For more than 30 years, Australia’s rural R&D corporations have partnered with traditional research providers to drive innovation that solves industry challenges. Now, they’re also looking to the startup ecosystem for faster, bolder solutions that reach producers sooner.
StepStone paid roughly $40m for the portfolio which includes FBN, plus a bit extra for follow-on investments in Fund I companies, according to calculations based off Campbell’s regulatory filings.
Interesting things are happening in the Nordics. MatHem (literally “Food Home”), the market leader in online groceries in Sweden, has teamed up with a local financial colossus and industrial enfant terrible to re-draw the food map, writes Johan Jorgensen.
Pontifax AgTech Fund II is targeting $250m overall.
The firm closed the fund with new and existing investors from across the globe.
The clash over consumers’ demand for fast food chains to improve the animal welfare requirements that they use when sourcing meat hit new heights last week when the third largest public retirement fund in America, New York Pension Fund, penned a letter to McDonald’s warning it about “potential financial and reputational risks associated with McDonald’s chicken welfare practices.”
Tarfin, a Turkish startup providing farmers with credit to purchase the inputs they need each season, has successfully sold its first portfolio to a family office.
Indigo’s business model, which it is deploying funds to build out across the US, Argentina, and Australia, is as much a part of its offering as its business model, according to agtech insiders.
IKEA’s iconic meatballs and packaged food products are headed for a shake-up, says Michael la Cour, so we caught up with him to find out what’s in store and how startups might play a role.
While a number of outside investors have been great assets to our industry, many others have been a net negative for agriculture, writes Jim Budzynski.
Sixty-seven percent of the large institutional investors invested in agriculture in Prequin’s database said they were interested in investing in agtech.
Agrivi’s $1m Series A follows two recent agtech funding rounds that also attracted investment from large institutional investors in as many weeks.
Cellular agriculture is the process of cultivating meat, eggs, and leather in cell culture rather than raising and slaughtering livestock.
The Public Sector Pension Investment Board has invested in Allflex, a global animal intelligence and monitoring systems provider.
An Australian farmland fund joined a drone company, microbe manufacturer, consumer products, and food e-commerce startup to raise funding and highlighting the diversity of the ag investment space.
Local pension funds are starting to show interest in the country’s agriculture sector again, according to QIC.
Willow Hill Ventures will invest in growth stage agtech companies beyond Series B stage taking advantage of IFC’s portfolio of farmland across the US.
A further 36 funds, across farmland, agribusiness and agriculture technology, are still in the market targeting $7.5 billion collectively, according to Prequin.
Australia’s pension industry has been highly criticized for not supporting the country’s agriculture sector making last week’s A$150 million almond farmland acquisition by First State Super a coup for the industry.
The biological crop protection startup is the first agtech equity investment by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which will look at all technologies that can play a role in increasing productivity for smallholder farmers, a spokesperson told AgFunderNews.
