A farm management software company ceremonially opened their new headquarters in a historic building in downtown Murray on Thursday. Syngenta subsidiary Ag Connections has relocated into the renovated Swann Warehouse, a former tobacco warehouse built in the 1920s.
Ag Connections was founded in 1998 and develops software for commercial farm management, notably Land.db as part of Syngenta's AgriEdge Excelsior. The company services more than 16,000 growers representing 21.3 million acres, according to company officials.
Ag Connections plans to reach a capacity to grow the company to 75 employees. They moved into the new space in early November and were previously located in repurposed tobacco barns in southwestern Calloway County.
John McCauley is the Director of Agriculture Policy and a senior advisor in the Kentucky Department of Agriculture. He said agriculture has changed since previous generations and is now a high-tech industry. Regarding Ag Connections’ relocation and investment into the downtown Murray location, McCauley said it’s “a huge deal” to keep talented young people graduating from Murray State’s ag department in the local community, working in the ag and tech sectors. “To me, that’s the single biggest thing.”
Company officials say some 75% of the staff are Murray State University graduates. McCauley said he hopes the partnership between the business and university can serve as a model. “Other communities in the state, especially communities with colleges of agriculture can look at what Ag Connections, Syngenta and Murray State - the partnership and what they’ve done - and actually a model, and hopefully something we can sell and do in other communities across the commonwealth,” he said.
In talking about the importance of technology in today's ag industry, Murray State Dean of Agriculture Tony Brannon said when he was growing up on a tobacco farm, the most important tools were a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. “Well, it’s not my granddad’s agriculture anymore. We need more technology in agriculture than a screwdriver and a pair of pliers. It’s more a thumb-driver and a flyer - a drone.”
Syngenta global head of digital agriculture Dan Burdett said 'digital agriculture' was a new concept 17 years ago that has since expanded into an industry in of itself. He said ag technology plays an increasingly important role when it comes to population growth, referencing United Nations statistics about a population of 9.6 billion by 2050.
“The need for ever-increasing agricultural productivity is huge and that challenge falls right in the hands of our customers - our growers. And so we’re trying to enable that,” he said, through helping growers meet long-term demand for agricultural productivity.
Work on the Swann Warehouse is still underway. Ag Connections is located on the second floor and a portion of their office space has up a temporary wall while construction continues on an expansion. The first and third floors are also under construction.
