Explosive growth in VC investment in agtech – Inside INdiana Business

From restaurant tech to climate science, innovation taking over the agbioscience sector continues to diversify and grow as the problems associated with food production get more attention. This week on the Agbioscience podcast presented by AgriNovus Indana, AgFunder News senior reporter Jennifer Marston discusses venture capital’s growing investment in the global market last year.

”’Agri-food-tech’ raised about $50 billion last year, according to AgFunders annual report. That is a huge jump from the $26 billion the previous year,” said Marston.

The parent of AgFunder News is AgFunder, a venture capital firm. Marston explained to podcast host and AgriNovus CEO Mitch Frazier the VC firm invests in food tech and agtech startups

“There’s a lot of things driving that crazy investment. It’s COVID. it’s all it’s the fallout from the year 2020. And how that changed things. It’s the supply chain chaos. It’s the war in Ukraine and its impact on everything from input prices to how to get grain to countries in Africa that rely on that as a food source. Inflation obviously is top of mind,” said Marston.

She says the company created a media division to cover the growing agbioscience space and the big investments in emerging innovations. She says there is a clear separation between the VC side and the news gathering side.

“It’s really about who’s doing something different. Who’s looking at these really important problems the world faces right now. And who’s really bringing innovation in the in the true sense of the word,” said Marston. “It’s really looking at who is pushing the envelope on solving some of these problems? And how is tech doing that? How is tech helping that?”

Listen to the Agbioscience podcast when it drops Monday morning. Click here to access the full lineup of AgriNovus podcasts.