields

WeatherMe OÜ, which does business as VitalFields, is a digital agriculture company that offers an easy-to-use farm management system for farmers to plan, manage and analyze their field activities, including simplified tracking and reporting of all crop inputs to help ensure compliance with European Union environmental standards. Founded in 2011 and based in Tallinn, Estonia, VitalFields is available in seven European countries: Austria, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Romania, Switzerland and Ukraine. For more information, please visit www.vitalfields.com.

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Contact information

The Climate Corporation
Chelsea Shepherd, 314-258-0438
or
Brandon Mitchener, +32-2-776-7656
media.europe@monsanto.com