Women are underrepresented in the AgTech industry, as is the case in many other technology-related fields. However, the number of female founders in AgTech and AgriFood is growing. Despite the challenging fundraising landscape, female founders and emerging fund managers in Europe have demonstrated resilience. The recently published "The State of Gender Diversity in European Venture report 2024" by Female Foundry, highlights this resilience. According to the study, in 2023, European startups co-founded by women secured a total of €5.9 billion in funding. After the peak years of 2021 and 2022, this amount marks 2023 as the third-highest year on record in terms of funding raised. PitchBook's European VC Female Founders Dashboard reveals mixed companies currently claim the largest share of capital at 19.2%, reaching its highest level in over a decade.

Desafía FoodTech Germany x RootCamp is a six-month program collaboratively initiated by ICEX Spain (the Internationalization Agency of the Spanish Government) and RootCamp. The Desafía FoodTech Germany program aims to foster growth and success for startups through collaborative initiatives, networking events, and access to valuable resources within the competitive German market.

Agritechnica - the world's largest trade fair for agricultural innovations has long been a hub for agricultural innovation. This year, Hannover saw something new brewing. RootCamp orchestrated the Lunchtime Startup Pitch Session. Each day, pioneering startups from the agricultural sector took the stage to pitch their disruptive ideas. A total of 46 AgTech startups hailing from 14 countries showcased their innovative solutions. Explore the lineup of these startups below.

The AgTech landscape is experiencing remarkable growth, underscored by a staggering 305 applications originating from 61 countries for Batch #5 at RootCamp. This blog article shines a spotlight on the most promising AgTech startups within our latest application phase.

The livestock sector faces enormous environmental challenges like high emissions, water and land usage, as well as changes in consumer behavior and the increasing importance of animal welfare. To be in line with the climate objectives, emissions need to be reduced significantly. As part of the BLIVE project, Innovation Hub RootCamp collected seven best practices that are improving the management of livestock farm.

Get to know Caspar Olenhusen! He is one of RootCamp's startup coaches, with a passion for agriculture since his childhood. During his career in different countries like the USA and the UK, he collected a wide amount of knowledge and know-how to coach startups in the agribusiness and agtech scene.

For Batch#3 we got 250 applications from 58 countries worldwide! We are extremely grateful for your interest in our program and the choice was definitely not easy for us. Together with our partners, we have selected seven promising startups. The business ideas are driven by innovative technologies with a major impact on the agricultural industry. In the coming months our mentors, corporate partners and industry experts will work with the startups on many different topics as part of our acceleration program.

The RootCamp Demo Day is designed as an exchange platform for the agrifood tech scene in which corporations, investors and startups can discuss current topics like sustainability, circular economy, green packaging, digitalization of agriculture, and soil improvement techniques. Let’s see what happened this year and how we celebrated the Batch #2. 

Regularly, we want to present you the startups that are part of the RootCamp program. In this interview series we introduce you to the founders, their innovative technology and how RootCamp has taken the startup to the next level. Get to know Contagra of RootCamp batch #2.