Farming has always been a data-intensive business but digital approaches to record keeping are starting to take root with more farmers. Agtech startup FarmLogs aims to capitalize on the trend, and it now has $22 million in additional financing to support those efforts.
New investor Naspers Ventures led the round Series C round of financing. Ann Arbor, MI-based FarmLogs last raised money in 2014, when it closed a $10 million Series B round. The company plans to use the latest infusion of capital to hire more workers and invest in additional product development.
FarmLogs has developed software that enables farmers to track and manage farm operations from a mobile device. The software logs farm activities in real time and also offers features such as rainfall tracking and soil composition maps. Field mapping features use satellite images to enable farmers to get a big-picture view showing all of their fields.
The data collected by FarmLogs’ software is owned by the farmers, but stored securely in the cloud, according to the company. A farmer can permit other farm workers to access those records from anywhere using a mobile device. FarmLogs provides software for both Android and iOS devices.
FarmLogs was co-founded in 2011 by CEO Jesse Vollmar and backend engineer Brad Koch. Xconomy reported more about the origins of FarmLogs in 2013. Since graduating from Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator in 2012, the startup has steadily built up its customer base. FarmLogs says that its technology now manages more than 20 percent of the country’s row crop acres.
FarmLogs says the Series C round brings the startup’s total financing haul to $37 million. A group of earlier investors also participated in the round, Drive Capital; Huron River Ventures; Hyde Park Venture Partners; SV Angel; and Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator.
Field mapping screen shot by FarmLogs.
