FarmLogs raises $22 million to make agriculture a more predictable business

FarmLogs raises $22 million to make agriculture a more predictable business. Naspers Ventures led the round joined by the company’s earlier backers Drive Capital, Huron River Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, SV Angel and individual investors including Y Combinator president Sam Altman. According to CEO and cofounder of FarmLogs Jesse Vollmar, the company has invested heavily in satellite imagery and data since it graduated from the Y Combinator accelerator in 2012. It develops predictive models on top of that raw data to help farmers “program” their fields, Vollmar says. “We analyze fields all around the US all season long. It’s all thanks to a multi-year history of performance satellite imagery,” he explained. In one recent case, FarmLogs was able to help farmers who knew their neighbors were experiencing grasshopper infestations to pinpoint the bugs in their own massive operation, and stop the pests from spreading. In another typical case, FarmLogs users can see if an irrigation system has stopped working properly and part of their field is over- or under-watered, then go out and fix the system before washing away expensive inputs, like fertilizers or organic pesticides. Vollmar grew up in a farming community and working for the family business, an organic corn farm. Farmlogs which employs about 70 full-time today plans to use the new round of capital for further hiring, and to make its technology known to even more row crop farmers.

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Ann Arbor, Michigan-based FarmLogs has raised $22 million in a Series C round of funding for technology that helps farmers monitor and measure their crops, predict profits, manage risks from weather, pests and more. Naspers Ventures led the round joined by the company’s earlier backers Drive Capital, Huron River Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, SV Angel and individual investors including Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

According to CEO and cofounder of FarmLogs Jesse Vollmar, the company has invested heavily in satellite imagery and data since it graduated from the Y Combinator accelerator in 2012. It develops predictive models on top of that raw data to help farmers “program” their fields, Vollmar says.

“We analyze fields all around the US all season long. We can highlight and alert farms when we see a problem developing, and send them out to examine and fix things they never would have caught on the ground. It’s all thanks to a multi-year…

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