Changing Farmland Dynamics Spark Innovation

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Agtech startup valuations seem to be down from last year, but investors are still excited about the potential for agricultural innovation. Builders VC general partner Mark Blackwell says one big opportunity is in serving the growing appetite for investments into farmland.

Blackwell… “There is a huge tectonic plate that’s moving and thinking about capital and access flow into the farmland asset class. And that’s what gets us super excited. Just the differences in institutional ownership in commercial real estate versus the institutional ownership in farmland, and the dynamics that are changing due to a number of kind of like macro secular trends. But there is just an immense amount of appetite and propensity to get access to farmland. And a lot of different companies are figuring out new ways to do that.”

Blackwell points to companies like AcreTrader, FarmTogether, and Tillable that are focused on this trend, and said there are others emerging.

Blackwell… “And then there’s a bunch of companies that are emerging on the seed stage side that are trying to figure out different ways to finance, help farmers grow, new leasing structures. You know, you got Farm VC, Steward, the team at FarmOp Capital and Fractal, thinking about different ways to finance farmland and finance growth. And so that is an area that we are relatively obsessed with and spending a lot of time thinking about.”

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