Traive, an agricultural and financial tech company that graduated from the Techstars Farm to Fork program in St. Paul, will travel to San Francisco next week as a finalist in the World Agritech Innovation Summit.
Traive is a digital lending platform focused on helping farmers get the capital they need to invest in their businesses, including introducing technology to help them become more efficient and productive. Traive has partnered with big agribusinesses, getting access to data that provides an inside look at farmer behavior and loan information. Using that data, Traive is building financial models that will allow it to assess farmers’ risks and connect them with lenders.
Traive looks to take risk assessment to a new level, incorporating more data points, CEO Fabricio Pezente said.
The World Agritech Innovation Summit comes at a time when Traive is finishing up a $1.5 million funding round. With investors in the room, Pezente hopes to demonstrate its value and potential. Pitching Traive on a global agritech stage means something special to Pezente, who said the opportunity “connects some dots” for the company.
“This is a very important way to validate what we are doing,” Pezente said. They’ll be one of three fintech companies there, which he said surprised the team. “The agri fintechs are gaining traction worldwide. Now the fintechs are really popping up. … This is an interesting way to say the farming sector needs fintech.”
Pezente is from Brazil and has a background in investment banking. He attended MIT to study how to apply new technologies to finance. He’s drawn to financing in the agriculture industry because of the pressing challenge of feeding a growing global population. The United Nations estimates there will be 9.8 billion people in 2050.
“This is going to be an amazing challenge to feed all these people, especially in developing countries. Most people understand this growth is going to come from increasing productivity, not increasing planted area. To have this productivity, you need to invest in different technologies,” he said.
To rise to the occasion, farmers will need to be able to invest in new technology, but it’s difficult to think about those kinds of investments when farmers have thin margins, Pezente said. “Finance is the basis for all the other innovation.”
