International partnership announces startups selected to promote sustainable solutions
Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program members Adapta, Busca Terra, Green Bug and SciCrop will receive financial support from the Startup Finance Facility
Four new proposals were selected by the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program to receive financial support from the Startup Finance Facility (SFF) – a novel initiative to manage and foster innovation solutions for sustainable soy supply chains that are deforestation-free, with no conversion of native vegetation. Adapta's Regen-cert, a systemic solution to promote the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices in the Matopiba region's soybean chain; Busca Terra's Soy Transparency Panel, a traceability platform with a "Green Soy" seal to show the grain’s origin and encourage sustainable crops that comply with environmental laws; Nature's Ears, by Green Bug, a proposal to monitor forest sounds using IoT technology and artificial intelligence; and the Green Pixel Initiative, by SciCrop, a platform to negotiate future contracts based on green pixels, collected by satellite, and stored in a blockchain system. With resources from the Land Innovation Fund and AgTech Garage's expertise in monitoring solutions, the Startup Finance Facility has R$3.4 million available to catalyze the development, testing, and implementation of innovative solutions that bring intelligence, security, and sustainability to the soy chain in the Cerrado biome, and the potential for additional revenue with the entry of new partners interested in supporting this innovation ecosystem for sustainable agribusiness.
The four new projects to be funded by the Startup Finance Facility make up an innovation portfolio for whole farms – from cropland to the standing forest – providing solutions in conservation, production, and financial mechanisms, three of the Land Innovation Fund's four lines of action in South America. "We understand that innovation depends on creating conditions to develop an innovation landscape, with spaces for sharing among the various players in the soy chain and for fostering solutions able to transform the soy chain at different stages of development – from early stages to those that need to gain scale," explains Carlos E. Quintela, director of the Land Innovation Fund. He also adds that "With the Startup Finance Facility, we offer startups selected for the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program access to funding to enable projects, actions, and disruptive initiatives for responsible agricultural development, and to boost the formation of a portfolio of innovative. sustainable, and marketable solutions."
Startup Finance Facility funding is available for participants in the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program (PSSC) seeking to overcome barriers to innovative projects and to find ideas for sustainable agribusiness. Startups can submit proposals individually or in partnership with other program participants for appraisal by a Technical Committee. The criteria for approval include adherence to the PSSC program; the innovative potential of the service or product; the initiative's economic and financial feasibility; the composition, function, and relevance of each startup in the project (if more than one is involved); the technical knowledge and quality expressed in the proposal.
According to José Tomé, co-founder and CEO of AgTech Garage, "The Startup Finance Facility is one more differential in a Program whose management structure is already innovative. The PSSC’s 360-degree outlook offers connections to the market, mentors, academics, and experts, as well as to farmers. Its unique intersection of modules – from For Farmers to the Cerrado Fellowship, with funding by the Startup Finance Facility – places the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program at the frontier of innovation in this entrepreneurial ecosystem."
The Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program:
The startups selected for the Sustainable Soy for the Cerrado Program participate in an Experience Day, where they gain access to strategic and technical mentoring, connect with executives from the AgTech Garage community, exchange experiences with entrepreneurs, participate in events and workshops with professionals from the private sector, and are monitored by a team of expert members of partner companies, all focused on developing and scaling up their solutions. PSSC members also participate in master classes and get technical and scientific support from a team of researchers selected for the Cerrado Fellowship Program. As of the 4th cycle, they are given the chance to interact with ten farmers who are members of the For Farmers Program, an initiative to place farmers at the center of the innovation ecosystem and facilitate the adoption of new technologies in the field.
As the organization responsible for bridging startups and entrepreneurs with research centers to use their state-of-the-art infrastructure and technical skills in the selected projects, EMBRAPII can also provide grant co-funding for technological solutions, based on its own criteria. The Program also enjoys strategic backing from the Center for Research and Development in Telecommunications (CPQD), an institution involved in the entire innovation process, from idea to implementation, whose expertise will identify potential synergies among entrepreneurs, researchers, and the technology market, in addition doing training and sitting on selection committees during the process.
New partners can join the Startup Finance Facility by contributing technical and financial resources to the project and will participate in the program's selection process for new innovation solutions.
Here are the latest solutions to be funded by the SFF:
REGEN-CERT, Adapta: a systemic solution to foster the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices in the Matopiba region’s soy chain. Adapta, a startup that works with cooperatives, associations, corporations, financial and public institutions, seeks to reduce environmental impacts and promote socioeconomic benefits in agricultural chains. For the Startup Finance Facility, Adapta proposed a solution with three integrated platforms – technical, financial, and digital – able to help farmers adopt regenerative agriculture practices on their farms, through 1) virtual monitoring of the transition stages and technical visits by experts; 2) studies on economic feasibility, technical barriers, and risks associated with the adoption of the practices; and 3) the development of a digital certificate with blockchain and IoT technologies to record the environmental benefits associated with carbon, biodiversity, water, and soil health metrics in the soy supply chain. The impacts tracked in this project will enable large players in the agricultural market and financial institutions to confirm the use of sustainable practices, the achievement of ESG goals, and synergy with the international agenda to implement climate change mitigation actions.
SOY TRANSPARENCY PANEL. Busca Terra's proposal is to develop a traceability platform for companies to show they are buying soybeans grown on farms that obey environmental laws or have environmental recovery projects, in order to obtain "Green Soy" seals for grains produced on environmentally compliant farms. The startup’s technology already combines data on farms in more than 100 different databases, with information on climate, soil, land tenure and registration factors, deforestation alerts and fire outbreaks. Support from the Startup Finance Facility will enable the commercial-scale deployment of a complete evaluation and monitoring panel for soybeans, bringing transparency and credibility to the soy supply chain. The system will generate a positive registry of farmers in compliance with the Forest Code and will encourage the development of native forest conservation projects with Green Farmer Certificates (CPR Verde). With Busca Terra's support, farmers interested in preserving a forest area will be able to find a company willing to invest in environmental preservation. The startup will help them identify, validate, and measure environmental services and to negotiate with potential investors.
NATURE'S EARS, Green Bug: This company listens to forest sounds to detect changes in the ecosystem, foretell the need for preventive actions on a farm or gauge the scope of good agricultural practices that lower costs, improve production conditions, and conserve the environment. Green Bug uses Internet of Things technology and Artificial Intelligence to monitor ecosystem sounds, transmit results to a database, and monitor any noise changes in the mapped area – such as changes in local bird populations or seasonal migration patterns, or outbreaks of wildfires. The data set enables analyses of general features in the monitored region – crop areas, pastures, conservation units, and permanent preservation areas – with short, medium, and long-term information relevant to farmers and, ultimately, to the scientific community and private sector as well. The data is collected by an electronic solar and battery-powered device with microcontrollers capable of running artificial intelligence algorithms, detecting and classifying events, transmitting the results to the web platform, and translating these sounds into numbers to chart the dynamics of each micro-region and issue early warnings about variations or anomalies. The information is useful to measure risks and the scope of preservation actions, such as landscape recovery, the creation of ecological corridors, the installation of roosts, as well as good agricultural practices.
GREEN PIXEL INITIATIVE, SciCrop: As the first Brazilian agtech company to obtain intellectual property to create a blockchain specific to the demands of Brazilian agribusiness, SciCrop's proposal is to develop smart futures contracts in blockchain, that will preserve or regenerate areas of Brazil’s Cerrado based on satellite images collected over twelve months. The smart contract generates a single, digitally signed file that reproduces the real biomass conditions in an area over a given period and certifies the landowner's socio-environmental preservation or regeneration actions in the micro-region. With the Green Pixel data, the farmer can sign smart contracts with private investors to receive financial offsets for environmental preservation actions, CO2 removal rates per hectare of preserved or regenerated areas, mitigation actions against the risk of suppressing native vegetation, or social initiatives for local communities carried out with NGOs pre-registered in the startup's database. The private investor accesses the Green Pixel Initiative website, chooses areas to protect and buys pixels in the form of a smart contract. Payment is calculated as the sum of environmental, social, and administrative fees. SciCrop's proposal stimulates deforestation- and conversion-free agriculture, while helping to neutralize carbon emissions and reducing social vulnerability in the Cerrado's lower HDI locations.