Data on farmers and fields will now be aided by satellites.

Farm Market iD, a leading provider of farm-level U.S. agricultural data, announced today the signing of a joint venture agreement with Fargo, North Dakota-based Agri ImaGIS.   The joint venture agreement between Farm Market iD and Agri ImaGIS creates co-development and co-marketing arrangements for Farm Market iD, a comprehensive database of U.S. farms, allowing the combined team to bring to the agricultural market a new and unique set of GIS [geographic information system] and geo-spatial products and services associated with sites in the database.

Farm Market iD is a company of Telematch, Inc., a leading marketing intelligence solutions company.  The announcement comes less than a month after closing the acquisition of Farm Market iD by Telematch.

“This exciting opportunity with Agri ImaGIS demonstrates our commitment to Farm Market iD and the agribusiness community,” said Peg Kuman, chief executive officer, Telematch.   “We are investing early and aggressively into new and robust technologies that will continue to position Farm Market iD as the leader in quality farm data and database solutions.”

According to Lanny Faleide, president, Agri ImaGIS, “With FMiD’s proprietary data that identifies grower and farm detail, along with its geo-coded Common Land Units (CLUs), and Agri ImaGIS’s proprietary satellite imagery archive and Web-based GIS products, we plan to offer growers and marketers the unique opportunity to map individual farms, identify the crops and acreages for each field and to know precisely who owns and operates each farm.   It is truly revolutionary in scope.”

“We are already in discussions with a number of leading ag suppliers about testing and licensing this unique enhancement of our database,” said John Montandon, co-founder of Farm Market iD who remains with Telematch as an investor and consultant. “This is a transitional moment for the company in several ways, and it certainly represents a major step forward in our intelligence offerings in support of farmers and to the agricultural marketplace. With Telematch stepping up immediately to support such innovations for Farm Market iD, we are excited about the practical applications that our joint venture with Agri ImaGIS will produce.”