News in brief: Kenyan agrictech start-up FarmWorks raised $4.1 million in a pre-series A funding round led by Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund. It operates an outgrower scheme with over 1,200 smallholder farmers, providing access to farm inputs and a market for their produce.
A Kenyan agrictech start-up, FarmWorks, has raised $4.1 million in a pre-series A round led by Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund. Other investors include Livelihood Impact Fund, Vested World, some family offices and angel investors. So far, the company’s total equity funding amounts to $5.6 million, according to a TechCrunch coverage of the news.
FarmWorks provides farmers with access to farm inputs, and a market for their produce, through its outgrower scheme which has over 1,200 smallholder farmers on board.
Yi Li, CEO, and co-founder of FarmWorks, stated that the funding will be used to strengthen the company’s data analytics capabilities and improve AI usage to enhance production and influence planting and lending decisions.
Yi Li founded the startup with Peter Muthee in 2020, and their community of outgrowers has helped them build a supply chain network that ensures timely delivery of quality produce. The company plans to expand its network of contract farmers to other regions within Kenya, in addition to the two counties in the central region where it currently operates 16 collection centers.
Li notes that the company is transforming both its farming practices and income by introducing higher-value crops like sugar snaps and snow peas. She adds that the decision to expand the outgrower scheme is strategic because it picked up quicker than anticipated, resulting in shipping 400 tons of farm produce monthly on 175 acres of land.
The company had initially begun as a farm, growing its own crops, but the founders saw a bigger gap in the industry and decided to step in. Its former farms now serve as training centers.
Besides buying farmers’ produce for export and local sales, FarmWorks’ model includes providing farmers with farm inputs and pest control services. Member farmers can also obtain farming equipment like drip irrigation kits on loan.
They also help farmers find the market, becoming vertically integrated in both the production and distribution side of commercial agriculture.
The startup claims to teach farmers about good agricultural practices, demonstrated in their own trial farms. One of the company’s core values is built on the belief that the significant issue facing farmers in Kenya is production and low yield caused by poor farming practices and years of soil degradation. Therefore, their aim is to unlock production by boosting farmersâ capacity.
