Precision farming is about to get a whole lot more precise with a wave of 5G technology showing economic and productivity benefits to the viticulture industry. Growers are increasingly interested in the advantages that 5G has to offer the industry by saving money, time and maximising yield. Platfarm is a spatially based tasking and GPS… Read more »
US-based Australia agtech startup Regrow Ag has raised $50 million (US$38m) from leading American investors to help the farming sector meet net-zero targets. The round is led by Tom Steyer and Katie Hall’s Galvanize Climate Solutions. Existing investors including Cargill, Main Sequence Ventures, Ajax Strategies, Neglected Climate Opportunities (NCO), Microsoft’s M12 and others returned, joined… Read more »
From an idea conceived over a farm kitchen table to a $100 million business in seven years, Australian livestock management platform AgriWebb has been anything but an overnight success, says co-founder and Executive Chairman Justin Webb. Looking back on setting up AgriWebb with John Fargher and Kevin Baum in 2014, self-confessed “math geek” Justin Webb… Read more »
Cicada Innovations is launching a grain agtech challenge to uncover innovative deep tech solutions that will help to drive sustainability and improve profitability in the grain growing industry. The GrowLab Grains Challenge, a collaboration with the Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC), is now seeking applications from entrepreneurs, grain growers, and researchers. Successful applicants will take part in… Read more »
Agtech startup Regrow has raised US$17 million (A$23.5m) in a series A for its carbon measurement software for the agri-food supply chain sector. The raise was led by new US climate change focused VC Ajax Strategies, Tenacious Ventures and Cargill. Existing investors include Microsoft’s venture fund M12, the Jeremey and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust’s Neglected… Read more »
Tenacious Ventures, a specialist agrifood tech venture capital firm, has build a $35 million fund to invest in early-stage startups with a focus on climate change resilience. The Tenacious Ventures Fund I achieved its first close in March 2020 at just over $20 million, backed by $8 million from the Australian Government Clean Energy Finance… Read more »
Innovative Australian food and agri startups have the chance to showcase their businesses on the world stage through the international FoodBytes! Pitch program, which is currently open for applications. FoodBytes! is global agribusiness bank Rabobank’s food and agriculture innovation platform – designed to drive collaboration between startups, corporate leaders, investors and farmers as part of… Read more »
A New Zealand agritech startup fitting cows with GPS-enabled solar collars to “guide” cows around pastures using sound and vibrations, creating virtual fences via an app, has raised A$29 million in a series B round. Halter says it is bridging the gap between human and animal understanding to transform farming. The series B round was… Read more »
Agriculture and food tech accelerator SparkLabs Cultiv8 has selected 10 new startups for its 4th cohort. The global Sparklabs Group invests in early-stage companies and each startup will receive up to A$100,000 in seed funding. This year’s group includes a CSIRO project using seaweed in livestock feed to reduce their methane production, a consumer app… Read more »
Field robotics company Agerris is commercialising robotic agricultural equipment and AI solutions on farms. Agerris launched in April 2019 with one of Australia’s largest AgTech seed funds, spun out of the University of Sydney’s Australian Centre for Field Robotics. The team there has secured nearly $30 million in R&D, prototype and operational funding from horticulture,… Read more »
Perth-based SWAN Systems, an agtech startup that helps farmers use less water and fertilisers on the crops thanks to data analysis has been named the world’s best startup in the agtech category at Rabobank’s FoodBytes! Pitch 2020 competition. The company’s cutting edge technology platform, which helps growers schedule, monitor, and optimise management of water, nutrients,… Read more »
Agtech startup The Yield Technology Solutions has signed a three-year deal with ASX-listed Treasury Wine Estates to use its machine learning technology to assist with harvest predictions and grape production. The Yield’s Sensing+ solution users sensors and analytics to provide information and predictions in apps that help commercial vignerons make key production decisions such as… Read more »
End-to-end traceability delivered through blockchain technology could provide a new level of trust and integrity to align with consumers’ growing demands for authenticity on what they consume. Andrew Grant has co-founded several AgTech startups, including smart tracking software solution Trust Provenance, from his base in Adelaide, South Australia. The platform integrates data points along the… Read more »
Agricultural technology has been identified as a key factor if Australia is to achieve the National Farmers’ Federation’s goal of $100 billion annual agriculture production in Australia by 2030 from the current level of about $60 billion. AgTech is a diverse industry ranging from the use of satellites to detect crop health through to robotics… Read more »
An investigation of social network connections – seen as a key indicator of innovation – on LinkedIn between Australia, the US and New Zealand concluded Australia’s agtech sector is falling behind the others. Australia’s agtech network is dominated by a few key players while the US and New Zealand agtech networks are more evenly distributed. Compared… Read more »
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