October 10, 2024

By Gerelyn Terzo, Global AgInvesting Media

AcreShield, a Des Moines, Iowa-based company behind the YieldOptimizer technology, has raised over $2.5 million in a Series A fundraising round. The company’s Yield Optimizer is a hybrid artificial intelligence (AI) solution designed to solve a yield-gap problem, helping to deliver smarter seed selection with protection to row crop farmers. Led by Vertical Ventures, the round also extended to InnoVenture Iowa. In response to the successful fundraising round, AcreShield’s board of directors has authorized an additional $2 million Series A round, the proceeds of which the company will direct toward further developing its AI model.

AcreShield’s Yield Optimizer solution harnesses independent seed performance data to deliver what it described as “guaranteed ROI performance” to growers. Farmer profits hinge on achieving crop yields of 100 percent or better compared with historical results. At 85 percent, crop insurance is good for more than three-quarters of that but could leave profits on the table when yields fall below that key threshold. This 15 percent range represents the yield gap that AcreShield’s technology sets out to identify for crops such as corn and soybean varieties.

Data show that farmer yields fall into the yield gap trap 40 percent of the time, per Adam Oswald of the Oswald Crow Agency, an AcreShield distributor, who noted that it could be the difference between a profit and a loss for the season. With commodity prices under pressure of late, and predictions for lower farm incomes across the U.S., increased yields translate to better income and profits for farmers.

Image by AcreShield on LinkedIn

As an example, Farmers who use AcreShield’s proprietary seed trial data together with its AI model for better seed selection have experienced yield increases of 15 percent. Vertical Ventures President and AcreShield investor Scott Stewart shared how smarter seed selection caught caught his attention, considering seed selection is paramount to farming operations. The company’s AI tech platform is live, boasting a distributor network intact with customers. According to investors, the company has proven revenue success and is on pace for accelerated growth.

Kaylee Williams, investment director of InnoVenture Iowa, touted the disruptive nature of AcreShield’s technology, saying, “We…saw the potential for this AI technology to disrupt a billion-dollar market in a key industry – agriculture. Every row crop farmer faces the Yield Gap problem. AcreShield brings a truly innovative solution to solve the Yield Gap and, by doing so, is creating a 180-million-acre opportunity in the U.S. alone. This is something the industry has never seen before.”

AcreShield CEO Billy Rose stated, “The Yield Gap is a serious farmer challenge, which is why we created and built AcreShield to solve this billion-dollar opportunity with AI-powered smarter seed selection for greater yields. We do this by managing our own independent seed trials, which provide unbiased data sets that feed our AI Yield Optimizer. The net result is that farmers have better yield and financial performance, which is so needed with today’s low commodity prices. We’re solving a large farmer problem – the ‘Yield Gap,’ by demystifying smarter seed selection with financial protection.”

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