Gates Foundation’s agtech arm sets up shop in St. Louis to help smallholders in Africa
Gates Ag One will focus on crop innovations that benefit yields and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Gates Ag One will focus on crop innovations that benefit yields and livelihoods of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Picnic dispatches groceries from strategically located, automated hubs to its customers’ doorsteps using electric minivans.
Provivi will use the funds to sell its pheremone-based pest control products to smallholder farmers in Kenya, Bangladesh, and India at cost.
The Woburn, Mass.-based startup uses pharmaceutical discovery techniques to advance promising modes of action for fighting crop pests.
This is the first equity investment by the Gates Foundation in India, highlighting the importance of modernizing India’s dairy sector, according to Mark Kahn, partner of Omnivore.
Boragen’s technology, which is licensed from Penn State University, is initially focusing on next generation, synthetic fungicides using a technology with a novel mode of action.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has awarded a three-year, $6.1 million grant to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to expand and accelerate the development and deployment of improved varieties of sorghum for smallholder farmers.
We caught up with Christian Witt from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ahead of his speaking slot at the Rothamsted Open Innovation Forum in the UK.
AgBiome has received another grant from the Gates Foundation while a European accelerator plans to spend $1.26m on agri-food startups and Alphabet is planning to use drones to deliver food.
Agricultural development is one of the biggest initiatives for the foundation. Here Vipula Shukla, senior program officer for agriculture, speak about the foundation’s approach to agtech investing.
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.
The two will develop microbiome-based solutions that reduce methane emissions for beef and dairy cattle and enhance feed efficiency.
Gates isn’t the only one to have recognized that farmland investments can lead to solid returns.
The Microsoft co-founder commented on the acquisitions for the first time since he and wife Melinda were revealed as the top private farmland owners in the US earlier this year.
Promoting his new book on climate change technologies, the Microsoft co-founder said plant-based protein makers Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are “totally competitive.”
Research released last month indicates that Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda own the largest share of farmland in the US.
The Gates’ have also invested in numerous agrifoodtech startups, either through their private foundation or via other investment vehicles.
“I’m a firm believer that you need to address the entire value chain,” says Usman Javaid, CEO of Ricult.
Bill Gates invests $40 million in livestock health research through a Scottish non-profit, Kroger wants to challenge Amazon with the help of Alibaba, and more in our weekly brief.
A first-of-its-kind report by AgFunder and ISF Advisors, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, highlights the pressing need to invest in climate adaptation for smallholder farmers.