By Lynda Kiernan, Global AgInvesting Media

Iowa-based Growers Edge Financial announced the close of a $40 million Series B led by S2G Ventures, Cox Enterprises, and Skyline Global Partners, and including Finistere and new investor Bunge Ventures, giving the company the capital backing to accelerate the development and market penetration of its data-driven fintech solutions for the ag industry. 

“Agriculture fintech is core to the future of sustainable farming,” said Josh McClung, director of Cleantech Strategy and Investments for Cox Enterprises. “By providing products that enable farmers’ long-term resiliency, we are targeting the foundational needs of farmers – financial and environmental health. We believe these solutions can fundamentally change and accelerate the trajectory of agriculture’s technology adoption and impact sustainability on a global scale.”

Growers Edge’s platform leverages sophisticated data science and deep learning algorithms, alongside public and private data sets to design warranty-backed, customizable financial risk management solutions that can help eliminate the financial risk for farmers associated with agtech adoption.

In turn, these tailored fintech solutions provide economic incentives and data-backed recommendations to effectively deploy agtech tools that give agricultural producers added stability through volatile economic periods.

“We don’t make the technology products – like the sensors, chemicals, or seeds. We work with companies that have developed those technologies and figure out ways to create economic incentives for people to adopt those technologies,” Dan Cosgrove, chief strategy officer, Growers Edge explained to GAI News in an interview last year. 

Cosgrove continued, “The farm economy is under stress these days because of world trade and economics, and farmer profitability has really suffered quite a bit. As a result, growers are less likely to take a risk on new technology. To counter this, we develop a warranty or a guarantee that says if you follow the steps that we prescribe, which may include adopting a new technology or package of products, you will get a guaranteed output. There is a financial data-driven effort to create that package.”

Understanding that growers need access to capital to adopt new technologies, and that the risk associated with this adoption often poses a hurdle for adoption at all, Growers Edge plans to use the capital from this round to expand its data science team, to develop and advance its AI platform, and to expand into new markets both within the U.S. and abroad. 

“We are most excited about the growth possibilities for our investment,” said Sachin Gupta, co-founder, Skyline Global Partners. “Because the company does not make seed, inputs or equipment, it is able to leverage its business model across all of agricultural retail. By partnering with existing ag retailers and companies, Growers Edge uses its proprietary data and analytics to develop product warranties that create an economic incentive in favor of technology adoption.”

By closing the existing financial and risk gaps for farmers and agribusinesses, Growers Edge is creating a playing field where agtech adoption and implementation can be fully achieved.

“There is a lot of effort that needs to be directed to ag because feeding the world is an important charge,” Cosgrove told GAI News. “What I saw in the industry over the past few years was that there were not many addressing or bringing these modern financial tools and analytical techniques on the side of mitigating risk for the grower or providing them access to capital – the financial side of the business. There’s a lot of people bringing new technologies to sell to farmers; what we do is create incentives for anyone selling the technologies, and mitigate the risk for the farmer to adopt them.”

“Growers Edge has achieved tremendous growth and solidified its position as a key market disruptor by creating a strong network of technology, agent, and farm partners in an extremely short timeframe,” said Sanjeev Krishnan, CIO, S2G. “Its industry-changing fintech solutions will dramatically accelerate the adoption of sustainable ag innovations, revolutionizing the ag industry and our global food supply chain.”

 

– 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.