PEORIA MAGAZINE June 2023

C O V E R

DANCING THE SAMBA ON CENTRAL ILLINOIS SOIL Alexandre Chequim of Brazil is planting his DigiFarmz headquarters in Peoria and moving here

BY LISA COON PHOTO BY RON JOHNSON

Alexander Chequim

A lexandre Chequim comes from a family of farmers. His great-grandfather emigrated from southern Italy to Brazil, where he grew grapes and eventually row crops. His entire life, Chequim has been surrounded by all things agriculture, combined with an early interest in technology – coding and creating databases by age 9. ‘FARMERS GATHER LOTS

those in 2017 to co-found DigiFarmz Smart Agriculture in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he lives with his wife, Caroline, and teen son Alex. The company has developed a digital platform that combines climate infor mation, cultivar genetics, seed sow ing dates, disease biology, location and other parameters to provide farmers real-time recommendations for their specific situations. This allows for the optimization of agrochemicals, with the potential to increase a field’s yield and overall crop profitability. Today, their database has information on more than 20 row crops covering more than 1.8 million acres. Those crops include soybeans, wheat and barley, with the company close to launching an application for corn, Chequim said.

“We are committed to improving food nutrition in a more sustainable way,” he said. “There are real challenges for farmers – complex challenges with too many variables. The DigiFarmz platform can provide them the guidance to increase their yield in a way that is best for the ecosystem.” THE APPEAL OF PEORIA By November, Chequim will pick up and move his family from Brazil to Peoria, where he will open the U.S. headquarters of DigiFarmz. The company currently has about 40 employees in Brazil. Chequim expects to hire at least five people in the first 18 months when the Peoria office opens in space at Distillery Labs’ The Nest Coworking, 820 SW Adams St.

OF DATA BUT AREN’T GOOD AT UTILIZING IT’ — Ben Martin

As an agronomist and serial en trepreneur, the now 44-year-old has started nine companies. He sold all of

34 JUNE 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE