Argentine ag blockchain platform raises seed funding

Traceability continues to be an area of interest for various stakeholders in the agrifood supply chain, particularly after Covid-19 raised questions about the safety of our food system. 

“We are solving a verification problem, which is to understand and unbox how crops are being produced from seed to harvest for a world demanding more sustainable and food security practices,” Diego Hoter, CEO and co-founder at ucrop.it, told AFN.

The Buenos Aires-based startup recently announced it had raised $1.1 million in a seed round led by Closed Loop Partners and agrifoodtech accelerator The Yield Lab LatAm. Yugen Partners, a New York venture capital fund specializing in blockchain, and Red Surcos, one of the main distribution companies of agricultural supplies and services in Argentina, also participated alongside several other strategic investors.

The Yield Lab LatAm first met the ucrop.it team two years ago when they joined its accelerator program. Extensive knowledge of the agriculture industry and a strong tech team made the decision to invest easy, according to The Yield Lab LatAm principal Camila Petignat.

“The team has already validated the concept with a lot of pilots in Argentina,” she told AFN. “They have proven that they are actually able to align incentives between farmers and buyers in the ag value chain to get the farmers to start thinking about sustainable practices. [It] was very, very powerful to witness that progress.”

Read the complete article at www.agfundernews.com.