From CB Insights, Jan. 30, 2017:
Corporate investors such as Mitsui, Monsanto, and Syngenta have backed
startups improving irrigation, crop spraying, harvesting, and more.
As population growth increases the need to ramp up food production,
tech startups are creating a range of agricultural software, services,
farming techniques, and more aimed at bringing more data and efficiency
to the sector.
We used CB Insights data to identify more than 80 private companies
in agriculture tech and categorized them into eight main categories.
We define ag tech as technology that increases the efficiency of
farms (in the form of software), sensors, aerial-based data,
internet-based distribution channels (marketplaces), and tools for
technology-enabled farming. We only include companies that primarily
target the agricultural sector.
The breakdown is as follows:
- Farm Management Software: This includes software like that produced by Andreessen Horowitz-backed Granular that allows farmers to more efficiently manage their resources, crop production, farm animals, etc.
- Precision Agriculture and Predictive Data Analytics:
These startups include those that focus on using big data and
predictive analytics to address farm-related issues and make better
farm-related decisions in order to save energy, increase efficiency,
optimize herbicide and pesticide application (such as Prospera, which uses machine vision and artificial intelligence), and manage risk, among other uses.
- Sensors: Startups in the sensor category include Arable, which offers smart sensors that collect data and help farmers monitor crop health, weather, and soil quality.
- Animal Data: These companies provide software and hardware specifically aimed at better understanding livestock, from breeding patterns (Connecterra) to genomics (TL Biolabs).
- Robotics and Drones: This category includes drone companies and related drone services that cater to agricultural needs (such as TerrAvion), as well as robots or intelligent farm machines that perform various farm functions more efficiently (such as Blue River Technology, backed by Monsanto Growth Ventures, Syngenta Ventures, and Khosla Ventures, among others)....
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MUCH MORE
