McCain Foods Launches Presia Ag Insights to Drive Innovation in Agriculture
McCain Foods is working to support food companies, landowners and farmers foster on-farm resilience and adopt regenerative agricultural practices with the launch of newly formed business unit, Presia Ag Insights (“Presia”).
The result of a decade of collaboration to develop digital technologies that support farmers in building resiliency within their operations, Presia will help farmers and crop-sourcing partners to better evaluate and predict crop yields, optimize harvest timing and enhance on-farm sustainability practices. Satellite-based, data-driven intelligence can transform the way we understand crop growth, and Presia will accelerate the future of farming.
“Presia supports our farmer and crop-sourcing partners in building resiliency within their operations and strengthening decision-making capabilities through the use of satellite imaging and machine learning,” says Tyler Hennick, Managing Director of Presia. “We are proud to offer existing and new customers more frequent and accurate readings on their in-season crop performance within and across entire fields and regions.”
Presia is the evolution of McCain’s acquisition of the predictive crop portfolio from Resson in 2022, including vision-intelligence-based technologies that better leverage field data and satellite imagery to assess more accurately the status of a potato crop. Since then, the product has continued to evolve, and the team is now excited to launch under the Presia banner.
Based in Ontario and Eastern Canada, the Presia team is comprised primarily of data scientists and software developers, with nearly a decade of experience working with crop-monitoring technologies on potatoes. The insights from Presia’s data and models will help its customers better manage their crops, support earlier yield estimates with greater accuracy, and improve crop monitoring and sampling efficiency. While the focus is currently on potatoes, Presia’s data and models could be expanded to other crops in the future.
“We are focused initially on measuring plant health, supporting crop quality, and tracking regenerative agriculture practices. This expertise has been built within potato with plans to support similar insights in other specialty crops,” says Mr. Hennick. “We are getting more data on region and variety-specific nuances to inform our modelling and can work with our partners to measure the indicators that matter to them most.”
