Ag Tech Investment Report

Where is the investment coming to other than Food commerce startups? From the report of Ag Founder.

Soil & Crop Technology is a broad category encompassing biological inputs and treatments, chemical inputs, geneticsbased tech, new crops, and seed technology.The subsector saw $161 million raised across 22 deals in H1-2016, a 290% increase on H1-2015 ($41m) and not far behind 2015’s total for the sector of $173m.The increase in investment and activity were largely be attributed to three trends: gene-editing technologies, microbiome research, and biological inputs.

Precision ag startups raised $333 million during the first half of 2016, slightly more than half of what was raised during all of 2015 ($661m). We define these companies as those helping farmers grow and manage both crops and livestock using digital tools and hardware. They come from the following subsectors: Drones & Robotics, Decision Support Tech, Irrigation & Water, and Smart Equipment & Hardware. Hardware and sensors startups also grabbed a larger size of the pie raising $27.4 million.

Startups in the Biomaterials & Biochemicals subsector produce or farm biological organisms and compounds for use across the food, pharmaceutical, textile and other industrial industries.