agtech

German giants partner on agtech
Bosch and BASF Digital Farming have signed a 50:50 joint venture agreement to globally market and sell agtech solutions from a single source including the founding of a new company in Germany next year Bosch will provide hardware, software and digital services while BASF Digital Farming, the agtech arm of

Wine giants taps The Yield for microclimate data
ASX listed Treasury Wine Estates has signed a multiyear partnership with agtech The Yield to use its harvest predictions and weather notifications technology. For the next three years Treasury Wine Estates will use The Yield’s Sensing+, a system for large scale growers to monitor and predict growing conditions based on

Australian agtech The Yield secures $11m in funding from global tech giants
Australian agtech The Yield has received another $11 million in funding from Japanese and German tech giants which will help it expand its product development and expand into international markets. The investment was led by Yamaha Motor Ventures, the Silicon Valley-based investment arm of Yamaha Motor Co, while The Bosch

Minicast: AgTech in a pandemic
Global food supply chains are being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent lockdown affects. The crisis highlights the importance of accurate crop forecasts and an efficient supply chain, according to Ros Harvey, founder and managing director of The Yield, a local agtech which uses IoT and AI to

Australia bucks Agri-Food Tech Investment Slump
Venture capital investment in agriculture and food technology fell significantly last year, according to investment data analysis by a global VC firm released this week. But Australia bucked the trend, recording a US$90 million increase in funding in 2019. Globally, investment in foodtech and agtech startups reached US$19.8 billion across

How data and AI help companies reduce waste and improve food production
Analytics might be seen as a corporate tool to boost revenues and gather insights on customers but now the food industry is taking a piece of the data pie to help reduce waste and improve production. One of the ways this is being done is through commercial kitchens. Winnow is a

Coles offers innovation grants to Aussie producers
Australian food and beverage producers can now apply for financial support from the Coles Nurture Fund to help them innovate and grow. Coles has opened a new round of the Coles Nurture Fund to provide grants of up to $500,000 for small businesses to develop new market-leading products, processes and

Government must show more leadership on agtech, farmers group warns
New policy settings and infrastructure upgrades are required for Australia’s agriculture technology sector to mature, according to the National Farmers Federation, which has asked the federal government to adopt a “leadership role” in digital agriculture. Currently, adoption of new agriculture technologies is challenged, the group says, by poor national networks,

Australian Agtech Start-up Urbotanica Announces Equity Raise as It Expands into Asia
Perth-based agtech start-up Urbotanica is working with equity crowdfunding platform Equitise to raise $700, 000 to support its expansion into Asia. Urbotanica’s first product is called the UrbiPod Indoor Smart Garden, a self-watering kitchen benchtop appliance that uses advanced LED growing technology to allow consumers to grow food indoors including

Australian Agtech FluroStat raises $4.6 million to expand globally
Agronomic analytics company, FluroSat, announced its successful closing of a new $4.6 million funding round backed by M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, Costanoa Ventures, Space Capital, Artesian/GRDC GrainInnovate Fund, Artesian Clean Energy Seed Fund, along with existing investors including CSIRO’s Main Sequence Ventures, AirTree Ventures and Telstra’s muru-D. The new funding,