How Agreena is pioneering the future of agriculture
Nearly one-third (27 percent) of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are estimated to come directly from agriculture. In addition, a significant percentage of the world's soils are now degraded, making current farming practices not only a climate issue but also a critical problem for food security. Transforming traditional agricultural practices is no longer optional - it's imperative and we must act swiftly.
In recent years, we have seen an influx of venture and growth capital into the broadly defined climate tech sector. This surge is welcome, as venture and growth capital excel at funding companies that reshape markets and consumer behaviour - changes that are crucial for achieving our climate goals.
However, despite the fact that food and agriculture contribute to one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, the sector receives only 11 percent of the capital flowing into climate tech (Dealroom). This discrepancy is not due to a lack of interest from investors but rather related to specific challenges within the food and agtech ecosystem. Many solutions don't fit traditional venture capital models due to slow adoption, a fragmented and conservative farming community, entrenched consumer behaviours, and regulatory hurdles.
Venture and growth investors like us most diligently search for scalable and innovative solutions within agtech. This search led us to Agreena, a pioneer in regenerative agriculture, which is set to redefine the farming landscape through sustainable, scalable innovation.
Less Carbon in the Air and More into the Ground
Agreena helps farmers profitably transition to regenerative practices while supporting companies' sustainability goals. By promoting techniques such as diversified crop rotations and reduced tillage, Agreena is not only improving farm economics but is also transforming agriculture into a substantial carbon sink. This shift has the potential to offset between 2-5 gigatons of carbon annually. The IPCC has recognised soil carbon sequestration in agriculture as one of the most impactful and efficient solutions for net emission reductions (IPCC), with Agreena playing a crucial role in facilitating these practices and driving costs down even further.
The Agreena CarbonProject has become the first large-scale agricultural cropland project registered under Verra's VM0042 methodology, a globally trusted standard for carbon credits. This milestone validates Agreena’s rigorous approach to generating credible, high-quality soil carbon credits and reinforces its position as a leader in sustainable agriculture.
Sky-High Technology Ensures Ground-Level Sustainability
What sets Agreena apart is its commitment and scalable approach to transforming the agricultural landscape from the ground up, with a focus on the farmer. The challenge of shifting the world to regenerative agriculture is monumental, requiring the collective effort of the world’s 570 million farmers. To ensure that farmers are mobilised and practices are implemented correctly on a large scale, sufficient tracking and verification must be in place. Agreena leverages satellite imagery, ground-truth data and advanced AI models to deliver accurate soil carbon measurements verified by third parties. Agreena’s digital tools and services provide field-level insights and end-to-end traceability for the sustainability of supply chains, investments, and more.
How Agreena is leading the charge in a climate-critical industry
Agreena is now the largest soil carbon programme in Europe, working with thousands of farmers across 4.5 million hectares of arable land in 20 European markets. They've proven they can onboard farmers and track their practices at scale. They have also demonstrated that there are solutions within agtech that fit the traditional venture and growth capital model, having raised EUR 60m+ from investors such as ourselves, Giant, Re:food, HV Capital, and others.
So, what are some of the success factors behind this?
- Farmer-first approach as a data moat: Agreena has consistently prioritised farmers, deeply understanding their reality. Moreover, their entire business model is centered around being close to the farm, which not only is the way to mobolise farmers but also creates a data advantage as field-level data collection is combined with AI and advanced satellite-imagery to enable rigour, accuracy and traceability at scale.
- Playing with the existing ecosystem: While investors generally look for companies that disrupt traditional industries and challenge incumbents, within agtech, it's also necessary to recognise the characteristics of the ecosystem. From the start, Agreena has seamlessly navigated the existing ecosystem around farmers, partnering with companies and people they already rely on, building trust and ensuring that farmers' needs are always the highest priority.
- Strong technology backbone enabling a scalable and versatile platform play: Agreena has, from the start, been laser-focused on building a strong technology platform and scalable approach to verification. By doing so, they can meet the demands of many different stakeholders, such as Agrifood companies, financial institutions and carbon credit buyers and create several avenues for monetisation, and supporting farmers. Agreena's recent partnership with Mars further validates their approach.
- Early integration of M&A as part of their strategy: Agreena has been quick to build a method of working that allows them to explore and execute M&A opportunities proactively and opportunistically, playing the weaknesses of capital markets to their advantage. They have demonstrated this through their acquisitions of Hummingbird (AI MRV technology) and Fieldmargin (a well-liked farm management system), thus enhancing their technological capabilities, expanding their farmer database, and increasing connected hectares.
- At the forefront of standards: When Agreena initially launched their first product, a soil-carbon-credit programme, nearly no one had done it before. As such, there were no established methods or standards for such a programme. Since then, the landscape of policies, standards, and regulations has evolved rapidly, but that doesn’t mean it’s becoming less complex. The challenges with carbon credits, particularly if they are nature-based, include verifying permanence, additionality—that is, whether the emissions reductions or removals would have occurred without revenue from the sale of carbon credits—and auditability. That is one reason we were so excited when we met Simon. Agreena understood that building trust is the significant challenge to solve for the market to flourish and was obsessed with tackling it from the start, with a distinct combination of technology and best-practice measurement standards. Their certification by Verra is a significant step in the journey, underscoring their credibility and commitment.
We're excited to continue supporting Agreena’s mission to transform the food ecosystem by leveraging tech to align financial incentives and drive regenerative farming.
