Agreena, a startup that helps farmers earn carbon credits for transforming their land into carbon sinks, has announced a successful Series B funding round, raising €46M.
The funding round was led by Germany’s HV Capital and included new investors such as Anthemis and AENU. Existing shareholders such as Kinnevik, Gullspång Re: food, and Denmark’s Export and Investment fund also participated.
Agreena was founded in 2019 and has created a platform that helps farmers earn carbon credits for converting their land into carbon sinks, which removes CO2 from the atmosphere and stores it. Through this platform, Agreena has been able to help farmers earn additional revenue while contributing to the fight against climate change.
The platform works by having farmers input data about their land’s quality, planning for the next harvest, and committing to actions that increase the land’s carbon sink potential.
The idea of regenerative farming is gaining momentum worldwide, with various entities focusing on agricultural soils for carbon removals to meet global net-zero targets.
Agreena’s certificates and downstream services support climate-focused companies already working to decarbonise and companies in the food supply chain that require traceability of their agricultural commodities to comply with Scope 3 reporting requirements.
Agreena acquired UK-based Hummingbird Technologies to enable AI-based monitoring and verification by satellite imagery and NDVI algorithms.
At the end of the harvest, verification from the air and ground data determines the impact of the changes made to the land. Agreena then assigns a certain amount of credit to the farmer for these changes.
To ensure transparency and reconciliation across the board and give farmers instant payments for their credits, Agreena has partnered with ZTLment, which is a regulated European payments institute built on blockchain.
Since its Series A funding round one year ago, Agreena has grown its team from 30 to 140 employees and increased the land it covers by 10 times.
Currently, Agreena manages over 600k hectares of farmers who use regenerative agriculture practices across 14-16 countries, with its primary business being in central and eastern Europe, according to co-founder Simon Haldrup.
“Real climate impact is only created at scale and Agreena is perfectly positioned to distribute their carbon farming capabilities across the globe to bring high-quality, verifiable and nature-based carbon credits to the market. Only with carbon removals, can net zero targets be met,” said Alexander Joel-Carbonell, partner at HV Capital.
“In order for the world’s farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture and create a scalable climate impact, the financial rails to support and pay them for it need to be built. Agreena is building out technological and financial services infrastructure throughout the agriculture value chain as the industry increasingly becomes a focal point for decarbonisation efforts. We are on a journey to remove the economic barriers to adoption of regenerative agriculture for farmers and their entire ecosystem – carbon is just the beginning.”
Simon Haldrup, Co-founder and CEO of Agreena.