Blockchain Agtech GrainChain Raises $29M – Ledger Insights
Today, Texas-based GrainChain announced a $29 million funding round. This includes $10 million from Overstock, which provided GrainChain’s Series A and B funding through Medici Ventures. The Medici fund is now managed on behalf of Overstock by Pelion Venture Partners, which committed an additional $10 million from its own funds. Brigham Young University’s Cougar Capital was one of the other funding participants.
GrainChain offers a suite of solutions to farmers and buyers, most of which are based on blockchain and smart contracts. It includes tracking data from seed to harvest, inventory management, logistics and transaction management.
“2022 was a breakthrough year for GrainChain in many ways,” said GrainChain CEO and co-founder Luis Macias. “We saw explosive growth when our transaction platform, Trumodity, was fully integrated with banking systems in Latin America and when we launched liquidity programs with coffee producers in Mexico and Central America.”
Many of the tens of thousands of users are small farmers in the US or Latin America. They have no technological infrastructure, so the GrainChain system automates data collection through IoT and mobile apps that can work offline.
GrainChain is essentially a data collection system. Farmers are encouraged to collect data if they know they can receive more money, for example by proving that the item is sustainably sourced.
But once the data is there, it reduces the risk for bankers who can lend to the farmer or insurance companies who provide cover. One of the visions driving GrainChain is to enable farmers to get loans or insurance in minutes.
Brian Humphreys, the president of Rio Bank, a local bank in Texas where farmers use GrainChain, commented that “farmers just want a guarantee that they’re going to get paid. Period. “
Farmers do not wait 60 days after delivering the grain to the silos to get paid. Either the payment is immediate, or the payment date is automated using smart contracts.
Having seen the real-world utility box in action with GrainChain, Humphreys believes blockchain will come to banking sooner rather than later.
GrainChain is not alone in deploying blockchain in agriculture. Ripe.io offers a traceability solution and Agrotoken tokenizes goods in South America. The really big player is Covantis, a consortium backed by seven of the world’s largest agricultural companies, including Cargill, Bunge and ADM.
