AgTech Digest

A decarbonization fund just bought the business of baling corn stover — and crop residue stopped being a by-product. Boston-based Ara Partners acquired a majority interest in Pacific Ag, founded in 1998 in the Columbia River Basin and billed as North America's largest crop residue supply and logistics company, for an undisclosed price. Pacific Ag harvests, stores and delivers corn stover and...

Farm waste just became a bankable asset class — and a robotic bee startup got funded by the orchards that will use it. Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners made the first investment from its Advanced Bioenergy Fund II, backing Via Verde's 20-project biomethane pipeline across Lombardy, Abruzzo and Campania in Italy, with each plant designed to process 60,000 to 100,000 tonnes of agricultural w...

A $19 billion seed pipeline just walked out of Corteva and started trading on its own. Corteva completed the spin-off of its seed and genetics business on October 1, and it now trades on the NYSE as Vylor, led by CEO Chuck Magro from Johnston, Iowa. The company values its corn, soybean and wheat pipeline at $19 billion, plans 12 platform launches over the next decade — including the Xpedite...

Three companies sold divisions, two merged into one, and the only capital moving at scale was debt — except for the reactor developer that walked onto Nasdaq at a $2.4 billion pre-money valuation. newcleo, the lead-cooled fast reactor and MOX fuel developer, closed its SPAC combination with NewHold Investment Corp III, raising $247 million gross and pushing total funding past $1 billion. It...

In one week, two of the largest names in crop inputs decided they are worth more in pieces. Corteva's board approved distributing its seed operating segment into a new independent, publicly traded company called Vylor, ahead of an October 1 separation — with the seed platform already forecasting $500 million in North America wheat revenue by 2035, $1 billion by 2040, and roughly $500 million...

Agricultural carbon just stopped being a pilot project: two record offtakes landed in the same week, one of them 4.45 million tonnes. Agreena signed a seven-year agreement to sell 4.45 million tonnes of CO2e soil-carbon credits to an unnamed global commodity trading house — the largest publicly disclosed agricultural carbon deal to date. The credits come from a targeted 1.6 million hectares in nor...

A seaweed additive that cuts cattle methane by 49–77% just took its first venture cheque — in the same week a single Brazilian sugarcane mill changed hands for $148 million. Adecoagro completed its acquisition of the Caarapó Mill from Raízen Group for approximately $148 million, folding it into the company's existing three-mill sugarcane-processing cluster in Mato Grosso...

The U.S. cattle herd is at its lowest level since 1951 — and investors just put $27 million behind the platform tracking what's left of it. Consolidation defined the week. CropX Technologies acquired lab-analysis firm SCIO — its eighth acquisition since 2020 and its largest to date, terms undisclosed — while Indigo Agriculture spun its microbial crop-protection science out as a standalone company,...

A salmon farmer just got cleared to raise half a billion dollars in green bonds — collateralised, effectively, by 300,900 tons of fish. Norway's Financial Supervisory Authority approved SalMar, based in Frøya, to list NOK 5 billion (roughly $531 million) in green bonds on the Oslo Stock Exchange, backed by record 2025 harvest volumes. It is one of the larger debt raises to hit the sec...

Citrus greening has wiped out 95% of Florida's citrus production — and this week the EPA registered an RNA-based, non-GMO therapy to fight back. The week's lead deal came out of Europe: Germany's EW Group completed its acquisition of French natural-solutions maker Olmix from Amadeite and Motion Equity Partners on August 7, adding nine industrial sites and algae-, clay-mineral- and yeast-based biol...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest developments in AgTech — the latest consolidation analysis revealing where M&A is reshaping the industry, Diane Holdorf on why nature-positive agriculture requires measurable farm-level data, Corteva and FMC posting strong earnings, Bayer and Ginkgo Bioworks partnering on next-generation biolog...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech — the data ownership question and why farm data is becoming a power issue as AI gets embedded in agricultural decisions, Pieter Lommen of Delphy on why CEA projects fail before they buy their first climate computer, Bayer cutting full-year crop science guidance, Bowery Farming's I...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech — the data ownership question and why farm data is becoming a power issue as AI gets embedded in agricultural decisions, Pieter Lommen of Delphy on why CEA projects fail before they buy their first climate computer, Bayer cutting full-year crop science guidance, Bowery Farming's I...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Unlock the future of agtech and CRISPR with this deep dive into the world of soybean innovation and next-gen crop defense! Matt Begeman, a key voice from Confluence Genetics, unveils how his team is driving breakthroughs in seed genetics and leveraging cutting-edge technologies like CasClear. From transforming the profitability and sustainability landscape for growe...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech — tariffs adding 8 to 23% to agricultural hardware costs and splitting the sector between those who localized early and those who didn't, a sharply divided earnings season with Corteva up and AGCO down 18%, three company exits including AppHarvest, Benson Hill, and Invaio Sciences...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech — the H1 2026 state of play with $1.27 billion across 89 deals, Europe's first new herbicide active ingredient in over 15 years from Bayer, Pivot Bio's PROVEN 40 clearing EPA registration, John Deere's See & Spray surpassing 1 million acres, a WFFS strawberry virus spreading t...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech — Tropic acquires Rahan Meristem to become the first fully integrated banana genetics company, Reservoir makes its first ever acquisition to own the financial data layer, the US government links soil health to biofuel pricing for the first time, the Supreme Court rules on Roundup,...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech — Tropic acquires Rahan Meristem to become the first fully integrated banana genetics company, Reservoir makes its first ever acquisition to own the financial data layer, the US government links soil health to biofuel pricing for the first time, the Supreme Court rules on Roundup,...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech, featuring Flagship Pioneering's merger of CIBO Technologies and Indigo Ag's Source business into Terion, a new neutral AI data infrastructure company, NativState's forestry carbon acquisition, Munters exploring an exit from food tech, FMC and Corteva's $200 million herbicide lice...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech, featuring an analysis of why CEA consolidation will keep accelerating with 32 failures since 2022, AeroFarms acquired by a family office with a commercial-first pivot, Goterra's collapse raising hard questions about insect farming at scale, over $90 million in fresh funding, Cana...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Episode Description In this episode of AgTech Digest, Sepehr Achard sits down with Frank Glatz, an environmental entrepreneur driven by the vision of revolutionizing weed management in agriculture. Discover the intriguing story behind Contact Bio Solutions, a startup that evolved from health science innovations to pioneering one of the market’s most potent bioherbic...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! This week on AgTech Digest, we're covering May's consolidation wave — three acquisitions, a landmark 300 million euro EIB financing for Limagrain, and the first USDA and EPA authorized field trials of an engineered microbial fertilizer, all alongside the Purdue barometer hitting its lowest farmer confidence reading on record. Let's get start...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! This week on AgTech Digest, we're covering a wave of consolidation that swept the agtech stack — four acquisitions in five days across post-harvest tech, autonomous robotics, and mycelium, plus major new product launches and a $200M greenhouse investment in Mexico. Let's get started! Here’s a Quick Snapshot of What’s Making Headlines: Acquis...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech, featuring Oman's rise as the MENA region's most active agricultural market, Egypt's $15 billion New Delta — the largest horizontal agricultural expansion in history — the FAO's food crisis warning tied to the Strait of Hormuz, URUS Group acquiring AgriWebb for global beef data, a...

📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify Welcome back, listeners! In today's episode, we dive into the latest strides in AgTech, featuring AI moving from hype to commercial reality, Oishii's $150M Series C tranche and S2G's $1B fund targeting the missing middle of agricultural finance, five AI precision tool launches in a single week from Mitsubishi Electric, VeriGrain, Doriane, GrubMarket, and BASF, a str...