InnerPlant, a seed technology startup with a transgenic, early stress alerting seed trait in soybeans, recently raised $30 million in Series B funding. About half of the funds came from a group of farmer-investors headed by Coutts Agro. Saskatchewan grain farmer Matt Coutts is Coutts Agro’s Chief Investment Officer.
How did InnerPlant set itself apart?
Coutts’ experience with InnerPlant thus far has been unique and a refreshing departure from the typical venture capital funding cycle, he says.
The company was not the least bit shy about trekking up to Canada’s vast western plains and putting boots-on-the-ground to breath the fresh prairie air and take in his operation to gather how the two could potentially work together. And, funny enough, it all literally got off the ground by Coutts filling out one of those online “Contact Us” forms.
That’s one lesson Coutts has picked up from his relationship with InnerPlant that he wants to share with other farmers: don’t be shy about going online, filling out those forms and throwing your hat in the ring if it seems like something that would be a good fit. It might seem like a futile exercise at the time, and that nobody will respond, but you’ll never truly know until you give it a go.
“We’ve trialed so many different products and met with so many different companies,” Coutts adds. “InnerPlant has shown us a much different level of dedication to farmers, at least that I see. Shelly and her entire team were engaged right from the start, coming up to the farm and delivering the pitch right here in one of our barns. It’s hard to find companies as farmer committed as InnerPlant.”
What did InnerPlant learn from working with farmer-investors?
For InnerPlant CEO Shely Aronov, her journey with Coutts and his group cemented a strong conviction in working with farmer-led investment groups over traditional venture capital firms. She believes the shift helped accelerate InnerPlant’s journey from startup to a “real company with customer-centric values.”
“We have the retailers and growers engaged, and we have a technology that is meaningful and moves the needle. Now we must work with farmers to get the point price right, because this is not the time for expensive products,” Aronov says.
Over the last handful of months, InnerPlant has undertaken a pilot program with Illinois-based retailer Growmark FS’ Sentinel Plots to ground truth its technology. Soon you will start to notice the company launching its futuristic seeds with select farms in Illinois and Iowa as it fires up its technology and starts to “scale up”.
“We’re building a team of agronomists and crop specialists in the Midwest right now to support the rollout,” Aronov says, noting its technology remains most effective “with the help of an agronomist.”
Another thing she has learned is if you want to be successful with ag tech, you need to be on the ground and connected to your potential customers.
“We have to train the trainers, and they have to train the farmers, and in order to make that happen, we need to be there alongside them,” Aronov adds.
Why are farmers attracted to InnerPlant?
“It gets us a data layer into our crops that we don’t have today,” Coutts says. “Being able to manage stress days and weeks ahead is a game changer. If you’re reacting to plant disease you can already see, you’re too late. Of course, you’re hoping that it’s not that bad, but at that point you are probably way behind the ball.”
Coutts and his family oversee 120,000-plus acres of productive, cereal-producing cropland in Saskatchewan, Canada. The group grows lentils, canola, and wheat.
Once a farmer hits that type of acreage level, technology must return profits rather quickly to be valuable, he says. The other side of the coin is, that type of acreage also paints a big, shiny red target on your back at many technology companies. They see that acreage and the little dollar signs start dancing around in their heads before they’ve even pulled up to the farmgate.
According to Ag Funder News, the rest of the funding outside of what Coutts Agro put in came from climate investor Systemiq Capital as well as Deere and Company and Bison Ventures.
What is InnerPlant technology?
InnerPlant’s seed traits signal plant stress – the signals will be able to be picked up optically by satellites once the seeds are widely distributed. For now, the company is using stationary detection towers to scan the invisibly fluorescing plants.
To get there a transgenic gene is edited, or inserted, into the soybean plant’s genome – like inserting a new line of code into a computer program. This enables optic scanners to see what our human eyes cannot: where stress is taking hold in a farmer’s field at a plant-by-plant level.
The plant data is then correlated to areas of the field via the companies’ new CropVoice software program and can pick up stressed plants within one or two days of the initial infection, Aronov adds.
Previous InnerPlant coverage:
InnerPlant - Tech That Visualizes Plant Stress - Names Germplasm Partner
