October 30, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

eAgronom is an ag-focused climate tech company in Central and Eastern Europe using real-time agtech monitoring programs along with on-the-ground educational outreach to help farmers integrate sustainable practices in a financially beneficial way.

The company’s carbon offsetting and insetting programs work directly with independent farmers and major agricultural groups to implement in-field crop monitoring, automated reporting, crop and yield plans, farm activity scheduling, and more, to modernize thousands of hectares across Europe and Africa. 

Following a successful bridge funding round earlier this year, the company now has $14.3 million in investor backing and more than 2,500 clients covering over 1.4 million hectares (3.5 million acres) of farmland in Europe.

Easing the Transition

Changes in production practices, adopting new methodologies and technologies, integrating new accountability requirements, transparency, and documentation –  all have the potential to be costly and pose real challenges to advancement. 

We are seeing these challenges play out for low-carbon, regenerative, and climate-smart farming, as growers are interested and willing, but are faced with steep barriers while shouldering heightened levels of risk, sometimes for years, before receiving a financial return.

Last year, eAgronom partnered with global carbon project developer and climate solutions provider South Pole to reduce these barriers by farmers being pre-paid for future carbon credits. 

Under today’s widely accepted carbon credit standards, it can take years to receive payment for the credits generated through carbon-smart projects – a timeline that is generally unacceptable for most farmers. This novel program, launched last year, introduces the concept of prepaying today for carbon credits that a project will generate tomorrow – giving farmers the support needed to adopt sustainable practices such as cover cropping and reduced tillage.

eAgronom partners with farmers to install real-time soil, crop monitoring, and yield planning technology providing detailed insights tailored for greater efficiency and effective carbon sinking. The associated carbon credits program directly subsidizes farmers, while eAgronom’s verification and certification processing incentivize financial institutions to provide more favorable lending terms to farmers and landowners integrating these measures. 

This access to carbon finance not only benefits farmers, but fosters ESG benefits on a global scale as it helps the uptake of farming practices in an industry accountable for 17 percent of global carbon emissions. Soil ranks second only to the ocean as a carbon sink with scientists estimating that soil holds the potential to sequester more than a billion additional tons of carbon every year, according to eAgronom. 

Building upon its positive momentum, eAgronom has now announced a major European expansion into Czechia, Romania, and Ukraine – a move that it estimated will increase the company’s sponsored farmland by more than 500,000 hectares (1.24 million acres), and enable farmers to redeem an additional 300,000-plus carbon credits, benefiting their bottom line and the overall sustainability of their operation. The company explained that the expansion will also call for the significant expansion of its in-house team of agronomists and its local partners. 

“This expansion has been in the works for some time, so we’re absolutely thrilled to reach the jumping-off point with our farmers and our partners,” said Robin Saluoks, CEO of eAgronom, who co-founded the company in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2016 with Kristjan Luha.

“We’ve already onboarded a number of farmers and enrolled our first partners. Thanks to the establishment of our local teams, we’ll be able to continue onboarding farmers at an accelerated pace. Excited to bring value chain incentives, carbon credit income, and sustainable loans to new farmers.”

Teams in all three countries are already active in recruiting local farmers, and eAgronom works with local networks of agronomists, consultants, farm-centric companies, and banks in every country it services, with on-the-ground support available in Czech, Romanian, and Ukrainian languages. The company stated that it is already organizing events, seminars, field shows, and consultations that educate on the benefits of regenerative farming, and to provide hands-on support throughout the transition process. 

In Czechia, eAgronom will focus on building  a carbon program distribution network; in Romania, where production leans toward bigger crops, eAgronom explained that it will focus on developing its input resellers network and target individual farms. Toward this end, the company has already partnered with input reseller AGRICORPS CHIM, which has a strong presence in northeastern and eastern Romania, and is in the process of partnering with a second reseller to better cover the northwest, west, and central regions of the country. 

Ukraine, with more than 40 million hectares, is essential to European food production, and has already made inroads regarding sustainable production, stated eAgronom, which plans to enhance and build on these improvements in a meaningful way. The company ensured that it is closely monitoring the impacts of the ongoing war on production, and will collaborate with Ukraine’s farmers to help mitigate price volatility. 

“We’ve been extremely deliberate about partnering with distributors, input resellers, and other agriculture-focused institutions throughout the region while planning this expansion,” said Adam Mikolajczak, general manager, CEE, eAgronom.

“Creating individualized and seamless solutions for farms has been integral to our mission since day one, so it’s only natural that any regional expansion would be incomplete without input and advice from locals who know it best. We’re entering Czechia, Romania, and Ukraine with local expertise at our side, and that’s going to make a tremendous difference for farmers and, ultimately, the planet.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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