Solyent, Thymox, Propel, Hectare Agritech, Smart Earth Seeds, Taranis, Abundant, Calysta, Ceres, and Territory have all raised funding in the past two weeks.
The financing will enable the business to achieve commercial scale manufacturing of its FeedKind protein, which is an alternative feed ingredient for fish, livestock and pet nutritional products.
The search is on for a sustainable alternative to the 30 million tons of wild caught fish that are currently used to feed farmed fish.
AgShift, an ag data startup helping farms automate their compliance reporting, also closed a pre-seed round. Online office catering service Platterz and pivoted Indian agri-marketing platform Ninjacart also raised funding.
Also in this week’s funding sheet, Waycool, a fresh produce distribution service for smallholder farmers in India raised funding from George Soros-backed Aspada Investments.
The Yield is an Australian microclimate sensing, IoT and predictive analytics startup for aquaculture and agriculture.
LoveTheWild, the Boulder-based frozen seafood brand that only sources farmed fish, has closed an undisclosed Series A round of funding with Leonardo DiCaprio and seafood-focused
MicroSynbiotiX, a startup creating a novel oral delivery process for fish, has won the Nutreco Feed Tech Challenge.
Also, John Deere has opened a strategic technology office in the Iowa State University Research Park and Aggrigator launches a Farm to Shelf Marketplace for small farmers to sell direct to restaurants, schools, and grocery stores.
A biotech company working on improving the consistency and efficiency of cannabis cloning raised seed funding from an impressive array of investors while an Aussie wholesale surplus food marketplace got the attention of impact investors.
Bowery has built a vertical farming facility in New Jersey that uses automation, machine learning, and vision systems to monitor and tend to its crops.
Investment in seafood and aquaculture technology increased 271% compared to the $52 million raised across both 2014 and 2015, but there is still a huge need for technology to bring efficiency and sustainability to the industry.
A meaty industry brief this week includes a lawsuit against larger food companies including Tyson and Perdue, new grant options for food & ag research, India’s TIME winner of the year, and a plan to build 100 black soldier fly farms.
The year’s first exit came from Observant, an early agtech pioneer in the precision water management space. Jain Irrigation acquired the Australian company.
Nolet is an advisor to Australian insect-for-feed startup, GoTerra, and here writes about the challenges and opportunities for GoTerra and others in the space.
It was a busy week for agtech startups with new partnerships and awards, while regulations around gene-editing make slow progress.
Insect farming, Big Data technology, soil health products, and a Crowdfund a cow platform are just a few of this week’s agtech fundings.
Catalina Sea Ranch, the first offshore shellfish ranch in US federal waters, has raised funding for its mussel farm off the coast of Southern California, and for research into growing environmentally-beneficial giant kelp.
The White House, FDA, and NOAA made key moves that could impact the food & ag industry during the first few days of 2017.
A bumper week of fundings as we catch up from the holidays offer a diverse look at the types of startups innovating in the food and ag space today.
Sponsored
Restoring the soil quickly is key to capturing returns in regenerative agriculture