3rd cycle of the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program announces selected startups
Winners’ solutions add value to the conservation of native vegetation on the region’s farms.
Sustainable Soy in Cerrado Program :: Selected startups
Five startups will participate in the 3rd cycle of the "Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program – fostering entrepreneurship and innovation for deforestation-free production". Adapta Consultoria, Busca Terra, Connect Farm, Green Bug, and Maneje Bem, were chosen from 54 applicants offering solutions in forest regeneration, carbon markets, impact mitigation, compliance, and environmental monitoring. The companies join the ten members of the 1st and 2nd cycles to make up an integrated portfolio for a sustainable soy supply chain, free of deforestation and native vegetation conversion. As part of a partnership between the Land Innovation Fund and AgTech Garage, with strategic support from EMBRAPII – Brazilian Company for Industrial Research and Innovation – the program has initial resources of about R$2.2 million to support startups, with the possibility of increasing revenue from new partners interested in joining this innovation ecosystem for agribusiness sustainability.
The program's 3rd cycle prioritizes solutions that add value to the conservation of native vegetation on farms in the Cerrado region. Eleven finalists presented their solutions to a committee made up of members of the AgTech Garage staff and the program's partner companies – Land Innovation Fund, Embrapii, Center for Research and Development in Telecommunications (CPQD), and Cargill. Selection criteria included innovation, maturity and business model, team profile, environmental impact, and technical and economic feasibility. Also considered was the potential for exchanges and complementarities among the projects, to cope with some of the global agenda's biggest challenges in fighting deforestation and mitigating climate change. "We believe the finalists can contribute to creating value from standing forests and to the emergence of activities and financial mechanisms favorable to environmental conservation," says José Tomé, co-founder and CEO of AgTech Garage.
The selected projects include the startup specialized in regenerative agriculture, Adapta Consultoria, with feasibility plans, training, monitoring and quantification of financial benefits (tokenization); a tool for integrated data management and analysis and for payment of environmental services from Busca Terra; a data intelligence platform to monitor native vegetation areas, pastures and cropland on farms by Connect Farm; GreenBug's IoT device for detecting and classifying forest sounds, with geostatistical analysis and guidance for rural managers; and the environment, land-use and water-resource monitoring application by Maneje Bem, with technical assistance accessible to producers as well as environmental data management. The five startups have thus joined a portfolio with ten other initiatives selected in the first two cycles – Agrorobotica, AgTrace, BrainAg, BrCarbon, Forestmatic, SafeTrace, SciCrop, Plantem, Quiron, and One and a Half Degrees – all offering solutions to some of today’s main demands for environmental conservation and restoration.
According to the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), the Cerrado lost 8,351 km2 of native vegetation in the period from August 2020 to July 2021, an area five and a half times the size of the city of São Paulo. The combination of fertile land, water availability, and its flat relief gives the Cerrado – especially the Matopiba area, a recent agricultural frontier overlapping the states of Maranhão, Piauí, Tocantins, and Western Bahia – great potential for agribusiness, particularly grain crops, and calls for innovative solutions, if sustainable agricultural development is to have a chance. "The winners join the projects funded in the first two cycles in a portfolio of novel solutions for whole farms – from cropland to standing forests – contributing to the conservation, restoration or expansion of native vegetation areas, in synergy with major challenges on the global agenda for agricultural sustainability and climate change mitigation," said Carlos E. Quintela, director of the Land Innovation Fund.
"The winners join the projects funded in the first two cycles in a portfolio of novel solutions for whole farms – from cropland to standing forests – contributing to the conservation, restoration or expansion of native vegetation areas, in synergy with major challenges on the global agenda for agricultural sustainability and climate change mitigation," said Carlos E. Quintela, director of the Land Innovation Fund.
The Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program:
Lasting six months, the 3rd cycle began March 9, with participation of the selected startups in an Experience Day, giving them access to strategic and technical mentoring, connections with executives from the AgTech Garage community, an exchange of experiences with entrepreneurs, participation in events, broad exposure through social networks, and monitoring by a group of experts from partner companies focused on developing and scaling up solutions that can contribute to the Land Innovation Fund's goals of sustainability in the soy supply chain. The winners will also participate in master classes and enjoy technical and scientific support from a team of researchers selected for the Matopiba Fellowship Program.
EMBRAPII is responsible for connecting the selected startups with EMBRAPII Units to carry out research, development, and innovation (RD&I) projects to handle specific technological challenges, in addition to co-funding the projects with grants. "By combining the cutting-edge knowledge of startups with the technical expertise of our EMBRAPII Units, we can optimize agribusiness processes, while reducing environmental impacts. The Cerrado spans some of the world's largest watersheds and is vitally important for the planet's biodiversity," says Igor Manhães Nazareth, EMBRAPII's Director of Planning and Institutional Relations.
During the six-month cycle, after analysis by an advisory board, promising startups may be awarded funding from the Startup Finance Facility to further develop their solutions. With funds from the Land Innovation Fund and expertise from AgTech Garage, this new initiative to manage and promote innovation solutions has R$2.2 million available to develop solutions. So far, three proposals have been selected for support: HyperT, an integrated traceability, monitoring, and carbon credit platform presented by AgTrace, BrCarbon, BrainAg, and One and a Half Degrees; Carbon Stock in Western Bahia, a project by the Agrorobótica startup to analyze different soil scenarios in one of the regions with the country's highest agricultural yields; and Protege Cerrado, a carbon offset initiative to stimulate environmental conservation and restoration, by the Plantem and Forestmatic startups.
Here are the selected startups:
ADAPTA GROUP: This systemic solution can monitor, plan and fund farmers who use regenerative agricultural practices in the soy supply chain. Its four-step process involves training and monitoring producers as they adopt regenerative practices, monitoring impacts through an online platform, funding, and then tokenizing their environmental performance (carbon, soil, water, and biodiversity) through offset mechanisms for socioeconomic and environmental gains. Adapta's proposal is to stimulate transitions to large-scale regenerative agriculture, with a feasibility plan, training, monitoring, and quantification of financial benefits to farmers who join the program.
BUSCA TERRA: This solution helps farmers identify payment for environmental services (PES) opportunities, with mechanisms to offset or reward on-farm conservation and restoration actions. The tool also helps price such actions and initiatives, assigning values for the exchange of carbon credits, conservation of water resources, creation of eco-taxes, sustainable use of biodiversity, and ecotourism. The startup partners with a financial institution to issue Green “Rural Product Certificates” (CPRs) that reward farmers for conserving and restoring official environmental preservation areas (APPs) and legal reserves.
CONNECT FARM: This startup offers a data intelligence tool able to monitor a farm’s native vegetation, pastures, and cropland. With fertility, genetic, environmental, and soil-health indicators, it sets recovery targets for degraded or low-yield areas using sustainable solutions to reduce the cost of land use, the risk of fires and erosion, and to boost yields, avoiding deforestation from the expansion of new fields. The company is also developing a carbon calculator to estimate the entire estate’s emissions balance and capture, from the preservation area (APP) to plantations.
GREEN BUG: This battery and solar panel powered device, equipped with artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms, can identify the sounds of the forest – from chainsaws and farm machinery engines to singing birds and howler monkeys, among other animals –, classify the results, and issue alerts about possible invasions and deforestation, in addition to collecting data on the farm's fauna. The startup's proposal is to be “the ears of the forest”, offering remote acoustic sensing and monitoring for rural landowners.
MANEJE BEM: This integrated data collection and analysis application helps connect farms with private companies, to make sustainable agricultural decisions. It collects data, gives farmers remote technical assistance, monitors and plans actions and initiatives for socio-environmental agricultural improvements, suggests sustainable, on-farm ESG measures, and calculates return on impact in analytical dashboards.
AgTech Garage is an innovation hub specialized in agribusiness. Founded in 2017, it now has over 55 major partner companies, leaders in their segments, and over 900 connected startups in its virtual community. As a pioneer in fostering open innovation in agribusiness, its initiatives, practices, and tools have boosted its partners' competitiveness through novel products and services for an increasingly digital and sustainable agri-food chain.
The Brazilian Research and Innovation Company (EMBRAPII) is a social organization that supports technological research institutions promoting innovation in Brazilian industry. EMBRAPII cooperates with public and private scientific and technological research institutions, focused on business demands and aimed at risk-sharing in the pre-competitive phase of innovation. Its objective is to stimulate the industrial sector to undertake more innovation, with more technology, and to enhance companies' competitive strengths in both domestic and international markets.
About the Land Innovation Fund:
Founded with an initial contribution from Cargill and managed by Chemonics International, the Land Innovation Fund supports innovation for a sustainable and deforestation-free soy production chain, with no conversion of native plant cover, and with positive economic and socio-environmental impacts in three of South America's priority biomes: Cerrado, Gran Chaco and Amazon. The Land Innovation Fund supports innovations that increase yields through sustainable practices, mechanisms and approaches, encouraging farmers to conserve and restore native forests and vegetation, and by mobilizing networks and resources to transform the soy supply chain.