August 1, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

San Diego-based, company-building platform for early-stage ag and food technologies Radicle Growth has announced yet another channel for accelerating the development of early-stage agtech companies. 

The launch is being called The Radicle Farm, a global farm-access platform to advance new on-farm technologies. This cohort-style program will identify startups that are in the position of needing access to trial design, agronomic support, and farms in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Throughout the process, Radicle will work with entrepreneurs and farmers to ensure that the data generated from the trials meets the standards of farmers, institutional investors, and large corporations.

By partnering with farms for two growing seasons, The Radicle Farm will have the ability to double the speed at which new technologies and business models can be validated and demonstrated in order to secure further funding and new customers.

This in turn will bring innovative and potentially transformative technologies to market more efficiently and more rapidly, enabling The Radicle Farm to help address some of the most pressing challenges being faced by the global food system such as food security, sustainability, supply chain transparency and resilience, and adaptation to climate change.

“The speed of which new technologies are being integrated is transforming the ag and food supply chain,” Radicle Growth managing partner Kirk Haney told GAI News in an interview in 2019. 

“And it’s not a single issue,” he continued, “you have millennials demanding transparency (and other demographics as well), and according to the World Economic Forum, you have two billion people in the world who are obese, and two billion who are micronutrient deficient. So, we have both a quantity and quality problem and disseminating information is going to help solve those two challenges.”

As part of the program, Radicle has signed farming partners throughout the Northern and Southern Hemispheres that have domain expertise and operations in soy, corn, cereal grains, leafy greens, vegetables, almonds, pistachios, grapes, avocados, sugarcane, and other key crops that account for more than 75 percent of the world’s caloric intake.

In addition to trials associated with these crops, The Radicle Farm will trial technologies that are crop agnostic such as digital tools, soil health, new business models, and other emerging technologies.

“Designing the right trial and providing access to farmland in two hemispheres is essential to accelerating the speed at which we bring new technologies to market,” said Haney. “We’ve identified this gap and we are leveraging our domain expertise and relationships around the world to help entrepreneurs prove their technology which will help them secure the necessary capital and customers they need to grow their business.”

Neal Gutterson, partner and CTO at Radicle Growth, added, “Without sufficient Agronomic knowledge or resources, start-ups with potentially transformational technology can risk losing precious time and capital essential to proving their efficacy.”

“Simultaneously, field trialing influenced by corporate needs can miss the mark on reducing risk for investors,” continued Gutterson. “With a well-designed on-farm trial, access to innovative tech, and de-risked investment opportunities, The Radicle Farm will address the needs of all stakeholders.”

With plans to launch the first cohort in the fall of 2022, Radicle will conduct due diligence on each applicant, design the necessary field trial, and connect them to partner farms in both hemispheres in exchange for equity in the startup.

Successful trial outcomes will position companies to then receive an investment from Radicle Growth.

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor 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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