May 19, 2015
Farmers Business Network (FBN), provider of an independent and unbiased, anonymous farmer-to-farmer information network, has announced it has closed on $15 million in funding led by Google Ventures, and including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and DBL Investors.
Currently, farmers must often rely upon the same companies that supply them with fertilizers, seeds, equipment, and other inputs for advice regarding production practices and management. Through FBN, farmers can gain access to an independent source of real-world information on input, agronomic and yield performance from other working farmers.
FBN was co-founded by agricultural entrepreneur and chief executive, Amol Deshpande, who will be speaking at GAI Agtech Week, June 22-24 in San Francisco, and vice president of product, Charles Baron, who along with agriculture and technology veterans, began to connect farmers with each other in 2014 through an easy-to-use network that would make information accessible to all farmers.
“Farmers have been advising each other for thousands of years. FBN gives them a platform to do so with real information on a massive scale, so they can make the most informed decisions. It’s about putting the farmers first,” says FBN Co-Founder Charles Baron.
FBN can standardize and integrate over 35 formats of data, networking thousands of fields, providing advanced analytics, yield benchmarking, and real-time seed performance, among other insights all from anonymous information from productive farmers.
In the past six months, FBN has analyzed 7 million acres of data in the U.S., and has experienced an expansion rate of 30% per month. With this new round of funding, FBN plans to grow its platform to a national scale.
After successful rounds raising $5.6 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers, and $3.3 million in Series A-1 funding led by DBL Investors, this latest round brings FBN’s total funding to approximately $28 million.
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