AAA Solum switches from soil to cloud

Solum switches from soil to cloud

Granular, a US-based provider of a cloud software and analytics platform for farmers, founded in 2009 as Solum, has raised $4.2m from a consortium including corporate venturing unit Google Ventures, following the sale of its Solum brand name and soil-testing service to Monsanto subsidiary The Climate Corporation.

Google Ventures invested in Granular alongside venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.

As Solum, the company was initially funded by Khosla Ventures, which had former partner Shirish Sathaye on Solum’s board, and Andreessen Horowitz, which has had Michael O’Connor, a partner, on its board. A regulatory filing showed Solum raised $16.8m in July 2012’s series B round, following $4.5m in September 2011 and $2m of seed funding from Khosla in February 2010 when the firm was still at the Tech Shop incubator.

Solum co-founders included Justin White, who left in November to run product development at Blend Labs, and Nick Koshnick, former CEO and now vice-president of measurements at Solum.

In a CleantechIQ profile in 2012, Koshnick said that as well as most farm vehicles having GPS systems: “If you include weather and satellite imagery and meter-by-meter yield data, there’s a huge amount of data available, and there’s a huge opportunity.”

Granular’s service helps farmers with planning, production, marketing and accounting.

The system will enable farmers, such as Tom Farms and six others in a trial in the mid-west US, to dispatch, send work orders and allocate resources to operators in the field, while tracking associated cost.

Granular was formed when Solum sold its ‘wet’ soil science business to crops company subsidiary The Climate Corporation, acquired in November 2013 by Monsanto for $930m, from a venture consortium that had included Google Ventures. Solum can analyze dirt in its original ‘wet’ state, compared to other labs that first bake the soil and then grind it to make it easier to test. Solum also has developed a soil-testing tool that farmers can use to take readings on nitrogen content in their fields, to help decide how much of that fertilizer to apply and had run a field trial programme, which included a grant from the state of Minnesota with Mosaic and IPNI as partners.

David Friedberg, head of The Climate Corporation division, said: “Essentially, with more accurate and consistent data inputs, the insights and recommendations we provide for farmers can be more precisely customized to their fields, helping them make better decisions for their farms.”

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