Technology

Agricultural imaging and analytics firm Taranis has raised $30 million in a Series C round co-led by Vertex Growth — an affiliate of Singapore sovereign fund Temasek — and Orion Fund, a subsidiary of Malaysian conglomerate, the Kuok Group. New backers joining the round included affiliates of two of the world’s largest semiconductor companies — […]

US-based Farmers Business Network (FBN) is expanding to Australia after announcing the acquisition of local startup Farmsave. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, though FBN co-founder Charles Baron confirmed to AFN that the Farmsave brand will be discontinued. All of the acquired company’s existing employees will remain in place as the new FBN […]

It’s one of the top agricultural producers, as well as having one of the world’s most urbanized populations. It’s a high-tech society with a reputation for innovation; but is also the driest place on Earth, where water is a rare and precious commodity and bushfires are an almost yearly occurrence. Given all this, you’d expect […]

While the bulk of agrifoodtech VC funding in Southeast Asia went to downstream categories in 2019, startups sitting in the middle of the value chain are increasingly attracting interest from investors. According to AgFunder’s first-ever ASEAN AgriFoodTech Investment Report, the three most-funded categories were all downstream: In-Store Retail & Restaurant Tech, with $115 million in […]

The indoor farming industry is heating up again, posting one of the biggest year-over-year increases in funding according to AgFunder’s AgriFoodTech Investing Report. In 2019, indoor farming investment jumped 38% on 2018. For Florida-based vertical farming startup Kalera, forward momentum is everything. “Orlando was our first large-scale facility, but we are eager to double up,” […]

Google has agreed to invest ₹337 billion ($4.49 billion) into Jio Platforms, the Indian telco and online service provider that’s set to become the tech engine powering the country’s agrifood ecosystem. As a result of the Google deal, Jio — a unit of Mumbai-based conglomerate Reliance Industries — has raised total external funding of ₹1.52 […]

Editor’s note: Gabe Sheets-Poling is senior vice president and head of pricing and global markets at Indigo Agriculture, in Boston, US. This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of AFN. Understanding the challenge in grain marketing requires us to first understand why farmers get into the industry. Quite simply: farmers […]

Singaporean agrifoodtech startups may have secured the most funding overall last year, as highlighted by AgFunder’s recently released ASEAN Agrifoodtech Investment Report. But take one large outlier in the city-state — retail tech provider Trax’s $100 million Series D round — out of the equation, and Indonesian agrifoodtech startups raised more, with $165 million invested […]

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 […]