Microsoft plants seeds in the agriculture industry

Microsoft has been developing a suite of farm-focused solutions called Project FarmVibes to offer farmers data to, ideally, build more efficient operations, from monitoring and planning for planting conditions to weather data and harvesting metrics. Project FarmVibes is part of a larger strategy, according to Chandra. Microsoft, he said, is building tools specifically designed for industries like retail, sustainability, and finance, and it is now building tools specifically designed for the agriculture industry. By building tools for farmers and researchers alike, and by focusing on open-source, Chandra said that Microsoft is aiming to “make advances in democratizing data driven agriculture.”