November 22, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Founded in late 2021, Cooperative Ventures is a venture capital fund jointly launched by CHS and GROWMARK, two of the largest farmer-owned agricultural supply cooperatives in North America.

The fund has dual objectives – to back innovative solutions and emerging technologies with the potential to positively impact farming, and to develop mutually beneficial commercial relationships between these startups and the CHS and GROWMARK’s cooperative partners. 

Cooperative Ventures has now made its first investment in Sabanto, a hardware and software startup pioneering the development of autonomous capabilities in tractors. This investment, the firm notes, fully aligns with its core areas of investment, or “Fields of Play”: crop production, supply chains, farm business enablement, and sustainability. 

Founded in 2018, Sabanto is deploying fully-autonomous machinery performing row crop field operations including planting, tillage, spraying, and mowing over thousands of acres throughout the U.S. Midwest, and is currently focused on retrofitting 60-200 horsepower tractors for autonomous capabilities.

“While many autonomous equipment startups are focused on specialty crops, we believe Sabanto’s focus on row crops presents a tremendous opportunity for farmers and our member owners,” said Ben Van Straten, director of innovation and sustainability, CHS.

“This truly is an evolution of agriculture with the potential to lower equipment and labor costs for farmers and ag retailers by using smaller tractors that are more fuel efficient while further improving sustainability through less soil compaction.”

Fully autonomous machinery is a nearly universal holy grail across the entire farm equipment industry. Global giant John Deere unveiled its fully autonomous 8R farm tractor at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last January. The culmination of almost 20 years of R&D, the 8R is the manifestation born of investment in GPS, IoT connectivity, data analytics, automation technologies, advancements in software, and partnerships with emerging agtech startups. Currently, the company notes that its global fleet of 8Rs totals less than 50 tractors, however, Deere intends to have a fully autonomous row crop platform established by 2030. 

And although Deere is probably the most recognized name in farming equipment, it is not the only one feverishly working to break the autonomous ceiling. AGCO, which owns Massey Ferguson and Fendt, has advanced its work to the point of what it calls “supervised autonomy”, and at this year’s Farm Progress Show, Case IH and its partner Raven debuted the Case IH Trident 5550, its maiden autonomous spreader.

For Chicago-based Sabanto, the goal is two-pronged – to ease the increasingly difficult lack of farm labor, and to lessen the ever-climbing CAPEX for modern agricultural machinery through low-cost retrofitting of existing machinery regardless of make or model.

“Cooperative Ventures’ investment is a testament to the importance of autonomy in the future of row crop agriculture,” said Craig Rupp, CEO, Sabanto. “Given the vast network of customers and acres across GROWMARK and CHS, the path to autonomous field operations will certainly be accelerated.”

~ 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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