Telus More...

Last week in 'Quick Hits', we noted a Canadian telecom company acquiring its way into agtech... Let’s revisit that. The proud parent company, Telus, snatched up seven agtech companies across the US, UK, and Canada to form Telus Agriculture. They’ve racked up products and services that include supply chain management, advanced data systems, precision agronomy, traceability, and artificial intelligence. The shopping spree allowed Telus to:

• Cement a fast footprint in 50 countries

• Claim customers that collectively span over 100 million acres

• Combine a team of 1,200 experts.

The ultimate goal?

 Connect all the players in the agri-food value chain. From input manufacturers to the farm and distribution to food retail, Telus hopes to align incentives, optimize data insights, and increase transparency. But Telus isn’t entirely new to agriculture. In the past three years, they have:

• Invested in remote-sensing biz Hummingbird Technologies Series B round

• Buddied up with IBM & Microsoft on agriculture data projects

• Built up a $16 billion fiber-optic network, noting it would help agtech applications

What’s Ahead:

 Mergers ain’t easy and Telus knows the process won’t come without challenges. Additional acquisitions focused on people, specialty crops, and livestock are on the horizon, too. But as Chris Terris, VP of Strategy, notes, the goal is simple:

“We’re not here to disrupt the industry. We’re here to enable it”