Federal Crown corporation Farm Credit Canada (FCC) has committed to investing $2 billion in AgTech for Canada’s agriculture and food industry by 2030.
The commitment, announced at the Invest Canada ‘25 conference in Calgary this week, will come from the FCC Capital investment arm.
“We are confident that our investment commitment to the industry will ‘crowd in’ capital to amplify the economic impact.”
Darren Baccus
FCC executive vice president
FCC said the capital “will direct more investment into innovative devices, instrumentation, research, and methodologies designed to improve efficiency, productivity, and sustainability” in agriculture.
A spokesperson for FCC told BetaKit that, with this commitment, direct equity investments will focus on companies at the growth stage, while fund investments will “cover a broad spectrum of the market,” including early-stage. The representative added that deal flow has already begun and companies can approach FCC at any time.
“At FCC, we’re uniquely positioned to provide catalytic capital and work with stakeholders to source compelling investment opportunities,” the executive vice-president in charge of FCC Capital, Darren Baccus, said in a statement. “We are confident that our investment commitment to the industry will ‘crowd in’ capital to amplify the economic impact.”
FCC is not getting any additional funding from the government for the new commitment, the spokesperson said, and will draw from its existing resources.
Launched last year, FCC Capital aims to deploy $4 billion over five years to support the “high-impact areas” in Canada’s agriculture and food system, supporting investment funds and direct equity capital for pre-seed stage to growth-driven late-stage companies.
FCC said that, in its inaugural year, Capital closed nine direct investment deals totaling $170 million, invested in three new funds, and added a business accelerator to its portfolio. FCC Capital’s first investment was in Vancouver-based biological pesticide developer Catalera BioSolutions.
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“[Investment] dollars have been scarce and have not scaled to meet the increasingly sophisticated needs of the [AgTech] sector,” FCC president and CEO Justine Hendricks said in a statement. “Through this [$2 billion] investment, FCC is delivering on its commitment to be a catalyst and support innovation and productivity in one of Canada’s most important and investable sectors.”
Recent reports and sentiment from venture industry leaders have painted a grim picture of Canada’s capital landscape. Calgary-based The51 held the final close for its $51-million CAD Food and AgTech Fund in January, backed by FCC, after actively raising for nearly four years.
Another federally-backed innovation vehicle, the foodtech focused Protein Industries Canada also announced an additional monetary commitment this week. The global innovation cluster is receiving an additional $15 million from the Government of Canada to build a new genomics funding stream while fortifying the existing artificial intelligence (AI) stream.
Protein Industries Canada will invest $7 million into the commercialization of new and improved broad-acre crop varieties under the new five-year genomics stream. The additional $8 million into the AI stream will support projects developing tools that accelerate seed genetic work, supply chain optimization, on-farm information gathering, quality assurance, food safety protocols, and ingredient and food formulation.
Feature image courtesy Randy Fath via Unsplash.