Monsanto's New Corporate Vision: A Future in Big Data

Sep 24, 2015

Monsanto Co., which last month abandoned a $46 billion bid to buy Syngenta AG, plans to offer its shareholders a new corporate vision: a future in big data, Reuters reported.

Monsanto executives are seeking to reposition the company as a business built on data science and services, as well as its traditional chemicals, seeds and genetic traits operations, Chief Technology Officer Robert Fraley told Reuters in an interview.

"We transformed from industrial chemical company to a biotech company, then to a seeds company," Fraley said. "Now, we're transforming again." Top executives are sketching out plans now, and briefing major shareholders ahead of a wider presentation to investors in November at the company's St. Louis headquarters. Fraley and others have met with at least 195 technology startups in recent months and identified five as potential acquisition targets, pending Monsanto's testing of products they make, company sources said.

Company officials declined to say how big a part of the firm it expects the data science and services arm to become, or to project sales and profits.

#Monsanto's new corporate vision: a future in #bigdata http://t.co/WpMRQwzKLT #ag #agtech #precisionag pic.twitter.com/zW051dsl2s
— Lisa Prassack (@LisaPrassack) September 24, 2015

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.