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iFarmer Secures $1.5 Million Foreign Funding to Strengthen Agri Value Chain
The investment will support iFarmer’s working capital requirements, enabling it to expand agricultural input distribution and strengthen market linkages for farmers across Bangladesh.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Farming Under Solar: How Agriphotovoltaics Can Transform Rural Livelihoods in India
As India scales up solar energy, a critical question has emerged: Can this transition deliver clean power without displacing farmers from their land? According to Laxmi Sharma, Bidisha Banerjee, Subhodeep Basu and Ashok Gulati at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, the country's renewable energy expansion has been led by large, ground-mounted solar projects, often located on agricultural land. But while this model has been effective in scaling solar capacity, it has also created a disconnect between the energy and agriculture sectors, while limiting participation among farmers. They explore how agriphotovoltaics (Agri-PV) can address these issues by enabling the cultivation of crops beneath or between panel arrays, and discuss the pros and cons of different Agri-PV operating models.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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African Development Bank Group Invests Over €7.5 Million in Breega Africa Seed I Fund to Support African Innovative Startups
The fund will focus on five key markets, namely Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Francophone Africa, which are major hubs on the continent.
- Categories
- Investing, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Shell Foundation and Startup Discovery School Launch the West Africa Aggregator Service Platform to Boost the Incomes of Women Smallholder Farmers
It will test service-based, shared and layaway delivery models designed to reduce upfront costs, distribute risk and make proven agricultural technologies viable for women farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Environment
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Press Release: Sistema.Bio Raises $53 Million to Launch FarmCarbon—An Innovative Funding Vehicle Aimed at Expanding Climate Finance for Smallholder Farmers and Accelerating Methane Mitigation
FarmCarbon will facilitate financing for more than 90,000 Sistema.bio digesters on farms worldwide to capture and destroy methane, creating emissions reductions of over 9 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Global
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Western AI Models “Fail Spectacularly” in Farms and Forests Abroad
Big Tech’s AI tools trained on Western data often can’t recognize local crops, forests, or farming conditions without adaptation to local environments, and there is a risk that a focus on profit by big tech firms and large agriculture companies will hurt farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Tech Firms and AI Farming Tools ‘Playing With the Food System’, Warns Thinktank
Google, Microsoft and Amazon among companies using algorithms and AI to influence what crops are grown and how, say critics.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Global
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Press Release: IDB Lab to Invest $8 Million in AgVentures III Fund to Advance Agtech Innovation
Fund manager SP Ventures' impact thesis is to generate social benefits for vulnerable populations by supporting technologies that democratize access to productivity and efficiency for small- and medium-sized farmers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Investing
- Region
- Latin America
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