The Golden Egg in the Golden Age: AgFunder Moving Agriculture Forward
In the face of environmental doomsayers, the rapidly developing profession of ecological eschatology, prevailing awareness of food source, distribution, nutrition and specifically relevant to where I write this – in the growing drought-crisis of California, the tech world welcomes not a moment too soon the crowd-sourced platform for life changing and affirming agricultural technologies simply called AgFunder. I sat down to speak with co-founder and CEO Rob Leclerc PhD about the company.
Rob received his PhD is computational biology from Yale and after working with a few agricultural projects the issue of funding kept coming up. A few steps later, and bringing Michael Dean of SeedRock Agriculture with him, AgFunder was conceived. This platform allows a breaking-away from communication barriers for an array of serious and on-the-edge ag-companies and their potential investors, just like the known Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The platform is democratic and allows the best ideas to succeed, everyone wins. One of the more far-reaching aspects in talking with Rob about AgFunder was a clear sense that it has the ability to bypass automatic partisanship between Big-Ag companies and little farmer alike. Money and efficient technology is entangled, and the bottom-line isn’t as maniacal as profit per usual without lacking the thought of risking sustainability or health.
The implications are staggering, and AgFunder has its hand in projects all around the world. With so much knowledge in agriculture, this platform brings to life the merging of the technology today to form, and I don’t say this lightly, a new agricultural and business paradigm. Meeting and learning about these new possibilities gave me a breath of hope for this planets production to match population. To name a few projects, there are ways to conserve tons of water while farmer’s monetize off of said conservation while keeping their water rights(SWIIM). There is genetically modified products that do not mean harm, but allow foods to grow in environments once thought unsuitable for crops(TeraViva). there are companies that have learned to consolidate time three-fold when creating nutrient rich soil and getting rid of waste(California Safe Soil).
All it takes is further inspiration, further searching, for surely there is more to come in agriculturally advancement. The products, and by-products of nature are not merely close to being fully understood, that could unlock a door to a better world. However, AgFunder, with its matrix to harbor ideas, consult, and make the reality of a better place had me leaving their offices in San Francisco with feelings beyond noble on the prospects of a future for generations, a feeling I’ve not had for sometime.
