Manitoba-based AgTech firm Farmers Edge is partnering with Gevo, a renewable fuels company based in Colorado, on a project aimed at tracking the carbon intensity impact of climate-friendly agricultural practices.
The project is part of Gevo’s Climate-Smart Farm-to-Flight program, which was launched last year and is aimed at creating a reward system for farmers adopting more sustainable practices, creating new incentives for low-carbon-intensity corn production, and accelerating the production of sustainable aviation fuel to reduce the sector’s dependency on fossil-based fuel.
Growers participating in the program will have access to Farmers Edge’s FarmCommand platform.
According to a statement from Farmer’s Edge, Gevo’s program is supported by grant funding from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Farmers Edge, which has worked with Canadian growers on similar programs for the last three years, will support the data capture component of this project.
In a statement, the company said it will also bring “experience to the recruitment and education aspects of the project.”
The project will work with growers across three regions in the US: Iowa, South Dakota, and the Standing Rock Reservation, which spans North and South Dakota. Participating growers will have access to Farmers Edge’s FarmCommand platform, which collects, visualizes, analyzes and uses farm data to support farm operations and decision making.
Founded in 2005, Farmers Edge is a digital agriculture company that offers data-centric technologies designed to help farmers and agri-businesses operate more sustainably.
Farmers Edge debuted on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in 2021 at $17 per share after raising $125 million through an initial public offering. However, by the fall of 2023, Farmers Edge’s stock had fallen to below 10 cents per share. The company announced in November that it was in talks to go private, and in January, entered into an agreement with Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited to go private.
Last month, Farmers Edge announced that the deal had closed, and that Fairfax had acquired all the company’s outstanding common shares, except for those already held by Fairfax and Farmers Edge’s CEO. The company’s common shares have been delisted from the TSX.
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Farmers Edge is one of a sizeable number of Canadian tech companies that have opted to go private in the last year. The list also includes Nuvei, BBTV Holdings, Dialogue Health Technologies, Magnet Forensics, MDF Commerce, Q4 Inc, and TrueContext, among others.
While Farmers Edge has worked in the Canadian market, its decision to partner with a US firm is notable. Despite the fact that Canada is the fifth largest exporter of agricultural and agri-food products in the world, expanding down south has become a common growth avenue for some Canadian AgTech firms.
Dan McCann, CEO of Regina-based agriculture drone startup Precision.ai, has previously told BetaKit that Canadian regulations often deter many AgTech startups from attempting to scale in the Canadian market.
“We want this to be a Canadian solution, and we’re going to keep working at it,” McCann said of Precision.ai’s solution. “But we’re also business people, and if we can’t do it here, we’re going to do it somewhere else first.”
Feature image courtesy Unsplash.