Monsanto acquires Climate Corporaton for $1.1 Billion

jvnk08

Senior Member.
I just saw this article and can't help but feel the chemtrail/GMO crowd will go crazy with this one. It combines both the ultimate evil corporation with a company centered around the "fabled" issue of climate change. I figured a thread about it would be appropriate to collect thoughts and/or debunkings of the inevitable claims about the subject as more news comes out.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/mo...ig-data-company-climate-corporation-for-930m/


Good morning everyone. Today’s big acquisition, a huge agritech exit: Bio tech company Monsanto has bought Climate Corporation for approximately $1.1 billion. While the Monsanto press release says $930 million, we’re hearing from investors that the actual price is past the $1 billion mark because part of the all-cash deal is paid out over time as a retention plan.

This is a pretty cunning move. It comes on the same day that Monsanto — the world’s largest argibusiness company — reported a larger-than-expected, increased 4th quarter loss, of $249 million, or $0.47 per share.

Monsanto is positioning this acquisition as part of a longer-term recovery plan, and a tip of the hat to bigger issues around ecology: Climate Corporation’s technology to monitor and track climate change helping Monsanto manage future risk better. Monsanto has weathered (pun intended) a lot of bad PR over the years around issues like genetic modification and the general trammelling of smaller agricultural enterprises, so it will be interesting to see how Climate Corporation fits into that mix.

Below is my invite to the media call at 8am, and here is a link to the press release on the Monsanto home page.

Good morning,

Monsanto just announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire The Climate Corporation for $930M. The full press release and supporting information is available on http://www.monsanto.com.

The acquisition will combine The Climate Corporation’s expertise in agriculture analytics and risk-management with Monsanto’s R&D capabilities, and will provide farmers access to more information about the many factors that affect the success of their crops.

We would like to invite you to join us later this morning for a call related to today’s announcement. We’ll use this call to provide details about the announcement and then have an opportunity to take some of your questions.

David Friedberg, chief executive officer of The Climate Corporation and Monsanto’s executive vice president of global strategy, Kerry Preete will provide an overview of the announcement.

Climate Corporation is backed by Founders Fund, Khosla, Google Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures and Atomico. The company uses machine learning in order to predict the weather and other essential elements for agribusiness.

Monsanto focuses on providing seeds, biotechnology traits and crop production products for farmers around the world. The acquired company will continue to operate as the Climate Corporation, and Monsanto will leverage its big data expertise to optimize farming globally.

The COO of Climate Corporation Greg Smirin tells me that the acquisition is an ideal fit for both companies: “As we all know, the weather is becoming more extreme. We found that we had kindred spirits with the folks at Monsanto. The data science that we have developed can be applied to improve seed production immensely.”

Climate Corporation CEO David Friedberg comes from an interesting tech background. He is an ex-Googler, where he served as one of its first corporate development execs. (One of the deals he tried to do while there was to convince Google to buy Skype, according to Index’s Neil Rimer, who wrote the first VC check for Climate Corp., a $300,000 seed round. Obviously that deal never happened, but he ushered in a number of other biggies for Google nevertheless.)
Content from External Source
Edit: I just realized that maybe I can't see the forest from the trees here - the links to geoengineering/"chemtrails" may be tenuous at best. Maybe this will be better off in Conspiracy Theories? I'm all for this thread being moved if it fits better elsewhere.
 
Last edited:
Climate corporation seem to have nothing to do with climate change, they are just ag specific weather forecasters.

http://climate.com/products
The Climate Corporation's proprietary technology platform combines hyper-local weather monitoring, agronomic data modeling, and high-resolution weather simulations t
Content from External Source
They also do crop insurance for weather.

It makes sense to integrate weather data with general crop management. However there are enough key words here that it's inevitable that it will get presented as evidence of something. Probably tied into the weather derivatives argument.

The general argument is that it would be possible to make money if you could control the weather. The rebuttal for which is "doh". There's still no evidence that anyone is actually doing it.
 
I recall a theory that because Monsanto is developing Aluminum-resistant crops they must be planning to complement them with aluminum-laden chemtrails, thereby killing off all crops but theirs. Of course, it would be quite obvious if that were actually happening. Just like I did, I can't help but see people reading "Climate Corporation" and "Monsanto" in the same sentence and immediately thinking of something related to chemtrails.

There's a thread going on at Lunatic Outpost, some people have mentioned the aluminum resistant theory: http://lunaticoutpost.com/Topic-Monsanto-Buys-Climate-Corporation
 
I recall a theory that because Monsanto is developing Aluminum-resistant crops they must be planning to complement them with aluminum-laden chemtrails, thereby killing off all crops but theirs. Of course, it would be quite obvious if that were actually happening. Just like I did, I can't help but see people reading "Climate Corporation" and "Monsanto" in the same sentence and immediately thinking of something related to chemtrails.

There's a thread going on at Lunatic Outpost, some people have mentioned the aluminum resistant theory: http://lunaticoutpost.com/Topic-Monsanto-Buys-Climate-Corporation

See:
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-monsantos-aluminum-resistant-gmos-and-chemtrails.341/
 
Last edited:
I just saw this article and can't help but feel the chemtrail/GMO crowd will go crazy with this one. It combines both the ultimate evil corporation with a company centered around the "fabled" issue of climate change. I figured a thread about it would be appropriate to collect thoughts and/or debunkings of the inevitable claims about the subject as more news comes out.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/02/mo...ig-data-company-climate-corporation-for-930m/


This is a pretty cunning move. It comes on the same day that Monsanto — the world’s largest argibusiness company — reported a larger-than-expected, increased 4th quarter loss, of $249 million, or $0.47 per share.
Content from External Source

The article is wrong. Cargill is the largest Agribusiness company in the World. Monsanto's revenues last year were approximately $13 billion. Cargill's revenues were $136 billion.

http://www.monsanto.com/investors/Pages/financial-highlights.aspx

http://www.cargill.com/company/glance/
 
Well, to be fair, Cargill has their fingers in a lot more pies than just agribusiness.

Not really...they do have some Risk Management and Financial Services business as well as some "industrial" businesses (a lot of which come from their Ag background- using soy, corn and sunflower oils etc...to make industrial products)

But the vast majority of their revenues come from the production and processing of agricultural commodities and food ingredients and associated Ag services.

They are the World's largest Agribusiness company (and yet still private)

BTW- I emailed the author of the article and she has since corrected it...

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/24/news/companies/cargill_food_business.fortune/index.htm
 
Not really...they do have some Risk Management and Financial Services business as well as some "industrial" businesses (a lot of which come from their Ag background- using soy, corn and sunflower oils etc...to make industrial products)

But the vast majority of their revenues come from the production and processing of agricultural commodities and food ingredients and associated Ag services.

They are the World's largest Agribusiness company (and yet still private)

BTW- I emailed the author of the article and she has since corrected it...

http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/24/news/companies/cargill_food_business.fortune/index.htm


So, the largest agribusiness by far, but they're also a larger and more diversified company in general(even if those portions of the business are small in comparison to their main revenue generating operation). Cargill has ~140k employees compared to Monsanto's ~20k.

But yeah, it's always baffled me why Monsanto gets so much attention from the anti-GMO and/or conspiracy crowd when, as a perfect example, Cargill is much larger and has their fair share of questionable practices themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill#Criticism


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been looking for this story to pop up on the usual outlets, and so far everything I've seen seems to be a mostly neutral verbatim regurgitation of the press release. There's some mention of the March Against Monsanto but that's about it.

Example:

http://beforeitsnews.com/internatio...oration-reports-4q-earnings-loss-2469564.html
 
So, the largest agribusiness by far, but they're also a larger and more diversified company in general(even if those portions of the business are small in comparison to their main revenue generating operation). Cargill has ~140k employees compared to Monsanto's ~20k.

But yeah, it's always baffled me why Monsanto gets so much attention from the anti-GMO and/or conspiracy crowd when, as a perfect example, Cargill is much larger and has their fair share of questionable practices themselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargill#Criticism


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I've been looking for this story to pop up on the usual outlets, and so far everything I've seen seems to be a mostly neutral verbatim regurgitation of the press release. There's some mention of the March Against Monsanto but that's about it.

Example:

http://beforeitsnews.com/internatio...oration-reports-4q-earnings-loss-2469564.html

Yea- Cargill is way bigger and some would argue much more influential...and the fact that they are private and with little in the way of actual "brands" they are quite under the radar for most people. Most of their diversification comes from a "value add" approach to building business...ie; turning corn into corn syrup...turning corn syrup into biodegradable packaging.

I think the deal with Monsanto is they deal in seeds which is the basis for Ag and thus some sort of primal attractant for people...and of course, the whole GMO thing which freaks people out...not to mention their contractual baggage.

Here is the New York Times take on the acquisition:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/...?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131003&_r=0


Monsanto said it was paying $930 million in cash for the company, which looks at data like historic rainfall and soil quality to help farmers predict crop yields. Monsanto hopes to apply the Climate Corporation’s data analysis insight across the company, to create what a Monsanto executive called “the next level of agriculture.”

“A farmer should be able to grow on farmland square meter by square meter, for lots more yield, planting seeds at different rates for each meter,” said Kerry Preete, Monsanto’s executive vice president of strategy. “We’re a data company at heart, breeding seeds and helping farmers optimize yields and manage risk.”
Content from External Source
 
“A farmer should be able to grow on farmland square meter by square meter, for lots more yield, planting seeds at different rates for each meter,” said Kerry Preete, Monsanto’s executive vice president of strategy. “We’re a data company at heart, breeding seeds and helping farmers optimize yields and manage risk.”

An interesting concept. Some tractors now have GPS built in and soil maps can be fed into software which allows the farmer to custom sow, fertilize etc. at differing rates on different plots of land having differing yield potential. No need to waste inputs on land that doesn't need or respond or is somehow limited and increase seed density or fertilizer application in land that can use/need it.

Already, rice farmers can reduce water usage up to 50% by precision leveling using lasers or GPS. The traditional curved levees are being replaced by grids.
 
Back
Top