Identify the part of farming that farmers like least (maintaining financial relationships), and you’ll have an opportunity. Build products to simplify that work, and you’ll have an offering. Keep building from there? Well, then you’ll have Growers Edge.
Since taking over as CEO in 2023, I’ve had a clear vision for the company: build financial products that help farmers reduce risk, expand access to capital, and increase profitability. In the last year, we’ve made significant strides toward realizing that vision, acquiring companies with complementary offerings, raising funds, and launching new product lines to great success.
So I’m taking a moment to look back at major milestones from the last year and look ahead at what’s on the horizon for Growers Edge and the retailers, manufacturers, CPGs, and farmers we serve.
The Basics: Core Products that Empower Innovation, Experimentation, and Responding to Opportunities
We’re in a moment right now where farmers, ag retailers, and manufacturers are facing immense challenges – and immense opportunity. Extreme weather, shifting trade policy, changing federal funding priorities, and evolving demands from CPGs and other crop buyers mean that today’s farmers (and those who serve them) are dealing with more uncertainty than ever.
Farmers are, of course, an endlessly creative and innovative group of people. They’re never short of ideas for adapting to changing circumstances – but finding the necessary funds is often a different story.
Our core products aim to fix that. This year, all four have hit their stride:
- Crop Plan Warranty removes the downside risk when farmers want to try new crop inputs (e.g., regenerative products or those that increase carbon sequestration).
- Input Financing gives small and mid-sized retailers a chance to compete with national chains on payment products that work for the realities of planting and harvest schedules. It’s been hugely popular this year, with sales up 800 percent from 12 months ago.
- Mortgages: We closed our first mortgage this summer. I won’t lie: I was on vacation with my family at Lake Travis, in Austin, Texas, and when I got the call from Brian (our head of mortgage), I did a little happy dance with my kids. Brian’s been working hard to build this program. Closing the first sale was a seminal moment. And now we’re off to the races.
- SaaS for ag lenders: Our GIS product is growing 100 percent YoY as more and more lenders recognize the value in having real-time geospatial data to not only inform lending decisions but also spot opportunities to grow their portfolio, streamline customer communication, and more.
Now, we’re focused on organic growth for these four pillars, investing in raising awareness and getting products in front of the folks whose lives they can improve.
The Growth: Acquisitions to Accelerate Improvement
We’re in a uniquely fortunate position, capital-wise. We just finished a fundraise, we have strong growth every month, and our P&L and financial performance keep improving.
That’s not the norm in our industry right now.
In fact, we’ve seen a sharp pullback in investor interest in agtech and agrifintech in the last few years. That’s created a situation where there are a lot of wildly useful platforms (like Agcor and FarmTest) that find themselves in a difficult financial position.
Growers Edge is able to offer a compelling way forward for some of those companies. When we offer to acquire them, we enable their founders and leadership teams to continue to execute on their vision without having to worry about finding financial sponsors.
And for us, the value proposition is exceptional: we’re able to be very choosy and consider only platforms that offer functionality directly in our development pathway.
Take FarmTest, for example. It offers a way to do side-by-side field tests on new products. Building that capability into our Crop Plan Warranty product was already on the roadmap. When we realized we could accelerate our timeline by about two years and save money in the process by acquiring FarmTest, we jumped at the opportunity.
Agcor was a similar story. And we’re not closing the door to other opportunities. Given the current capital realities of the industry, acquisitions may continue to offer strategic value.
The Future: AI Investments to Position Us for What’s Next
Looking ahead, I’ve got my eyes on AI. No surprise there.
But our biggest opportunities lie not in acquiring AI startups in the agtech space but rather in developing AI talent in house.
Already, we’re seeing early indicators that AI could be a huge booster for our sales team, especially as they increase outbound efforts. When we landed our first customer that we could tie to our AI initiatives, that was a bit of a wake-up moment for me. It was clear that this was just the beginning – and that seeing the full potential pay off will require serious focus and investment.
And by the way, we aren’t thinking this in terms of replacing anybody on our team. It’s more a question of where our salespeople are able to spend their time. If today they’re spending 75 percent of their time setting up interactions with customers and just 25 percent actually talking to those customers, the question is: how can we use AI to shift that balance?
How can we inject AI early in the workflow so that salespeople are spending less time juggling calendars and following up with emails and more time face to face with the people whose lives our products can change.
For us, the transition is gradual – a dimmer more than a lightswitch.
But we’re also aware that failing to take small steps now would put us behind the curve in three years.
Shaping the Future of AgriFinTech
Growers Edge is in a unique and privileged position in our industry right now, and we’re clear-eyed about our mission. It’s past time that agriculture professionals had access to the fintech innovations that have been available in other industries for years now.
As climate change and global conflict further stress our food systems, financing the future of agriculture will become even more urgent than it is today. And we’re going to be at the forefront, finding ways to ensure farmers have the funding they need to innovate, take risks, and adapt to the constant change.