In its first acquisition of 2020, Israel Chemicals (ICL) has bought Growers Holdings, a US-based provider of software and data services for farmers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

ICL said the acquisition of the Raleigh, North Carolina-based firm further enhances its digital service offering and accelerates is global development roadmap.

Growers’ platform collects and structures manual and machine-generated farm data to assist farmers, agronomists and other agro-professionals to simplify decision-making on planting, fertilization and purchasing, while also increasing profitability.

“The acquisition of Growers expands and strengthens our offering of agro-digital services and our capability to develop innovative solutions to generate higher agricultural yields and more efficient and sustainable practices,” said ICL president and CEO Raviv Zoller.

“By combining Growers’ one-of-a-kind platform with ICL’s extensive agronomic knowhow, we are accelerating our market reach and development roadmap to create an unparalleled digital service offering focused on providing agro-professionals with access to currently untapped and unstructured data in a simple, fast and actionable way,” Zoller said.

Steven Valencsin, founder and CEO of Growers, said it is the company’s belief that significant opportunity exists to “drive a more sustainable, profitable future through the better utilization of agriculture data. Valencsin will remain as CEO of Growers.