McCain Foods’ new subsidiary focuses on crop monitoring and analysis

McCain Foods unveils Presia Ag Insights, a newly formed business unit specializing in satellite-based, data-driven intelligence.

“Launching Presia advances McCain’s innovative agriculture agenda, providing an opportunity to build off the expertise we have developed in potatoes to offer leading capabilities to other food businesses and farmers,” says Peter Dawe, chief growth and strategy officer at McCain Foods. “It is driving data intelligence that is helping us change the way we grow a potato.”

Presia is the evolution of McCain’s acquisition of the predictive crop portfolio from Resson in 2022. That portfolio includes vision-intelligence-based technologies that leverage field data and satellite imagery to assess the status of a potato crop. The Resson team that managed the predictive crop intelligence portfolio joined McCain in June 2022. Over the past year, the team — and product — has continued to evolve and is now launched 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 manage their crops and determine yield estimates. 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 Tyler Hennick, managing director of Presia. “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.”