How People Use Planet's Data: Agriculture
Commentary on a customer index (of sorts)
I spend a lot of time on Planet Labs because it’s a misunderstood company. The market doesn’t grasp how customers use its data and why its data is unique. Naturally, my analysis focuses on these: how do people use Planet’s data to solve their problems? Said differently, how does the data create value?
Capturing value (sustainably) comes from creating value in the first place. A good data business creates value by producing reliable, useful data at scale. That’s exactly what Planet does for its agriculture customers.
Exploring Ten Major Customers
1. Bayer Crop Science
Bayer is a long-time partner / customer of Planet and one of the largest ag companies in the world. It uses Planet’s data to monitor seed production and power aspects of Climate FieldView (an app for farmers to manage farm ops) and RangeView (an app for ranchers to track cheatgrass encroachment).
Jim Kinnett (Global Head of Digital Product Supply) summed up his thoughts at Planet Explore 2023: “Data is critical for us. This relationship is critical for us because it gives us information we typically don’t have.”
He further described Bayer’s relationship with Planet as “co-innovating.” That’s a great position to be in, with Bayer spending $2.9 billion on Crop Science R&D in 2022.
“We’re using every part of the Planet portfolio of data. To give you an example, we have 700,000 square kilometers of Fusion data, which covers our production fields. So I can tell you what’s going on in those production fields, and I can also make decisions as granular as saying we need to run irrigation on these fields differently.”
No other company can provide this data across such a wide area.
“At the end of the day, this opened up ideas that we didn’t think to ask before.”
Much of the work around Planet involves exploring how its new capability can be best leveraged to improve results in the field. It’s a game of learning and iteration, and it takes time to discover the answers.
Nalini Polavarapu (Head of Data Science) spoke at Planet’s 2022 investor day: “Satellite imagery, particularly at scale, is a game changer for us.” The key words here are “at scale,” as the primary source of Planet’s differentiation is the size of area it covers each day.
“We have a hard time collecting data on commercial farms. Now just imagine the small holder farms. There are many of those, and we don't have enough people to go to these farms and collect all the data, but with imagery, we will be able to. Putting it even further, if you think about what happens in small holder geographies, there is leapfrogging of technology. And this is a technology that leapfrogs. So this is a technology that gets introduced in commercial farms and smallholder farms at the same time.”
I recommend thinking through the ramifications of what she is referencing for yourself.
2. Organic Valley
Organic Valley, the largest organic dairy producer in the U.S. (a farmer co-op with over 1,600 member farms and 460,000+ acres), uses Planet data to measure pasture health across all its farms (to support rotational grazing).
Last year, the contract expanded 5x after the pilot program.
Phil Marty runs the program for Organic Valley. Read his Linkedin and this article (written by Andrew Zolli, Planet’s Chief Impact Officer) for more info.
One quote from Marty: “We explored doing this with Sentinel-2, but it didn’t have the spatial or temporal resolution that we needed. Planet’s satellites make possible what no other technology could: they allow us to provide this service to every farmer who wants it.”
3. Syngenta
Syngenta uses Planet’s data in Nema Digital, the first commercial tool for diagnosing damages from plant-parasitic nematodes in soybean crops. The tool is integrated into the Cropwise platform (used by over 40,000 farmers on over 230 million acres).
I couldn’t tell you what a nematode is, but they’re big business. Or rather, anti-big business. The parasites cause over $100 billion in crop losses each year (over $5 billion in Brazil alone). Small improvements in parasite protection will unlock billions of dollars of value.
Planet and Sentinel data complement each other in this solution, which reveals a recurring theme in ag use cases: Planet is just one piece of the puzzle, but an invaluable one given the unique information it provides.
The pilot program launched in 2022 across 130,000 hectares of soybean farms in Brazil. In 2023, the contract expanded to support new product development and R&D in precision agriculture.
4. BASF Digital Farming
BASF Digital Farming, a customer since 2019, integrates Planet’s data into the xarvio Field Manager platform.
Digital agriculture apps (like Climate FieldView or Cropwise) rely on near real-time data feeds (like Planet) to improve the quality of farmers’ decisions. Over time (maybe a long time), farmers will be able to more directly manage operations across the farm through integrations with machinery. In general, I find such apps a compelling avenue for growth.
Jeffrey Spencer (Global Head of Technology and Data): “The value PlanetScope imagery adds is not only the frequency for time-series analysis of specific field zones, particularly in cloudy areas, but also the spatial resolution to discriminate crops and reliably measure vegetation health.”
“We are excited by the results we’re seeing so far, and at the same time, we expect these results to be seen in other geographies where digital farming technologies haven’t been applied at scale and where we anticipate the greatest contribution to sustainable agriculture and a healthy global population.”
Here is some meat on the bones of Nalini’s earlier point about how Planet is a “leapfrogging” technology.
5. AMAGGI
AMAGGI, a Brazilian ag business with >400,000 hectares of farmland, uses Planet data to create NDVI maps for its Agro precision agriculture solution.
Ricardo Moreira runs the program on the AMAGGI side. He explains, “In agriculture, there are countless variables. To isolate one from the other, you really have to have a lot of data.”
People generally don’t think of agriculture as a data-centric industry, but it is, and it’s becoming even more so. There is never enough data about farms. Planet produces a lot of data on farms today, and it’s likely to produce orders of magnitude more data in the coming years. This bodes well for expansion opportunities with these customers.
Another quote from Moreira: “In the very near future, we will start automating things. And then Planet imagery will make an even bigger difference because, in addition to identifying a certain problem, it will give you a spatial notion of the routing of these machines. We will have visibility on the management platforms that is a little closer than having an older or outdated map.”
This adds to my point of how in the future, data such as Planet’s will more directly inform machine activity on the farm. The agriculture world is moving towards large-scale automation, albeit slowly. Planet is well positioned to benefit from accelerating innovation in this area.
6. Disagro
Disagro, a Guatemalan ag business and customer since 2018, uses Planet data in AgritecGEO, a precision agriculture app for farmers.
AgritecGEO is yet another variant of crop decision tools in a digital / mobile format leveraging satellite data feeds. This is a secular expansion area, and I expect there will be many platforms tailored to farmers in different regions of the world, all of which will need access to as much data as possible.
7. Limestone Valley RC&D (via SkyTec)
Technically a civil government customer, I lumped it in because (a) civil government and agriculture frequently intersect and (b) it demonstrates the trade-offs between satellites and drones for field monitoring.
SkyTec’s Ranger platform uses Planet data to monitor land use and soil health, and Limestone Valley (a USDA spin-off) uses the platform to monitor fields across 11 counties in Georgia. Again, Planet’s data is uniquely valuable given the size of the area under monitoring.
Andy Carroll (Co-founder & CEO of SkyTec) on the tradeoffs between satellites and drones: “Ultimately, we found satellite data, for feasibility and scalability, was a whole lot more efficient than trying to get the drones out.”
Stephan Benketoe (Executive Director of LV RC&D): “We have the capability to collect this data in a way that does not require a field technician to walk every field in the United States. By creating a model that maximizes federal investments, the American people get the best ecosystem services return on their dollar. That’s where this data becomes super powerful.”
Satellites can collect data across the world with fully automated operations. Drones can’t do that. That doesn’t mean drones don’t have their place — they offer higher fidelity imagery — but satellites offer a unique view of the larger picture. And as such, they will always be a piece of the data puzzle.
8. Taranis
Taranis integrates Planet data into its crop intelligence platform alongside Sentinel, drones, and other data sources.
Taranis is in the business of amalgamating data to power field-level AI models. Planet produces a lot of data today, and it will produce a lot more data tomorrow, which again bodes well for expansion of this relationship. Last year, the contract expanded coverage into the southern hemisphere.
A quote from Ofir Schlam (Co-founder & CEO of Taranis): "As we built a solution to deliver the most timely, actionable insights for ag retailers, co-ops and farmers, Planet was able to provide us unprecedented daily satellite imagery to pair with our leaf-level drone imagery, allowing our customers to quickly identify deviations from expected crop growth and make the right interventions in the right time."
This is another example of where different data types (in this case, drones and satellites) are complementary. More data translates into better results, and combining different types of data generally creates a more comprehensive solution.
9. Oryzativa
Oryzativa uses Planet data to power an irrigation management application that informs directed scouting of rice fields in South America.
A quote from Joaquin Peraza (CTO): “In the past, farmers needed to walk the entire field looking for irrigation problems, and that took a lot of time. Now that we have Planet, we can go directly into a spot where there is no water or another problem with the irrigation or the crop… The farmer, by solving irrigation problems in 5% of the area, can cover the cost of monitoring the entire area.”
Planet’s imagery might be lower resolution than D&I-focused providers like Maxar and BlackSky, but it’s more than capable of pinpointing problems for farmers to investigate more closely (especially when combined with other data sources). Further, the fixed cost to acquire all its data, and the ability to resell it across multiple parties, enables a more cost-effective solution.
10. Corteva
Corteva, a DowDuPont spin-off from 2019 and Planet customer since 2017, uses the data to inform seed production and power the Granular (farming) and LandVisor (ranching) digital apps.
Planet’s relationship with Corteva resembles that of Bayer. Its data is used across the organization, and Planet plays the role of “co-innovator.” In practice, this means Planet and Corteva work together to discover new solutions (i.e., inform the R&D roadmap) and build core capabilities around the data, which offers a natural expansion opportunity over time.
I recommend reading the full Planet article on Corteva.
Christopher Seifert (VP of Data Science at Granular): “We’re definitely maturing in the view of where Planet data is the best fit for much of what we’re doing. Research and development (R&D) has driven some of that, previous geographic expansion of the offerings has also driven some of that. It took us a while to get moving and really consume a lot of the Planet data and figuring out how to leverage it, and then it took off pretty quickly.”
John Davidson (Senior Director of Product at Granular): “You can look at Planet on one side and you can look at what crops you planted or even look at the historical harvest without ever stepping foot in the fields. It’s pretty miraculous just looking at all this data they have and being able to process it really quickly and understand how it all fits together.”
In 2021, Planet and Corteva signed a three-year contract expansion. At that point, Planet imagery was used in Argentina, Brazil, the EU, Canada, and more. No other data provider can offer this scale of coverage.
The Big Picture
A rough estimate of Planet’s agriculture revenue lands in the $50 million ballpark (~75% of TTM commercial revenue). Peanuts, in the context of what Planet’s data can do for the industry. Ten years from now, I wouldn’t be shocked if ag revenue is north of $500 million (maybe even $1 billion?).
Why?
Theoretically, every farmer on Earth would benefit from Planet’s data. Practically, there is no reason every farmer on Earth can’t benefit from Planet’s data. The internet enables its distribution to every corner of the world.
Planet is the first company to operate a satellite imaging constellation that images the entire Earth’s surface every day. It is also the first company to build a web-based platform on top of such a proprietary satellite data asset. It has radically changed the availability, reliability, and quality of satellite data used in farming.
Collecting the data, however, is just the first step. Building a market for the data is the real challenge, and selling data is not easy. Ultimately, data augments or automates traditionally manual processes, and it’s difficult to crack workflows which have been done a certain way for years.
In agriculture, farmers have historically walked the field to assess crop health. Planet can now automate much of this process across every field in the world. With this data, the farmer can now target his visits to areas that need attention and adjust treatment more rapidly. The process is smoother, generally requires less fertilizer, and often increases the yield.
The small sample of customers explored here demonstrate how scale is Planet’s primary source of differentiation. Customers use the data to monitor hundreds of thousands of hectares of fields. It isn’t possible to do this reliably with other data sources.
While Planet’s data is just one small piece of the puzzle today, Planet is the only provider who can offer that unique piece. More importantly, that piece is proven to be valuable to farmers across the world. And perhaps most importantly, Planet has a lot of room to offer new types of data, build new products, and further embed its data in customers’ operations.
Agriculture is in the early innings of digitization. Farms want more data of all types. That’s a fact, and one not unique to agriculture. Every industry wants more data because the more data you can get, and the better the quality of that data, the better the results.
In an abstract way, I tend to view the basis of competition as the volume of useful data capable of being reproduced at a frequent cadence. It’s an overly simplistic take, of course, and perhaps even a dangerous one, but I like it for the purpose of evaluating the future of the industry on a decade-plus time horizon.
It stands to reason that those who can produce the most data, can create the most value, and capture the most value over time. Satellites offer a revolutionary method of collecting agriculture data at scale, and Planet is the leading satellite operator today. I like their odds of retaining that position.
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Good article Tim, keep them coming. Would be interested to get your take on Starshield and whether you view it as a competitive threat to PL? I’m a believer in the huge potential upside of PL but this, aside from some management concerns, is my main worry.
Great work as always Tim!