Forbes Elworthy takes his experience as CEO of Map of Agriculture, a leading agricultural digital information & analytics platform, to explore how farmers and farm service organizations (including ag banks) are managing agri-data to support production-enhancing and risk management decisions.
“Big Data” has become both an opportunity and a key challenge for risk managers. Data has to be first captured from a vast number of sources, both on and off farm, integrated into a common digital/technical and taxonomic framework, and then analysed to provide suitable information for the user. If we are to improve the welfare of farmers in emerging markets, opening up data and information flows is crucial. The webinar highlights data challenges, including farmer access and control, and implications for risk management.
Forbes Elworthy was brought up on Craigmore Station in the South Island of New Zealand. He trained in Agricultural Economics at Lincoln University where he was student president in 1984. He went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar in 1985. After some time at Goldman Sachs, he completed an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1992. Forbes worked as a credit trader at Merrill Lynch from 1992 to 1999 where he headed a convertibles trading desk.
Forbes then founded Credit Market Analysis (CMA), a real-time financial price discovery service and data community which served over 200 credit market clients and was sold to CME in 2008. Subsequently, Forbes launched an agricultural fund management business, Craigmore Sustainables. In 2012, Craigmore spun off “Map Of Agriculture”, which was then its farm financial returns benchmarking database. Forbes remains chair of Craigmore but as CEO of Map of Agriculture, he focuses on building it up as a global provider of farming information and communication solutions.