International

Google will invest ₹750 billion ($10 billion) in India over the next five to seven years to accelerate the country’s adoption of digital technologies in areas such as agriculture, education, and health. The Google for India Digitization Fund was unveiled by the US tech giant’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, during an online event earlier today. Acknowledging […]

GROW, the Southeast Asian agrifood tech accelerator backed by AgFunder, today introduces the 12 startups from across Asia Pacific that will join Singapore Food Bowl – its unique program aimed at building a more resilient, sustainable, and decentralized agrifood ecosystem in the wake of Covid-19. The pandemic has severely impacted global supply chains, shining a […]

Back in 2015, AFN spoke with Mitchell Presser, then head of US M&A for law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, about the relationship between the private equity investment and growth in agrifoodtech. A lot has changed since then, including Presser’s work. He recently joined Morrison & Foerster’s M&A practice as well as its private equity investments […]

Consumers, food businesses, and policymakers are increasingly aware of the need to improve our food system’s impact on the environment. But what about the impact of the clothes we wear – another major product of agriculture? Roughly 20% of industrial water pollution comes from garment manufacturing, according to the World Resources Institute, and the industry […]

There are plenty of new products and gadgets on the market for farmers to try, but sometimes the risk isn’t worth the potential reward. One US startup is hoping a data-backed warranty will change that. “There are a lot of issues that farmers deal with every day like grain marketing, land access, and agronomy. But […]

*Editor’s Note: In July 2020, Solectrac won a $500,000 grant from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District as part of its Funding Agriculture Replacement Measures for Emissions REductiosn Demonstration Program. A few decades ago, the idea of self-driving tractors may have sounded like science fiction. Today, tractors are taking on new futuristic shapes and […]

In this episode of Future Food, which I co-hosted with my wonderful colleague, reporter and resident rancher Lauren Stine, we talk to Lew Moorman and Nick Honegger of Soilworks, a newly-created investment group focused on regenerative agriculture. Nick and Lew founded SoilWorks after working together at Scaleworks, the B2B SaaS focused investment organization founded by […]

Seeing as it’s one of the world’s foremost agricultural producers and a highly advanced tech-based economy, it may come as something of a surprise to learn that Australia didn’t have an organized, membership-based industry group for agritech until a few months ago. The Australian Agritech Association formally launched in February this year, “to foster a […]

Access to vertical farming technologies is deepening and widening across the world, bringing down the costs and hassle of locally producing anything from Singapore strawberries to Arctic tomatoes. In Latin America, however, indoor vertical farms are still largely written off on a continent known for its abundant fertile soil and plentiful sunlight. Why need of […]

Last summer at a research lab on the outskirts of Cambridge, UK, I nervously rolled up my sleeve and tucked my hand deep into a tray of pulsing, writhing maggots. (Yes, keeping in touch with the future of farming is a mandate the AFN newsroom takes literally.) The tray — and all its wriggly inhabitants […]

Our mission at Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE) is to create and cultivate collaborative, innovation clusters that enable breakthroughs to advance human health and improve nutrition; this mission is now more important than ever. While the COVID-19 pandemic impacts each of us differently, we know that one of the most important actions we […]

“If you build it; the funding will come.” It might not be the exact quote that drove Kevin Costner to build a baseball diamond in an Iowa cornfield in Field of Dreams, but it is the advice that many founders and entrepreneurs are following as they look for locations for their agtech startup businesses. Businesses […]

Major seed and ag chemicals provider Syngenta is adding another initiative to the ongoing list of corporate sustainability commitments sweeping big food and big agribusiness after the results of a farmer survey revealed deep concerns about the impact of climate change.  The announcement also happens to come on the heels of 2020’s Pollinator Week. Through […]

AgFunder has just the ASEAN Agrifoodtech Investment Report 2020, its first-ever analysis of agtech and foodtech startup funding in Southeast Asia. The report can be downloaded here. [Disclosure: AgFunder is the parent company of AFN.] A total of $423 million was invested into Southeast Asian agrifoodtech startups in 2019, across 99 deals. Reflecting the fact […]

Regenerative agriculture is a growing movement. It’s popping up in new places including campaign platforms, proposed federal legislation, and new grant opportunities. Despite its momentum, the exact contours of regenerative agriculture are still up for debate. Even among proponents of the movement, there are debates about the best ways to prove regenerative agriculture’s promise or […]