Funding provides expanding opportunities for FBN members

SAN CARLOS, Calif. — Farmers Business Network will make significant investments in technology, data science and hire over 300 employees with $300 million in Series G funding.

“What’s significant about this fundraising is it is led by Fidelity and Fidelity invests in businesses with financial strength,” said Charles Baron, co-founder of FBN. “This is probably the best funding round that’s been put together in agriculture given the size and caliber of investors.”

Currently FBN employs over 800 people.

“Our company is going to grow substantially to fuel all the new initiatives FBN has in the works and to provide more local coverage and support for our farmers,” Baron said. “We want to find the best folks in the industry to serve farmers, so we will be hiring everyone from truck drivers to ag chemical specialists to seed breeders to veterinarians to nutritionists.”

ADM made an equity investment as part of FBN’s latest capital funding raise.

“It’s exciting to have that support and with that investment not only is it symbolically meaningful, but it comes with a broad set of partnerships, as well,” Baron said. “It focuses on developing end markets for sustainable grains which includes carbon and regenerative ag premiums for practices like no-till.”

ADM and FBN working together is a substantial change for farmers.

“Using the FBN technology to source the grains from farms and sell them via the ADM infrastructure to end buyers will be a seed change in the sustainability world for agriculture,” Baron said. “Now you have a buyer at the scale of ADM and the markets they’re participating in and you have the technology platform at the scale of FBN who can go all the way back to the farm.”

ADM has the infrastructure for some products that FBN doesn’t sell a lot of now including fertilizers and animal feeds, Baron said.

“The manufacturer has to be close to the farm because you can’t afford to ship it too far,” Baron said.

“Take FBN’s network of producers and our digital purchasing system and combine that with ADM’s feed and fertilizer facilities, it’s really exciting because it enables us to serve farms around the country,” he said.

Farmers have the opportunity to sell grain through FBN’s Gradable platform.

“The field data can be transferred if a farmer wants to when he sells the grain,” Baron said. “A buyer can be in the market for an environmental attribute like carbon, no-till or a regenerative practice and that can be tracked and verified through the FBN Gradable platform.”

For example, Baron said, POET has been developing a low-carbon ethanol.

“They want to lower the carbon intensity of ethanol to expand the ethanol market,” he said. “By sourcing regeneratively-grown corn for its ethanol facility we can verify meaningful carbon reduction in that ethanol and POET can access markets in places like California which has tougher rules.”

FBN plans to increase the number products available through FBN Direct.

“FBN Direct is the largest online seller of crop protection products and seed,” Baron said. “We added animal health last year which we are continuing to expand.”

The company has also developed its own products including biostimulants and chemicals, Baron said.

“We became a manufacturer so the industry can’t interfere with FBN by threatening our supply,” he said. “That gives us the ability to lower prices to farmers because we’re in more control of our supply chain.”

Another area of investment for FBN is their warehouse structure.

“We want to get products to farmers in 24 to 48 hours,” Baron said.

“We’ve hired a logistics team because we want to be world class in logistics so the farmer knows exactly when products will get to his farm and it works like magic,” he said. “We want the farmers to see on the FBN web store before they buy where the product is and when it can get to the farm.”

Delivering bulk products to farmers at the designated time is important to FBN.

“We never want to create an experience with a customer where he bought something and expected it at a certain time and it didn’t get there,” Baron said. “Then we’ve failed and that’s a terrible experience that we don’t want to happen.”

Farmers will also see more investment going into the FBN Financial segment of the company.

“About a year and a half ago we started offering crop insurance and farm lending including land loans, equipment loans and operating lines of credit,” Baron said.

“That really took off because FBN is technology driven so we can offer lower rates since our costs are lower and drive savings in interest rates,” he said. “We’re building that into an end-to-end digital experience to make it as easy and convenient as possible to get the best financing to the farmers.”

Joining FBN is free and close to 34,000 farmers in the United States, Canada and Australia are members of the network.

“We have over 450 farmer community builders who sell FBN products including seed, chemicals, animal feed and animal health,” Baron said. “Farmers want to do business with FBN and support local business and now you get to do both.”

The community builders give FBN members a local point of service and support.

“You are supporting a local entrepreneur and at the same time using FBN technology to get a fair price,” Baron said.

“The most important local business is your farm — that’s where it all starts,” he said. “If your farm is not thriving, then your town is not thriving.”

For more information about Farmers Business Network, call 844-200-FARM or go to www.fbn.com.