With the largest population in the world and as one of the largest agricultural economies in the world, China represents a major opportunity for startups and investors alike.
Chinese agrifood startups raised $5.8 billion of investment across 283 deals with 318 participating investors during 2018, according to the 2018 China AgriFood Startup Investing Report released by AgFunder in collaboration with Chinese food tech VC Bits x Bites.
Many Kenyan farms struggle for access to quality farming products like vaccines, fertilizers or diagnostic equipment; the farmers also find it hard to attain or acquire sound veterinary or technical expertise, according to Sidai.
The free app is aimed at helping overstretched and frustrated farmers take advantage of futures markets, which are complex and time-consuming, using research-based software and automation.
Indigo Agriculture, the microbial ag products startup-cum-agribusiness marketplace has acquired TellusLabs, a startup using satellite imagery to monitors the world's croplands.
Verde AgriTech, a fertilizer business operating in Brazil, recently launched a new business unit called Verde Marketplace, which it hopes will become the first B2B platform for farmers to offer sustainably-produced food on a large scale to interested corporate buyers.
The round coincides with a new partnership with Penny Newman to launch a new soil amendment product onto the market that has the potential to reduce nitrogen application by 30% over 3 growing seasons.
The startup launched the startup competition to showcase the latest in agriculture innovation to its farmer members, and to give startups the opportunity to get exposure and real-time feedback from their target customers.
The selected startups include packaging tech, marketplaces connecting farmers directly with retailers, innovative storage solutions and advanced analytics to optimize food supply chains.
Agribusiness marketplaces are a hot trend in agrifood tech at the moment as entrepreneurs look to create more options for farmers than existing distribution channels to give them more flexibility and hopefully more money in their pockets.
"Always prioritize building a great team and bringing on great partners," say Maximiliano Landrein and Alejandro Larosa, founders of the online agribusiness marketplace. "This is a long race and to have the right people on board is vital."
AgriSecure provides whole farm and field level budget planning & execution, organic farming expertise including training and coaching, certification and recordkeeping, and help with crop marketing.
We caught up with Curtis Garner from Bowles Farming, who has been assessing the way the business purchases its inputs in the hope of saving costs, to find what he thinks about all the agribusiness marketplace startups cropping up.
"Indigo could be a future marketplace for sustainable and biological ag inputs, which could impact my portfolio in a positive way," said one agrifood tech VC.
This is the latest deal among a growing number of agribusiness marketplace startups globally as the trend to take input purchasing and crop marketing online takes hold.
The Bushel mobile app platform integrates into grain elevators’ accounting systems to provide growers access to their contracts, scale tickets, prepays, cash bids, and markets.
