Bosch and BASF digital farming to go global

Bosch and BASF Digital Farming said on Tuesday that their  50/50 joint venture (JV)  to globally market and sell smart farming technologies from a single source has now received approval by all relevant merger control authorities.

Headquartered  in Cologne, Germany, the JV has been registered as Bosch BASF Smart Farming (BBSF) GmbH.The companies said that they jointly appointed BASF’s Silvia Cifre Wibrow and Bosch’s Florian Gwosdz to jointly lead the company.

The company will distribute its Smart Spraying solution, which Bosch and BASF are developing and testing, to initial markets in North America, South America and Europe.

"We have established the new company together, built the new team and continued to test our products successfully under different climatic conditions with various manufacturers,” says Florian Gwosdz, joint Managing Director of Bosch BASF Smart Farming.

They said that their "Intelligent Planting Solution" is already commercially available in Brazil and Argentina, and will use the advanced digital agronomic intelligence of BASF’s xarvio™ crop optimization platform to enhance zone-based seeding recommendations in the near future in Brazil.

"Combining Bosch’s high-tech camera sensor technology and software with xarvio’s agronomic intelligence enables Smart Spraying in milliseconds to precisely detect weeds in crop rows and to spot apply herbicide only where needed," said the companies in the statement.

The technologies  supports a more efficient use of herbicide, with trials showing herbicide volume savings of 70 percent are achievable, said the companies in the statement.