September 23, 2020

By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

Cultivian Sandbox Ventures has led a $2 million Seed round for Leaf, a food and agriculture data infrastructure company looking to overcome the challenges that are limiting the scalability of digital ag solutions. 

Existing Leaf investor Radicle Growth and SP Ventures also participated in this round.

Software developers are using Leaf’s API to build and scale a variety of products including farm management software, carbon removal marketplaces, lending products, outcome-based financing, land and input marketplaces, agronomic recommendations, food traceability platforms, equipment maintenance forecasting solutions, and more.

But what is an API? I’m glad you asked, because I wasn’t exactly sure either.

An API is an Application Programming Interface that fosters a connection between two or more varying systems, allowing them to exchange data, keep data synced, and enhance outcomes for users. 

Founded in 2018 with a mission to lower the entry barriers in food and agtech, Leaf’s API provides developer-friendly infrastructure for farm data. It allows developers to access high quality agricultural data, validate grower consent, and bypass the bottlenecks that have stifled scaling in the past. 

“Leaf is solving an emerging pain point that limits the scalability of digital agriculture technology solutions – the time, cost and complexity around the maintenance of data integrations,” said Christian Horn, Investor at Cultivian Sandbox Ventures.

Among the company’s products are its Machine Data product that allows developers to access standardized and aggregated data from all major farm machinery brand’s cloud platforms and operation files. 

It’s unifying field ID ability overcomes the inconsistency of field names and boundaries often not being synced across applications and use cases. By aggregating data under a single field ID Leaf’s API can be used to import, export, synchronize, and reconcile field boundaries across data platforms. 

And it also allows users to access standardized and aggregated imagery from a variety of major satellites, and airplane and drone derived services. 

“Food and agriculture technology can help solve some of the world’s most valuable health, economic, and environmental challenges but building with disconnected farm data has become an insurmountable barrier for both incumbents and startups,” said G. Bailey Stockdale, CEO and co-founder, Leaf.

“We’ve built the infrastructure that helps everyone bring change to our food system and now hundreds of applications and services are being built with Leaf. We’re excited to work with our new partners to scale our operations and broaden access to the industry.”

Radicle Growth made its first investment in Leaf last year when the company won the Radicle Growth Pre-Seed Challenge. Today, Leaf’s API supports all major agricultural brands and is behind the development of some of the world’s most dynamic food and agtech products. 

“We’ve been working with the Leaf team since the beginning and it’s exciting to see how quickly they’ve been able to power new innovation,” said Kirk Haney, founder and managing partner, Radicle Growth.

“The products being built on Leaf’s technology demonstrate that enabling the integration of all data sources is the key to driving adoption of digital tools. We’re excited to be a part of the journey.”

Lynda Kiernan is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, and HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She is also a contributor to the GAI Gazette. She can be reached at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.