AgriWebb is on a mission to help livestock producers feed the world efficiently, profitably and sustainably by providing its comprehensive, ground-truth database for beef production worldwide.
The Australian startup, which builds a livestock management platform for ranchers and farmers, wants to digitize farm records and the meat production process from the cow to the consumer and drive the industry’s animal and environmental welfare transparency.
The startup said today it has raised another $6.8 million of funding led by Germin8 Ventures and iSelect Fund. In total, AgriWebb has raised $27 million in Series B and about $29.3 million since its inception in 2014. It did not disclose its valuation when asked.
Its app allows users to visualize their operations and give insights on animals and grazing, including the best grass location and which animals gain weight. On top of that, it lets ranchers improve their sustainable land management for better profits and leverage the on-farm data they’re recording to make more intelligent business decisions, according to the company.
AgriWebb claims more than 16,000 farmers and ranchers globally are using its cloud-based platform and managing approximately 19 million animals on over 136 million acres of grazing land across the globe, including Australia, the U.S. and the U.K.
The global beef market is estimated at $500 billion, but the pure farm management software market in its core geographies is estimated at around $3.5 billion, the company executive chairman Justin Webb told TechCrunch. AgriWebb’s key markets include Australia — where more than 15% of the national herd is managed using its platform — the U.K. and the U.S. Additionally, AgriWebb has partnerships in Brazil and South Africa, Webb said.
Unlike most competitors who act as a point solution focused on one or two areas of farm management, AgriWebb’s platform brings together animal management, grazing management and team communication; task and compliance management; and daily record-keeping in one place, Webb explained. “Its grazing insights enable ranchers to maximize productivity, eliminate waste, and validate grazing and animal management decisions in a way that other record-keeping systems can’t touch,” Webb pointed out.
Webb founded AgriWebb with John Fargher (chief revenue officer) and Kevin Baum (chief executive officer) in 2014. In Australia, the three founders discovered that farmers were not only interested in the advantages of technology but were also desperately cobbling their own solutions with scrappy spreadsheets and notebooks.
“Livestock producers deserve better technology to help them maximize their business and consumers need more reliable provenance for the animal and environmental welfare of their food,” Webb said. “AgriWebb has always been about serving the farmers, and this round of funding doesn’t change our mission; it simply magnifies it.”
The latest funding will be used for the international expansion of AgriWebb to ranchers and farmers in the U.S., the U.K., and Latin America, both directly and via partnerships. AgriWebb has secured customers in 28 of the 50 states since its U.S. launch in 2021 and plans to continue rapidly expanding. In addition, the latest funding will enable the company to establish its database.
Apart from the funding, AgriWebb recently joined two project proposals to the USDA CSC program, one led by American Farmland Trust and the other by Farm Journal’s Trust in Food initiative, Webb said. Both aim to improve the U.S. beef supply chain’s climate footprint and scale regenerative agriculture practices, Webb continued. One project is focused on improving transparency in the beef supply chain and understanding the GHG impact of different practices; the second aims to scale the adoption of practices through payments for practice changes.
“There’s a misconception that agriculture is at odds with climate, but the importance of sustainability and implementing sustainable practices is far from lost on farmers and producers,” Webb said. “In fact, the long-term sustainability and viability of their land are of utmost importance. Talk to any landholder and you’ll understand their long-term goal is to pass on their land in better condition to the next generation. Sustainable and regenerative practices can and do exist in tandem with productive and profitable farms, and we remain steadfast in our endeavor to support producers now and in the future through data that measures, manages and improves the sustainability of the food supply chain from farm to plate.”
The company raised its first Series B from investors, including Telus Ventures, Grosvenor Food & AgTech and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation in January 2021.
“AgriWebb fits with Germin8’s thesis to invest in the full-stack enterprise software companies within AgTech that bring essential enterprise value to farmers in alignment with practices that are sustainable,” said managing partner at Germin8 Ventures Michael Lavin. “There are very few software offerings capable of accelerating the regenerative agriculture practices our climate stands to benefit from, and even fewer that target livestock production rather than being at odds with it.”