Farmers Business Network (FBN), an ag tech platform and online farmer network, announced yesterday that it has raised a $250 million Series F round of funding. The round was led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, with participation from Baron Capital Group, Balyasny Asset Management, Mandi Ventures, Lupa Systems and Ron Shaich. This brings the total amount of funding raised by FBN to $517.4 million.
Existing investors DBL Partners, Temasek, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., GV, Expanding Capital, and Kleiner Perkins also participated in the round. According to Bloomberg, Farmers Business Network now has a valuation of $1.75 billion.
FBN connects farmers with one another so they can share information on things like seeds, chemical and other inputs to bring more price transparency to the market. The farming sector is not immune from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ability for a farmers to save money on things like agricultural inputs can help farms stay afloat.
According to yesterday’s press announcement, Farmers Business Network now has 12,000 members farming more than 40 million acres across North America. For comparison, when we covered FBN back in Dec. of 2017, the company had 5,000 farmers across 16 million acres.
In addition to providing industry wide price analytics, Farmers Business Network also sells seeds and inputs directly to farmers via its FBN Direct online marketplace. FBN said that it will use the new funding to expand its Direct market as well as develop new FBN Crop Marketing and Financial Services products to help farmers get the most value out of their crops.
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