How to Unleash Agtech in the Fight Against Climate Change
Over the last ten years, we’ve seen an unprecedented rush of venture capital into agtech. Drawing from AgFunder’s 2019 AgriFoodTech Investing Report, funding to agtech startups increased by 900% between 2013 to 2019, rising from $2.2 billion to $19.8 billion. A strong quarter used to mean a hundred investments got done; the first quarter of 2018 hit 600. And more companies are reaching maturity – while 57 companies raised Series C or later rounds in 2014, 256 did in 2019.
At Prime Impact Fund, we invest in companies with the potential to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the gigaton scale, focusing on the pre-seed to Series A stages. We’ve come to the world of agtech as outsiders, and with the explicit goal of wringing out emissions that are unlikely to be addressed by today’s class of startups. When you view the world through climate wedges, agriculture stands out like a sore thumb, accounting for about nine gigatons of carbon dioxide each year, or 26% of total global emissions. Policy levers are unlikely to directly reduce these emissions in the near term because agriculture has largely been exempted from carbon pricing. So it’s going to come down to technology. In developing our investment thesis for technologies in this field, we ask three questions:
What emissions reductions are happening already?
What emissions reductions aren’t yet happening?
How do we unleash startups in neglected categories?
The answers might surprise you.
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