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4 min read

10 Female AgTech founders from Europe you should know in 2024

By Linh Pham on Mar 7, 2024 10:35:14 AM

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.

Topics: Startup Tips startups RootCamp
3 min read

Desafía FoodTech Germany: Catalyzing Spanish FoodTechs startups' success in Germany

By Linh Pham on Feb 27, 2024 9:57:18 AM

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.

Topics: News startups agtech applynow agfoodtech FoodTech
7 min read

46 AgTech Startups from Agritechnica 2023 you should know

By Mario Verbeek on Nov 21, 2023 11:58:40 AM

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.

Topics: startups Events
5 min read

Best AgTech Startups Application RootCamp Batch #5

By Linh Pham on Nov 7, 2023 4:27:55 PM

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.

Topics: Startup Tips startups Events
7 min read

Best practices on livestock farming

By Ilka Gomez on Sep 23, 2022 10:57:06 AM

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.

Topics: startups Livestock
5 min read

Get to know RootCamp startup coach Caspar Olenhusen

By Sandy Khorshed on Jun 15, 2022 9:36:25 AM

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.

Topics: agriculture startups RootCamp Interview Team
5 min read

RootCamp is kicking off with Batch #3

By Gaia Amatteis on May 16, 2022 3:19:27 PM

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.

Let's have a look on RootCamp Batch#3 👇

AgriCircle

AgriCircle makes sustainable food production measurable and delivers application maps for resource efficient fertilization via API. Together with farmers and food processors they fight for more soil vitality, biodiversity and a more efficient and sustainable use of resources in agriculture. The startup from Switzerland provides automated and outcome based measures for regenerative agriculture. Their solutions deliver highly accurate and economically viable measures to quantify sustainability and to improve productivity in one go.

Bialtec SAS

The biotech startup comes from Colombia. Bialtec SAS designs and produces microencapsulated precision microbiomes capable of reconfiguring the intestinal microbiome into a more efficient and healthy one. W

Biorefic

They are developing a next-generation biorefinery technology platform for advanced prebiotic ingredients and microbial Omega-3 fatty acids while enhancing food security by upcycling agri-residues into animal feed. Their prebiotic is the ultimate gut microbiota enhancing ingredient that improves the health, immunity and boosts the performance of animals. The algal omega-3 lipids are a sustainable replacement to fish oil, essential to avoid depleting marine resources. They come from Latvia. 

Climate Farmers

Based in Berlin the startups mission is reversing climate change through regenerative agriculture. Climate Farmers enables an effective carbon market for agriculture through the development of soil carbon monitoring systems to enable farmers to transition to regenerative practices. The technology at the core of Climate Farmers allows for remote, continuous and low-cost monitoring. Satellite data is processed based on scientific algorithmic models and machine learning, enabling continuously higher quality results with growing data sets and lower costs. This builds trust in the reliability of agricultural soil as carbon sinks and allows to funnel a larger margin of profit to farmers directly.

Cynomys srl

We are the promoters of conscious, sustainable and animal welfare-oriented livestock farming with our patented IoT solution for environmental impact monitoring in animal farms: the Cynomys Livestock System. Cynomys srl are the sole company to provide full, comprehensive monitoring of environmental parameters and energy and water consumption in animal housing with a single, self-contained IOT device. The devices are specifically conceived for long time measurements and all their features are designed and built for that very purpose.

Seqana

Seqana is a Berlin-based startup that enables global climate action through satellite-powered insights & monitoring solutions for Soil Organic Carbon. They enable a hands-off approach to MRV (monitor reporting verification), cutting expenses from $5-$10/hectare to $0.05-$1/hectare, and expediting the pathway to credible SOC stocks anywhere on earth. The technology is powered by Earth Observation (public and private) which offers a 10x reduction in cost as compared to current established services. Beyond the MRV bottleneck, their solution can be applied to reduce the time and effort needed to scout new projects by offering a large-scale analysis of state or countrywide SOC levels to help direct new project resources most efficiently.

VetVise

VetVise from beautiful Hanover improves animal welfare and farm efficiency in pig and poultry production by 24/7 video monitoring and real-time Machine-Learning analyzing. They care for the animal from birth to slaughter. AI analysis and linking with other data, such as slaughter data, optimises the entire value chain by giving actionable feedback. They combine usually independent domains in order to achieve more through diversity: Science with Commercialisation, Veterinary/Agricultural Science with Cutting-edge Machine Learning and Theoretical Physics. Using low-cost, off-the-shelf low tech hardware as a basis for high tech algorithms to perform real-time animal behaviour tracking on edge computing to automate and objectify the stable management of the future.

 

About RootCamp

RootCamp is a multi-partner innovation-hub for technology-oriented startups and intrapreneurs from the agri-food tech and bioeconomy sector. RootCamp is part of the SpinLab Family based in Leipzig and was initiated by K+S AG. It maintains a vibrant ecosystem and can count as partners on KWS, SKW, hannoverimpuls as well as Agritechnica.

We offer different startup programs which run up to twelve months and startups are supported by a grant of up to 50K EUR per team. A fundamental part of the programs is the collaboration between startups and corporate partners to develop new ideas and implement suitable solutions, in the form of pilot projects. The “Acceleration Program” addresses young startups and provides assistance as well as a network of mentors, industry experts and investors. Established startups are taking advantage of the “Fast Track” to rapidly enter collaboration projects with our partners.

The deadline to apply for batch #4 ends on 23rd August!

Topics: agriculture startups
5 min read

The best 10 % of Batch#3: Discover the startups

By Mario Verbeek on May 9, 2022 3:10:26 PM

Topics: startups agtech RootCamp
6 min read

Another succesful batch: RootCamp’s second demo day

By Gaia Amatteis on Feb 25, 2022 5:24:00 PM

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. 

Topics: startups agtech RootCamp pilot project Events demo day
3 min read

Contagra a game-changer in agricultural finance for farmers

By Gaia Amatteis on Feb 23, 2022 10:00:00 AM

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.

Topics: Learnings agriculture startups Interview