April 5, 2023

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Only one year after it closed on a €20 million (US$21.8 million) Series A, climate and fintech company Agreena announced it has now successfully completed a €46 million (US$50 million) Series B led by German multi-stage investor HV Capital. 

Reflective of a high level of confidence, a number of existing investors returned to participate in this round including evergreen food investor Gullspång Re:food, tech investor Kinnevik, and Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund. 

Also participating were a collective of new investors Impact fund AENU, fintech-focused Anthemis, among others. 

Originally founded with Seed funding provided by Danish farmers and agricultural families, Agreena explained that it works with farmers to unlock the power of carbon soil removals and natural capital to finance the transition to regenerative agriculture. 

Despite being a contributor, agriculture is also one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. But regenerative growing practices offer growers the ability to build healthy soils that can protect crops from uncertain rainfall, reduce the need for inputs, reduce farm costs and risks, and strengthen the long-term value of the land.

Likewise, by adopting these practices farmers can play a key role in combating climate change, food insecurity, and environmental threats, while turning these positive impacts into an additional revenue stream by leveraging carbon markets along with corporates, governments, and supply chain players, to finance the transition and meet net-zero goals. 

“In order for the world’s farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture and create a scalable climate impact, the financial rails to support and pay them for it need to be built,” said Simon Haldrup, co-founder and CEO, Agreena. “Agreena is building out technological and financial services infrastructure throughout the agriculture value chain as the industry increasingly becomes a focal point for decarbonisation efforts.”

Through Agreena’s digital platform, farmers can plan, track, and validate improvements while integrating and adopting regenerative practices that shift from emitting CO2 to capturing it and storing it in the soil. This side of the equation results in improved soil health, greater biodiversity, less need for inputs, and improved resilience to adverse conditions such as flooding or drought leading to an overall improvement in operational performance.

Consequently, Agreena stated that its certificates and downstream services serve climate-conscious companies actively working to decarbonize, and food companies in the value chain that are increasingly requiring traceability of agricultural commodities and ingredients beginning in the field in order to comply with Scope 3 reporting benchmarks. 

By giving farmers the ability to track and quantify their biodiversity benefits and climate-smart improvements, and then converting those achievements into carbon certificates, Agreena plays a key role in transitioning agricultural production into a more sustainable and profitable endeavor.

To do this, the company combines field-level practices with advanced technologies to capture the climate impact farmers make by incorporating cutting-edge AI-based monitoring and verification solutions using satellite imagery coupled with ground-truth data and machine learning. This allows them to identify and report on-farm regenerative practices on a global scale. 

“Real climate impact is only created at scale and Agreena is perfectly positioned to distribute their carbon farming capabilities across the globe to bring high-quality, verifiable and nature-based carbon credits to the market. Only with carbon removals, can net zero targets be met,” said Alexander Joel-Carbonell, partner, HV Capital.

Recently, Agreena also acquired remote sensing company Hummingbird Technologies, enabling it to expand its reach beyond farmers to encompass agridata services for the entire supply chain, governments, and other institutions. It provides the technological structure needed for a growing market including using sustainable blockchain tech for enhanced traceability and transparency of carbon credits, and e-money and smart contracts to facilitate payment exchanges between corporates and farmers with immediate reconciliation at scale. 

“We are on a journey to remove the economic barriers to adoption of regenerative agriculture for farmers and their entire ecosystem,” concluded Haldrup, adding, “carbon is just the beginning.”

~ 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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