Agritech Startup, Wefarm Secures €11.7m for Its Smallholder Agricultural Ecosystem

TechInAfrica — Wefarm, a digital network for global small-scale agriculture-based in London, has raised €11.7 million in a Series A financing round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm, True Ventures, with participation from AgFunder and June Fund, among others.

This round of financing will support Wefarm to further scale its network of 1.9 million farmers, and its newly created marketplace to connect farmers in Africa, even those who don’t have the internet access, to the information, products, and services they need to run their business successfully.

Wefarm, started in 2015, aims to build a global ecosystem for small-scale agriculture. With more than one billion people directly involved in small-scale farming, it is the biggest industry in the world. Wefarm is building a network of trust for those farmers. Wefarm Marketplace enables farmers to easily access quality products and services, such as seeds, fertilizers and a range of other non-agricultural items from trusted retailers and brands.

Align with Wefarm’s bottom-up model, all products, services, and retailers on the platform have been recommended by Wefarm users and can even be purchased through SMS.

Smallholder farmers lose a lot of time and money due to fake or faulty agricultural products. In part due to this, farm yields in many parts of Africa are just one-fifth of farm yield in the United States or Europe. Poor-quality seeds and fertilizers also limit growth in plants and animals. Given that smallholder farmers grow roughly 70% of the world’s food, Wefarm intends to use its technology to help close this yield gap.

Wefarm CEO and Founder Kenny Ewan believes the platform’s Marketplace will grow into an expansive ecosystem for smallholder farmers.

“If we can inspire 100 million farmers to work together on one platform, we can fundamentally shift global agriculture and trade in their favor, and this round of funding will take us even closer to bringing this vision for improved farm yields into fruition,” Ewan said.

“It’s about harnessing AI to champion human intelligence. Our network of trust empowers farmers to find solutions to problems through knowledge sharing. In tandem, the marketplace will give them access to first-rate products that help to deliver better produce. The combination of the two has limitless potential to influence and fight the major agricultural crisis we face.”

“We are enormously inspired by how Kenny and the Wefarm team have empowered the world’s farmers, and we see great potential for their future,” Jon Callaghan, co-founder of True Ventures, said.

“The company is not only impact-driven, but the impressive growth of the Wefarm Marketplace demonstrates exciting commercial opportunities that will connect those farmers to more of what they need to the benefit of all, across the food supply chain. This is a big, global business,” he concluded.

Source: eu-startups.com