Why investors should pick AgTech...

So what is the opportunity Regenerate Ventures and other investors see?

Whilst other investors have concentrated on the last mile delivery of food, there is a lot of complexity and opportunity further upstream and inside the farm gate. Innovations that use natural solutions to encourage growth and reduce the use of pesticides are increasingly important due to changes in policy.

The opportunity here is twofold. There are a lot of sustainably branded investment vehicles that have questionable marketing when in terms of its real ESG credentials. What Regenerate is offering in its new EIS fund is a truly sustainable investment portfolio, cutting right to the heart of what sustainability means for investors, and the planet. Agriculture and the food supply chain contributes to about a third of carbon emissions globally, and the food supply chain is costing the world trillions of dollars in both obesity and malnutrition. The world wastes about a trillion dollars’ worth food a year. The only way to fix these problems is through innovating these industries, which means increasing the soil health over years, farming more nutritious crops, with less chemicals on less land. The challenge is to produce a crop with higher nutritional content with less cost and while being better to the environment. The second aspect of this opportunity is of course financial. The volume of capital into agriculture innovation and the food supply chain over recent years is vast and stands to increase considerably.

There are also a lot of businesses seeking investment, they need the capital and support to grow. However Regenerate Ventures sees that there is a gap in investment. For seed stage businesses there is access to philanthropic and academic funding, and for later stage businesses there the opportunity for vast buy outs, and it is between these points that there is a gap where the Regenerate team are stepping in.

GB Investment Magazine, Feb 2020