VIDEO: 8 Startups That Are Revolutionizing AgTech
Agriculture is changing rapidly in the modern age. The global population is rising at an alarming rate and consumer preferences are shifting towards organic and sustainably produced goods. To keep up with these demands, the traditional agriculture industry must adopt new technologies to make farms more efficient and automate production.
The growing interest in AgTech is reflected in venture capital investments for AgTech startups. According to Pitchbook, $6.7 billion was invested in AgTech startups in the last five years and $1.9 billion in the last year alone. These 8 AgTech startups are paving the way to revolutionize the future of the agriculture industry.
1. Big Wheelbarrow
Big Wheelbarrow connects wholesale food buyers with local farmers. Big Wheelbarrow makes it faster and easier for buyers to work with small independent growers, regardless of size. Their technology empowers their customers to offer local products to their clients without the time and effort it used to require.
2. Vestaron
Vestaron Corporation develops and produces insecticides by employing peptides sourced from spiders in the United States. Its products are used in agricultural, animal health, and specialty non-crop applications, as well as in-household insects and commercial pest control applications.
3. Cainthus
Cainthus is developing the world’s most advanced technology for dairy farms today; technology that’s transformational for animals, farmers, and the production of food. Using computer vision and artificial intelligence to identify health, reproduction, and environmental changes early on, Cainthus translates visual information into actionable data.
4. Rex Animal Health
Rex Animal Health is on a mission to help livestock producers and farmers feed the world by increasing productivity and predicting, preventing, and precisely managing disease in the herd. They have a built up the largest database of clinical, health, performance, and genetic data on these livestock. Also, agribusinesses can use this data in order to understand their supply chain to identify the source of potential food borne illness, find the most efficient producers, set prices in commodities trading, and to understand and assess risk to increase transparency in the food supply chain.
5. Smallhold
Smallhold provides retailers and restaurants with contained-environment vertical farm units that produce large amounts of mushrooms, herbs, and leafy greens with minimal labor. Their current product offering is with on-site mushroom production and can produce up to 120 lbs/week in the space of a bookcase. The mushrooms are certified organic and are competitive with conventional ways of growing.
6. Babylon Micro-farms
Babylon Micro-farms provides an on-demand indoor farming service to make sustainable indoor farming more accessible than ever before. Their farms grow fresh produce 2x faster using 90% less water than conventional agriculture, without the use of pesticides or harmful chemicals. Their business model drastically reduces the upfront costs and expertise associated with indoor agriculture, powered by a patented IoT platform that remotely operates the ecosystem of farms.
7. Kiverdi
Kiverdi technology uses all-natural microbes to transform CO2 and other gases into high-valued nutrients, oils, and bio-based products. Kiverdi’s proprietary platform, which extends early NASA research, converts carbon dioxide from diverse industrial and agricultural sources into new materials using proprietary gas fermenting microbes.
8. Cambridge Crops
Cambridge Crops develops natural and edible coatings to extend the shelf life of a wide variety of perishable foods. Their coatings regulate the exchange of gases and slow down bacterial growth. These unique attributes allow for drastic improvements in shelf life for everything from avocados and spinach to meat and seafood. Cambridge Crops’ technology is easily integrated into existing packing and processing lines, minimizing the need for supply chain changes or expensive on-boarding. By increasing the window of peak freshness, Cambridge Crops allows food producers, food processors, and retailers to extend shelf lives, reach new markets, and reduce waste.
