Farmers’ Fintech Agreena raises €46 million to scale the regenerative revolution
Climate and fintech company Agreena, whose soil carbon platform is one of the largest globally, today announced its Series B raise of €46 million. Led by Germany’s leading multi-stage investor HV Capital, the round has an exciting line-up of new investors including impact fund AENU and fintech-focused Anthemis.
The share increase is also supported by a doubling from existing shareholders, including evergreen food investor Gullspång Re:food, well-established technology investor Kinnevik and Denmark’s export and investment fund.
The significant raise comes just one year after the company’s €20M Series A. Since then, Agreena has scaled its operations 10X, expanded its geographic footprint to cover farmland in 16 European countries, working with farms to help them relocate more than 600,000 hectares against climate-positive, regenerative agriculture. In Romania alone, Agreena manages over 70,000 ha, and in the Republic of Moldova 170,000 ha.
“For the world’s farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture and create a scalable climate impact, the financial rails to support and pay them for it must be built”said Simon Haldrup, co-founder and CEO of Agreena. “Agreena is building out technological and financial services infrastructure throughout the agricultural value chain as the industry increasingly becomes a focal point for decarbonisation efforts.”
Momentum around regenerative agriculture is sweeping the world, with businesses, governments and supply chains turning their attention to our agricultural lands for carbon removal to reach net zero global goals. By adopting regenerative agricultural practices, farmers will play an increasingly important role in tackling climate change, food insecurity and other critical environmental issues. Agreena has developed a way to turn this impact into a new and additional income stream for farmers to help finance the transition by leveraging the carbon market.
Via the company’s digital platform, farmers plan, track and validate improvements to their regenerative journey, in the process of moving from emitting CO2 to sequestering CO2 and storing it in their soil. The improved soil health and biodiversity reduces the need for inputs, while improving farmers’ resilience to increasingly adverse climate conditions (such as drought or floods) and improving the overall operational performance of farms. On the other side of the equation, Agreena’s certificates and downstream services support climate-focused companies already working to decarbonize, as well as companies in the food supply chain that increasingly require field-level traceability of agricultural commodities to comply with Scope 3 reporting requirements.
Scaling with technology
The recent acquisition of a remote sensing company Hummingbird Technologies have activated Agreena to expand the offer beyond farmers to include agridata services for supply chain actors, authorities and other institutions. Prioritizing a science-based and technology-first agenda, Agreena’s platform now includes a world-leading, AI-based monitoring and verification solution that uses satellite imagery, combined with truth data and machine learning to identify and report on-farm regenerative agriculture. practice. The company offers global monitoring, and is on a mission to take the lead in supporting the path to net zero for the entire value chain.
“Real climate impact is only created at scale, and Agreena is perfectly positioned to deploy its carbon farming capabilities worldwide to bring high-quality, verifiable and nature-based carbon credits to market. Only with carbon removal can net zero goals be achieved.”so Alexander Joel-Carbonell, partner in HV Capital.
From Farmer to Fintech
Deeply rooted in the agricultural community, Agreena was originally founded with seed investments from Danish farmers and farming families. The company’s next phase introduces a vertically integrated platform and marketplace. Working first with farmers in the field to monitor their carbon impact, the resulting certificates are constructed into scalable portfolios for businesses, tailored to their unique ESG strategy.
The company is leading the way in supplying the growing market with innovative financial solutions. Examples include the use of sustainable blockchain technology for improved traceability and transparency of carbon credits, and e-money and smart contracts to facilitate payment exchanges between climate-conscious businesses and farmers with instant reconciliation at scale.
“We are on a journey to remove the financial barriers to adopting regenerative agriculture for farmers and their entire ecosystem – carbon is just the beginning”. concluded Simon Haldrup.
