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Originally just offering ag chemicals, FBN Direct now covers more than 500 farm chemicals, fertilizers, seeds and seed treatments, and more. “We are happy to talk to any input company that wants to list on FBN or sell to our members.” People misinterpret us and say we are opposed to input makers, but we are just trying to create a more competitive market for our farmers so the best products and the best prices can win,” explains Baron. “We wanted to give farmers the independence to reduce input costs and to avoid retail markup or dealer markup. Baron dismisses these criticisms, arguing that FBN is focused on improving the industry altogether. This service has not been without its critics, however, particularly among retailers that say FBN is trying to disrupt their longstanding relationships with growers. The primary goal of FBN Direct, the chemical procurement service, was to create a national, fixed, no-haggle price for inputs with an emphasis on transparency. Soon, FBN discovered what Baron describes as “some shocking stuff.”īased on its members’ price data, FBN discovered a critical lack of transparency in the input pricing market, where confusing rebate sets, regionalized pricing, and a lack of manufacturers’ willingness to share their prices left many growers in the dark and unable to determine if they were truly getting a good deal. FBN set to work researching the issue by asking members to upload information about what they were paying for inputs across the country.
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“Quickly, farmers were so enthralled with seed intelligence that they wanted to figure out what to do to analyze price intelligence as well,” he says. After speaking with its board of farmer advisors, Baron and FBN learned that there was a real concern among farmers regarding the prices they were paying for inputs.
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This optimization of aggregated data didn’t stop with seed analysis and benchmarking. “This benchmarking allows farmers who want to build a network using technology to share information and to leverage that data to advance their agronomic and business practices,” explains Baron. What possibly provides even more value to FBN members, however, is that the data is then benchmarked anonymously against other farms in the US, the state, or even the county. FBN then provides the customary bevy of agronomic services like yield monitoring, weather data, and variable rate prescriptions. So how does FBN work towards this mission? First, its agronomics platform allows farmers to upload a wide variety of data sets from their farms. And not just a few bushels here or a few dollars per acre savings there, but radically transforming their businesses and creating different cost profiles.” “The onus is on every company in this space to figure out how it is helping farmers and exactly how it is bringing real, substantial value to farmers. When it comes to the increasingly crowded precision agriculture space, he believes this is a goal not only worthy of everyone’s time, but necessary. “Our mission is to help farmers democratize the farm information they are generating in a way that transforms their business,” Charles Baron, VP of product and co-founder of FBN, tells AgFunderNews. The network has grown to encompass roughly 3,500 farms throughout the US covering 13 million acres of farmland, including both commodity and specialty crops. The company has since expanded its product offerings to include agricultural input procurement services, crop marketing services, and financing at the same time as boosting its membership. Since starting out as a farm data analytics and management company in 2014, FBN has come a long way, and this round brings its total funding to nearly $88 million. Returning investors Acre Venture Partners, which Campbells Soup is the sole LP of, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers also participated.
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The round attracted a new investor in Bow Capital, a San Francisco-based firm backing companies using technology to better the world.
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Farmers Business Network (FBN), a farmer-to-farmer network offering data management and input procurement services, has raised $40 million in Series C funding co-led by Google’s venture arm GV and San Francisco-based impact investor DBL Partners both existing investors.