Seed-stage investing as the “whitespace” of ag and foodtech investing

San Diego-based acceleration fund Radicle Growth made its maiden investment just two years ago in Full Harvest, a San Francisco-based agtech platform designed to mitigate food waste at the farm level. Since that time, the company has committed funding to 15 investments in nine companies in the food and ag sector, most recently contributing to the $1.5 million Seed round for Augean Robotics of Philadelphia.

Leading the way in accelerating these disruptive early-stage ag and foodtech startups is Kirk Haney, CEO and managing partner at Radicle Growth, a $15 million market leader that lists industry giants Corteva, Finistere Ventures, Bayer Crop Science, and OurCrowd among its backers.

GAI News sat down with Haney to talk more about his passion for food, health, and sustainability.

You have talked of seed-stage investing as the “whitespace” of ag and foodtech investing. Can you please explain this?
We believe that seed-stage is the “whitespace” – the place to invest in food and agtech today. Traditionally a lot of VC funds have stayed away from ag and food tech investments because they say it takes too long [to get a return], and they are right. But I don’t make investments in a rearview mirror, I look forward, and having been through the digital revolution in the enterprise supply chain in the 1990s and 2000’s, I see the same exact thing happening in the food value chain, and that’s what I think people are missing. The speed of which new technologies are being integrated is transforming the ag and food supply chain. And it’s not a single issue: you have millennials demanding transparency (and other demographics as well), and according to the World Economic Forum, you have two billion people in the world who are obese, and two billion who are micronutrient deficient. So, we have both a quantity and quality problem and disseminating information is going to help solve those two challenges.