agriculture
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Trace Genomics launches a 23andMe for farms, raises $4 million to improve the world’s food supply
A San Francisco startup called Trace Genomics wants to help farmers diagnose and improve the health of the soil where they want to raise crops before it’s harvest time and too late to change course.
So the startup has developed a soil testing kit and “pathogen panel,” that tells the growers of high-value crops, like berries or lettuce, whether or not their soil has harmful… Read More
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ProducePay raises $2.5M to bring cashflow to farmers
ProducePay has raised $2.5 million to solve what CEO Pablo Borquez Schwarzbeck said is a major issue for farmers — getting paid in a timely manner for their crops.
Borquez Schwarzbeck explained that farmers usually have to cover the cost of not just growing the produce, but also shipping — and then they have to wait for it to get sold before they get paid themselves. And since… Read More
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Bosch, Flextronics back CropX to help farmers grow more food without wasting water
A Tel Aviv startup that wants to help farmers produce more food with fewer resources, CropX, has attracted sensor manufacturers Robert Bosch and Flextronics International as strategic backers. Specifically, Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and accelerator Flex Lab IX added $1 million in venture funding to the Series A round for CropX, which now totals $10 million. CropX makes soil sensors… Read More
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Indigo Is Mapping Plant Microbiomes To Produce Next Generation Crops
David Perry thinks the secret to agricultural challenges like drought resistance might lie in the bacteria that live in a bunch of grass on the beach. That’s just one example that Indigo, a company that analyzes the microbiomes of plants to produce seed coatings that impart various attributes, is looking into as a way to combat difficult conditions for various crops. Indigo is… Read More
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Necessity Is Driving Agricultural Innovation Indoors
According to the United Nations, the earth will house an estimated 9.7 billion people by 2050. Consequently, more food will need to be produced over the next four decades than has been produced over the last 10,000 years. And with more than 99.7 percent of global food coming from land, and most of the arable land already accounted for, increasing yields per surface area is essential. Read More
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The Next Food Frontier: How AgTech Can Save The World
As investors, our job is to find the visionaries that dream up the future and partner with them to help make that dream a reality. In agriculture, with the latest advancements in technology, we half imagined small harvesting robots, skyscraper vertical farms in every city and sensor-studded fields overseen by drones. Read More
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PowWow, A Startup That Tracks Water Pump Health, Raises $3M
PowWow, a startup that specializes in technology like a tool that detect leaks and help farmers keep track of their water usage, has raised $3 million. PowWow uses a combination of data from aerial imagery, water energy records and other kinds of data, and then sends farmers text messages with updates if there is a problem. Those problems can be something along the lines of finding a leak.… Read More
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Eric Schmidt’s Farm2050 Collective Will Back Agriculture Tech To Feed Earth’s Growing Population
We’ll need to produce 70% more food by 2050 to sustain a world population expected to grow to 10 billion. Yet agriculture startups struggle to get the funding, manufacturing, and test facilities needed to build tech that could boost food production. To fix that disconnect, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and Flextronics Lab IX today launched Farm2050, a… Read More
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