Monsanto just purchased Climate Corp for US$960 million.
Climate Corp is a company that is really good at predicting weather in a small area (like a farming region) and provides insurance against poor weather conditions like drought to farmers. It was started by two ex Googlers.
Do we have anything like this here? We certainly have he building blocks, with MetService, who are very good forecasters, and a host of companies and people who are experts in sensors, farming and so forth. The insurance part is not that hard, and we have plenty of people here to help.
This article from March 2013 by Dr Michael Naylor in the NZ Herald states that insurance companies in NZ are not covering drought. If so then there is really an opportunity here.
All of this is occurring in a world of changing climate – so there’s a huge advantage to a firm that can understand everything that is going on and earn margin for doing so.
Could someone could put this together? I suspect that not only do we have some structural advantages, but that ownership of Climate Corp under Monsanto may cause issues over time. Alternatively a NZ company could take this in another direction.
Lance Wiggs is a director of the Punakaiki Fund.
Lance Wiggs
Sat, 19 Oct 2013
Sat, 19 Oct 2013
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