Connecting Innovators, Investors, Industry Professionals and Early Adopter Customers
From improvements in nutritional
Gone are the days when big, industry-shaping innovations came out of corporate R&D departments. With the recent mega-mergers in agriculture, the market has changed to allow entrepreneurship to set the pace for food and agricultural innovation.
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“Given the overall AgTech entrepreneurial activity in the region, and the large number of multinational players, the American Heartland can be a powerful influence in driving the objectives of the AgTech revolution. Taken together, these resources indicate a regional competitive advantage in AgTech, similar to what the Silicon Valley cluster has provided for the IT industry.”
“AgTech: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Growth”, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, April 2014
iSelect Portfolio Companies
iSelect focuses on early-stage food and agriculture companies that are poised to help push the next agricultural revolution forward. We deliberately invest in companies that can make a positive impact on our society, as well as on the bottom line.
Vestaron, Inc.
Vestaron is developing new products in the crop protection industry that address the growing concerns of resistance, high costs of R&D, and safety/environmental externalities. Learn more… 
Benson Hill Biosystems, Inc.
Benson Hill is a crop improvement company that empowers innovators with a revolutionary platform to tap the natural genetic diversity of plants and develop healthier and more sustainable food choices. Learn more…
Artemis
Agrilyst, Inc. is a SaaS platform that tracks and analyzes farm data, helping indoor farms optimize plant performance and reduce operating expenses. From 2016 to 2023, the global indoor farming market is projected to grow at a 24% CAGR, reaching $6.4 billion in size by 2023. On average, profitable indoor farms have been operating for at least 7 years. This is driven largely by an inability to understand, measure, and monitor the key cost drivers of production. Agrilyst’s SaaS system allows indoor farmers of all sizes to focus on the linkage all the way from sales forecasting to production planning, enabling them to reduce costs and increase profitability. Learn more…
OneClickship, Inc.
TradeLanes is a Techstars backed company that is redefining global trade. The Company offers a SaaS-based trade execution and automation platform that eliminates the manual tasks needed to ship ocean containers. With an easy-to-use web interface that accesses real-time data about shipments, destinations, and clients, TradeLanes simplifies the export/import process by driving efficiencies, improving visibility, and reducing errors in the process. Learn more…
Harvest CROO, LLC
HarvestCROO is building the premier automation and robotics solution to solve the labor shortage crisis in specialty agriculture, starting with strawberries. Learn more…
Sentera, Inc.
Sentera is a UAV and crop analytics company delivering the most comprehensive suite of value-added hardware and software solutions available today to growers & agronomists. Learn more…
Mercaris
Mercaris is a market data service and trading platform for organic, non-GMO, and other Identity Preserved (IP) agricultural commodities. Learn more…
PlantResponse Biotech
PlantResponse Biotech is a Madrid, Spain and Raleigh, NC based company that is developing and commercializing biologically related products that improve plant health and protect yield potential. Learn more…
Plastomics, Inc.
Plastomics has developed a proprietary genetic engineering model that can produce high performing crops through editing the chloroplast. Learn more…
Geltor, Inc.
Geltor has a platform technology that enables it to cost effectively produce sustainable and beneficial proteins for the cosmetic, food, beverage, nutritional supplement, and healthcare industries. Learn more…
HerdDogg, Inc.
HerdDogg’s patented animal wearable technologies provide animal tracking and aid in the identification of missed heats, illness, and dystocia (difficult births) for the 2.5 billion herd animals worldwide. Learn more…
Bonumose
Bonumose is commercializing low-glycemic index, natural sugars through a proprietary, cost-effective enzymatic process. Learn more…
Agrible, Inc.
Agrible sells software that connects the agricultural supply chain from field-to-market, providing critical sustainability,agronomic, and yield data. Learn more…
ProteoSense LLC
ProteoSense is building a biosensing platform for rapid, cheap and highly sensitive food safety testing. Learn more…
Holganix, LLC
Holganix produces organic plant probiotics that make soils and plants healthier, more resilient, and more productive. Learn more…
Kultevat, Inc.
Kultevat combines genetic breeding and chemical process engineering to produce natural rubber from the Russian dandelion in North America. Learn more…
Meet Our Selection Committee
Our Food and Agriculture Selection Committee consists of industry and subject matter experts who help guide iSelect’s investment decisions. With firsthand experience and a true pulse on the industry, we consider these individuals key to our success in finding and investing in food and ag innovation.
Engage With Our Food and Ag Network
Join Our Food & Agriculture Innovation Network.
Join the over 5,000 entrepreneurs, investors, and industry professionals driving the future of food and agriculture.
Resources and News
What’s the Future of Nutrition? Addiction
The modern world has a serious problem with sugar. The average American consumes more than 129 pounds of the stuff each year, according to the USDA, more than double what we ate two generations ago. And, unlike in previous decades when most sweeteners came from cane...
It’s 2019, Where’s the Exit?
Once your big idea has come to life as a successful start-up, what’s next? How do you achieve a steady ascent that makes your small company and your investors happy? Getting the exit right can mean everything for a start-up— but what does that look like for food and...
How The Bee Corp is Empowering Growers and Beekeepers
CEO of agtech company The Bee Corp, Ellie Symes, is serious about bees. Her technology takes the uncertainty out of pollination, allowing growers to make time-sensitive decisions sooner and eliminating guesswork with objective performance metrics. In this Q & A,...
How Shifting Spending to Healthy Foods Could Prevent Chronic Illness
The burden of chronic health issues is massive: 90% of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care expenditures are for people with chronic and mental illness, according to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP). Even...
Travis Potter: Farming to Make Your Price
Travis Potter farms to make a price and, in turn, make profit in unusual ways. From his organic Tractor Soda to growing avocados in the Dakotas, Travis finds profitability in places that most farmers wouldn’t think to consider. Travis shares his philosophy for making a price for his farm products in the second installment of the Davos on the Delta Podcast.
Dr. Bruce German: Making Food Functional
Could changing your diet prep your brain for learning something new like playing the violin? Research by Dr. Bruce German at the University of California, Davis indicates that future is not as far-fetched (or far off) as it may sound. In this edition of the Davos on the Delta Podcast, we dive into the future of functional foods that could dramatically impact, not only health, but also physical and mental performance. And is it a new frontier for farmer profitability?
Automating the Harvest, One Strawberry at a Time
First, let’s clear one thing up: the strawberry is not, in fact, a berry. It’s what botanists call an “aggregate accessory fruit,” meaning that the flesh of the fruit is derived from the receptacle that holds the ovaries. And those seeds all over the outside? Those...
What the Latest Round of Food Contamination Recalls Say About Ag Innovation
It’s happened again. Last month, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a nationwide recall of more than 12 million pounds of raw beef due to new concerns over possible salmonella contamination.
Microsoft is Coming for Agriculture. Is That a Good Thing?
Here’s a headline I didn’t expect to see: “Microsoft Bringing AI to Ag.” From the author of that headline in Farm Journal: “Standing before a crowd of farmers at the 2018 Farm Journal AgTech Expo, keynote speaker Josh Henretig voiced what he believed a lot of farmers were thinking.
Food 2.0: Genetic Engineering Our Way to the High-Performing Crops of Tomorrow
It all started with the lowly tomato. One of the original North American food crops, Europeans first started cultivating tomatoes with the help of Native Americans in the 17th century. As a food source for the settlers, tomatoes were healthy, plentiful and easy to...
Mars Taps Benson Hill’s Crop Design Platform to Help Protect Cacao from Climate Change
Source: Mars Taps Benson Hill's Crop Design Platform to Help Protect Cacao from Climate Change
Bonumose: U.S. Patent to be Issued for “Enzymatic Production of D-Tagatose”
On September 21, 2018, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued Bonumose LLC a Notice of Allowance on its patent application for “Enzymatic Production of D-Tagatose.” The USPTO’s action recognizes the importance of Bonumose’s unique process for producing high-yields of low-cost tagatose from starch.
