Connecting Innovators, Investors, Industry Professionals and Early Adopter Customers
From improvements in nutritional value, to better resource efficiency, to improved yield, to better cost controls, the agriculture industry is ripe for disruption. It’s happening already, with harvesting automation systems, sensor-based farm management tools and other advanced technologies already appearing on the modern farm. iSelect is investing in the entrepreneurs who are focused on making these innovations happen.
“Given the overall AgTech entrepreneurial activity in the region, and the large number of multinational players, the American Heartland can be a powerful influence in driving the objectives of the AgTech revolution. Taken together, these resources indicate a regional competitive advantage in AgTech, similar to what the Silicon Valley cluster has provided for the IT industry.”
“AgTech: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Growth”, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, April 2014
iSelect Portfolio Companies
iSelect focuses on early-stage food and agriculture companies that are poised to help push the next agricultural revolution forward. We deliberately invest in companies that can make a positive impact on our society, as well as on the bottom line.
Location: Champaign, IL
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Agrible sells software that connects the agricultural supply chain from field-to-market, providing critical sustainability,agronomic, and yield data.
Location: Sydney, -1
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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AgriWebb is building the digital backbone of the livestock industry, connecting animal and land management to the supply chain and the consumer.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Arable, the leader in crop intelligence, advances digital agriculture globally. Forward-thinking agribusinesses, farming operations, and food and beverage companies use Arable to be more productive, sustainable, and profitable. Arable’s intuitive IoT-based solution combines reliable in-field weather, forecast, plant, soil, and irrigation data with advanced modeling and machine learning to deliver real-time, actionable insights into the entire crop system.
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Artemis is a software company making indoor farming profitable, efficient and traceable, enabling growers to drive the indoor farming revolution.
Location: Tel Aviv, AL
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Autonomous Pivot turns center-pivot irrigation systems into a noninvasive soil/crop sensor and communications network. This network feeds an artificial intelligence decision support engine for autonomous irrigation, fertigation, and crop protection, which ultimately helps growers maximize yield and minimize inputs.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series D
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Benson Hill is a crop improvement company that taps the natural genetic diversity of plants to develop healthier and more sustainable food. CropOS combines machine learning and big data with genome editing and plant biology to differentiate and accelerate the product development process to modernize our food system.
Location: Castine, ME
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Software platform for shellfish growers, seafood dealers, and seafood wholesalers to help improve the efficiency of their operations and take the guesswork and anxiety out of regulatory compliance
Location: Boulder, CO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Produces high-quality animal proteins through fermentation, supplying ingredients to manufacturers for pet food, treat and supplement applications
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Bonumose is commercializing low-glycemic index, natural sugars through a proprietary, cost-effective enzymatic process.
Location: San Francisco, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series B1
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Brightseed is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered nutrition discovery company that identifies unique micronutrients in the plant kingdom and maps them to specific human health conditions where they can have the highest impact.
Location: Marlborough, MA
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Accessible low cost nutritional measurement for the agrifood supply chain.
Location: San Leandro, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Geltor has a platform technology that enables it to cost effectively produce sustainable and beneficial proteins for the cosmetic, food, beverage, nutritional supplement, and healthcare industries.
Location: Blacksburg, VA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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EarthOptics is building the technologies and data products that will allow for the accurate measurement and modeling of key soil attributes, enabling land managers to improve soil health and unlock the value of healthy soils.
Location: Johnston, IA
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Growers Edge offers warranty and lending products and services in the agtech marketplace. Their warranties help farmers by guaranteeing yield with the adoption of new technologies.
Location: Raleigh, NC
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Harpe Bioherbicide Solutions, Inc. (“Harpe”) is an agtech company focused on providing natural and sustainable solutions to expand and provide new opportunities for organic agriculture while reducing, replacing, and synergizing with synthetic chemical use in row & specialty crops and commercial & consumer markets.
Location: Plant City, FL
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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HarvestCROO is building the premier automation and robotics solution to solve the labor shortage crisis in specialty agriculture, starting with strawberries.
Location: Longmont, CO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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HerdDogg’s patented animal wearable technologies provide animal tracking and aid in the identification of missed heats, illness, and dystocia (difficult births) for the 2.5 billion herd animals worldwide.
Location: Glen Mills, PA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Holganix produces organic plant probiotics that make soils and plants healthier, more resilient, and more productive.
Location: Somerville, MA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Kula Bio is an agriculture biotechnology company that aims to extend the life of microbes to unlock their biological potential and maximize their impact.
Location: St. Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Kultevat combines genetic breeding and chemical process engineering to produce natural rubber from the Russian dandelion in North America.
Location: Silver Spring, MD
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Mercaris is a market data service and trading platform for organic, non-GMO, and other Identity Preserved (IP) agricultural commodities.
Location: Ramat Yishai, AL
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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AI based solution that helps beef and dairy farmers optimize production and increase profitability with significantly, measurable lower methane emissions
Location: Vancouver BC, AL
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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Based in Vancouver, BC, Miraterra is revolutionizing soil analysis with its innovative technology for soil labs. The company’s breakthrough lies in enhancing and adapting Raman spectroscopy, a sophisticated analytical technique, for soil analysis.
Location: Oakland, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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TradeLanes offers a SaaS-based trade execution and automation platform that eliminates the manual tasks needed to ship ocean containers. Its interface accesses real-time data about shipments, destinations, and clients, TradeLanes simplifies the export/import process by driving efficiencies, improving visibility, and reducing errors in the process.
Location: Emeryville, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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PatternAg’s crop protection product delivers actionable intelligence to farmers, based on high resolution mapping of the DNA found in a farmer’s soil. With nearly 100 billion organisms per soil core, Pattern’s metagenomic DNA sequencing technology maps the unique microbial community found in a farmer’s field, identifying key opportunities to increase yield and save money. Armed with Pattern’s insights into next season’s risks, especially from the most costly pathogens like Corn Rootworm and Soybean Cyst Nematode, farmers can apply recommended protective measures to maximize their yield or save money on inputs when those risks are absent.
Location: Durham, NC
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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PlantResponse Biotech is a Raleigh, NC based company that is developing and commercializing biologically related products that improve plant health and protect yield potential.
Location: Saint Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Plastomics has developed a proprietary genetic engineering model that can produce high performing crops through editing the chloroplast.
Location: Saint Louis, MO
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Pluton Biosciences applies systems biology to global agriculture, combining the power of microbiomes and crop genetics with genomics, environmental, and synthetic biology to solve global threats to our climate and food.
Location: Columbus, OH
Prior Round Funding: Seed
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ProteoSense is building a biosensing platform for rapid, cheap and highly sensitive food safety testing.
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Prior Round Funding: Series C2
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Sentera is a UAV and crop analytics company delivering the most comprehensive suite of value-added hardware and software solutions available today to growers & agronomists.
Location: Springfield, TN
Prior Round Funding: Series B
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Stony Creek Colors, Inc. produces eco-friendly, bio-based dyes for sale to premium denim and garment brands, as well as other consumer goods, to allow them to sell traceable and environmentally friendly products.
Location: Chicago, IL
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Digital agriculture real estate platform that allows farmers, landowners, sellers, and buyers to buy, sell, rent, manage, or finance farmland
Location: Emeryville, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Triplebar Bio (“Triplebar” or the “Company”) makes products by harnessing the power of evolutionary biology to allow nature to do what it does best: design the solution itself. Triplebar captures this power through a groundbreaking hyper-throughput screening platform that couples microtechnology and hyperspeed testing with artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to give them unprecedented access to product design and testing functionality.
Location: San Diego, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series A
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Vence is a livestock data management and technology company that enables the scaling of the sustainable production of nutritious grass fed and pasture raised livestock. Its initial offering is solving the labor and capital intensive problem of fencing in pastured livestock management. The benefits to livestock management include improved control of animal movement, enhanced nutritional quality of animal products, reduced land degradation, improved soil health and sequestration of carbon in the soil.
Location: Kalamazoo, MI
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Vestaron is developing new products in the crop protection industry that address the growing concerns of resistance, high costs of R&D, and safety/environmental externalities.
Location: Mississauga, CA
Prior Round Funding: Series C
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Vive Crop Protection is delivering precision chemistry crop protection and fertility products that can reduce the volume of chemistry applied, reduce application costs, improve yields and improve the viability of more sustainable inputs, like biologics.
Meet Our Selection Committee
Our Food and Agriculture Selection Committee consists of industry and subject matter experts who help guide iSelect’s investment decisions. With firsthand experience and a true pulse on the industry, we consider these individuals key to our success in finding and investing in food and ag innovation.
As deputy director of The Nature Conservancy’s Regenerative Grazing Lands strategy in North America, William leads on-the-ground testing and research of improved ranch management frameworks and tools, and he regularly communicates results with ranchers, land…
As the director of innovation at Beck’s Hybrids, Brad Fruth works to deliver value to the American farmer. For more than 18 years, he has dedicated his days (and nights) to delivering the successful convergence…
Cheryl Van Dyne is an experienced regulatory affairs professional with specializations in the biotech food, feed, excipient, cosmetic, chemical, and oilfield industries. After 22 years at CP Kelco as Director of Global Regulatory Affairs, Cheryl…
Renée Vassilos is The Nature Conservancy’s Director of Agriculture Innovation. She manages TNC’s investments in innovative companies that will help scale regenerative agriculture production practices. Prior to joining The Nature Conservancy, Renée spent nearly a…
Bill Northcott is the Chief Innovation Officer at Agrible. He works on developing and researching the science and feasibility of new products. Bill is a sixth generation farmer and currently manages a 500 acre corn/soybean…
Chris Harbourt, Ph.D., co-founder of Agrible, Inc., is a world-class scientist and engineer with an eye on innovation and growth. Chris brings over 25 years of agricultural experience to Agrible and is heavily involved in…
Mr. Tom Willis serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Conestoga Energy Partners LLC. Mr. Willis is responsible for all aspects of the business. He joined Conestoga in November 2006. He possesses widespread knowledge in…
Todd is a recognized expert in functional genomics, bioinformatics, and plant systems biology, and is focused on accelerating discovery and development by more accurately predicting plant performance. He has built capabilities and toolsets that manipulate…
Tim is Vice President of G.M. Lawerence and Company, with a demonstrated history of working in the farming industry. He is skilled in management, agricultural production, precision agriculture, agribusiness, and strategic planning. Tim graduated with…
Mr. Steve Barr is a Co-Founder of Osborn & Barr Communications, Inc. and served as its Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Barr has more than 35 years of marketing and communications planning experience. He is a…
Dr. DiNicola has over 20 years of experience in the agri-food industry and a decade of experience in sustainability and agriculture development. Through DiNicola LLC, she consults for established and emerging companies and public institutions…
Kevin has over 20 years experience in the grain and livestock industry. He is the publisher of The Van Trump Report, a daily agricultural newsletter that contains some of the best and most comprehensive agricultural…
Eric is the Chief Executive at Pipeline Foods. Eric started his career at The Pillsbury Company where he received his classic commodity merchandising training and became the Manager of Market Development for their Speciality Commodities…
Dr. Bruce German is a Professor and Chemist of Food Science and Technology at the University of California, Davis and researches the role of fats and other components in the diet. He develops ways to…
Andy Daniels is a seasoned business executive and successful entrepreneur, an active angel investor, and serves on multiple governing boards with companies in the areas of venture capital, wealth management, agriculture, healthcare, technology innovation, commodity…
Rachel is a Senior Associate at The Context Network, a business management and strategy consulting firm providing services to the world’s leading agriculture, biotechnology and food companies. She was previously an International Sales & Project…
The founding president of the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis, Missouri where he served as Emeritus President and Director for 10 years. Roger is currently Executive Director at World Food Center at University of California,…
Tom Adamitis is Managing Director at Yield Lab. He formerly served as the Global Vice President of Raw Materials and Energy Procurement for Anheuser-Busch InBev, one of the world’s largest consumer product companies. He supported…
Chris is the president of Eckert’s Inc., a family farm in southern Illinois. The Eckert’s farm has been in the family for seven generations. They farm 600 acres of fruit and vegetable crops as well…
Before joining OTMIR in 2016, Brian Buntaine worked for more than 15 years in the life sciences industry. He began his career as a lab manager at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2003, Brian joined…
Dr. Brendan A. Niemira is the Research Leader of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Intervention Technologies Research Unit. He leads a team of 30+ scientists, engineers, technicians, postdocs and students in Wyndmoor,…
Dr. Bob Whitaker joined Produce Marketing Association (PMA) in 2008 as Chief Science & Technology Officer, responsible for food safety, technology, supply chain management and sustainability. Bob has served on the Center for Produce Safety…
Berwick Settle is a Dairy Farm Management Specialist, managing a large scale dairy operation in Beijing, China.
Barry Goldman is the Vice President and Head of Discovery at Indigo. Using novel computational, sequencing and laboratory technologies, he is responsible for identifying the microbes that enable Indigo’s first generation of products. Barry brings more than…
Glenn Swanson serves as the President of Daniels Trading. He brings a well-rounded commodity and foreign exchange background to the firm’s day-to-day operations. Glenn has an in-depth knowledge of trading technology and the order execution…
Braden Hudye is a managing partner of The Hudye Group, a 3rd generation family owned company involved in Agriculture, Commercial Real Estate, Multi Family Residential Real Estate, Development Property, as well as other equity investments…
Ron is a biotech consultant primarily focused on agricultural biotechnology with knowledge of pharmaceutical product development. He has extensive, successful experience in product characterization of products improved through modern biotechnology Able to provide guidance at any level…
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Resources and News
Microsoft is Coming for Agriculture.
Here’s a headline I didn’t expect to see: “Microsoft Bringing AI to Ag.” From the author of that headline in Farm Journal: “Standing before a crowd of farmers at the 2018 Farm Journal AgTech Expo, keynote speaker Josh Henretig voiced what he believed a lot of farmers were thinking.
Food 2.0: Genetic Engineering Our Way to the High-Performing Crops of Tomorrow
It all started with the lowly tomato. One of the original North American food crops, Europeans first started cultivating tomatoes with the help of Native Americans in the 17th century. As a food source for the settlers, tomatoes were healthy, plentiful and easy to...
Mars Taps Benson Hill’s Crop Design Platform to Help Protect Cacao from Climate Change
Source: Mars Taps Benson Hill's Crop Design Platform to Help Protect Cacao from Climate Change
Bonumose: U.S. Patent to be Issued for “Enzymatic Production of D-Tagatose”
On September 21, 2018, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued Bonumose LLC a Notice of Allowance on its patent application for “Enzymatic Production of D-Tagatose.” The USPTO’s action recognizes the importance of Bonumose’s unique process for producing high-yields of low-cost tagatose from starch.
The 25 Most Innovative AgTech Startups In 2018
From indoor farming businesses to food safety software providers and more, these are the 25 companies whose technology is poised to change the face of farming. Source: The 25 Most Innovative AgTech Startups In 2018
Food Insecurity Is the Biggest Threat to Life On Earth, Except That it Isn’t
Are we running out of food? The short answer is yes. As of 2016, there were roughly 815 million undernourished people in the world. Beyond that, several billion suffer levels of serious micronutrient malnourishment. But the United Nations says that the world’s...
Why It Matters That We’re Talking About Gender Discrimination in Agriculture
Agrilyst CEO Allison Kopf has something to say. After several years in agriculture, she’s seen the impact that gender discrimination can have on women in the industry, leaving them feeling overlooked, marginalized and left out, particularly when it comes to conference...
Agrifood Conversations, a New Agriculture Innovation Webinar Series
iSelect Fund, The Van Trump Report and The Yield Lab Institute are pleased to announce the launch of a new weekly webinar series entitled Agrifood Conversations featuring the best in agricultural innovation. With in-depth presentations from some of the leading companies and entrepreneurs in the agtech space, Agrifood Conversations is all about driving agriculture innovation forward and sharing the stories, successes and developments in the industry.
Agrilyst: Developing New Tools to Help Indoor Farmers Thrive
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Agrilyst’s SaaS-based platform provides indoor farmers with data-driven insights to make more profitable production decisions, optimizing labor cost efficiency and improving crop yield. With Agrilyst, indoor growers create seeding plans, schedule harvests, assign tasks, manage climate and nutrient density, and forecast yield, sales, and varietal performance.
It’s Getting Cold in Here: Transforming Modern Refrigeration With Control and Efficiency
Based in Boulder, Colo., Rebound Technologies is commercializing a freeze point suppression cooling cycle technology that targets the most critical part of the cold chain: refrigeration.
HerdDogg: Bringing IoT to the Field
The small town of Marshall, Calif. probably isn’t the first place most people would expect to find the latest in precision agriculture, but don’t tell that to Josh and Albert Blake. That’s because Blake’s Landing Farms, a dairy operation located about an hour north of...
Ag Venture Capital: Here’s What Investors Are Watching in 2018
From AgDaily: Software, social media and the latest wearable gadgets might be getting all the attention, but its the technological changes that are shaking up the agriculture market that are really going to change lives over the next decade. And it’s coming not a moment too soon.