Anyone in the agriculture and agtech space will attest to the fact that data is critical to creating value for stakeholders and customers, especially for a business like ours since our technology supports a variety of crops in a multitude of geographic, environmental, and structural settings.
We understand these complexities, and over the past few months as the number of trials we’re working on has grown rapidly, CO2 GRO’s leadership has been making efforts to collect and tap into the data it potentially has access to.
Data is imperative to us gaining an understanding of how our technology works, in isolation or in conjunction with other technologies, at any particular covered crop site, growing a particular type of crop.
This understanding does benefit us – but more importantly, it benefits our growers who can tap into our expertise and optimize their CO2 GRO deployment to further improve yields, boost the quality and size of produce, and ultimately, profitability.
As a result, the company recently hired a new Data Manger, Mark Young, who is academically qualified, experienced, and scientifically skilled in equal measure. Mark earned a BSc in Botany and Zoology from the Rhodes University in South Africa and over the past decade, has worked on more than 75 different types of crops in geographies with varied climate and ecological conditions spanning Africa, the Caribbean, and North America.
In his previous role, he has ample experience collecting data and building and managing a data platform to help run a nutrient program for a number of crops in his employer’s facilities.
Mark’s education and experience makes him perfectly suited for the role of Data Manager at CO2 GRO which is a rapidly growing company dealing with growers in more than 15 countries around the world, in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America.
Our trials with peppers, tomatoes, roses, and more, for example, outlined in recent press releases, have generated a lot of data – and we expect this trend to continue. In fact, with Mark’s help, we believe we’re more organized than ever before and can collect more data from growers and generate better insights.
However, our customers aren’t our only source of data. We’re also working with universities and other institutions to run bench-scale studies and trials on crops we’ve not tested CO2 GRO’s technology with in the past. These pursuits result in the creation of a strong data bank and help establish robust baseline data around new crops.
Ultimately, our aim is to collect environmental data, physical data, and crop data from covered crop facilities using our technology to help optimize the deployment for better results.
CO2 GRO has historically seen that paying attention to the data and making a few adjustments that are unique to each grower based on their individual circumstances makes a world of difference. That’s also our motivation in piecing together the data platform we’ve set out to create.
Aside from leveraging our newly launched digital experience platform (front-loaded with our website), Mark is also using a host of other technologies such as Python and ImageJ to make data collection, processing, and management simple.
One of the biggest challenges when collecting data is dealing with security and confidentiality. At CO2 GRO, we don’t see them as obstacles. Our team is sensitive to the risks of mishandling data and uses the most secure technologies to store and process it. Further, we establish strong non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with customers and ensure they we abide by them when we collect customer data, giving our customers, and the wider community we deal with, confidence that their data will be kept secure.
CO2 GRO is excited about the future of its data platform and can’t wait to see what we learn from our trials with customers, universities, and other institutions. To stay informed as we go on this journey, follow us on social media (LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook), subscribe to our newsletter, and visit our website.
