Israeli agtech start-up raises seed funding from Lool Ventures

Farm Dog, an agtech company producing sensors and analytical software for farmers in Europe and the US, bagged $750,000 in seed funding with Lool Ventures leading the round.

Farm Dog, an Israel-based agtech provider of precision sensors and analytical software for farmers in Europe and the US, has secured $750,000 in seed funding in a round led by Lool Ventures.

The company aims to serve small and medium-sized farms, which tend to “grow a different set of crops, operate different equipment and have different financial considerations than its larger counterparts,” it said in a statement.

“The fact is, most technologies that help farmers grow more with less are only available to the largest of farms. This leaves over 10 million farms in the US and Europe and millions more around the world searching for solutions to maintain their competitiveness,” said Liron Brish, Farm Dog’s chief executive.

Funding will be used to enhance the company’s technology and grow its team. The company expects that its precision agriculture solutions will save up to 25 percent of water, fertiliser and pesticide use while improving crop yield.

“Managing inputs in real time can save water, money and time which is important for every farmer, not just the big ones, and Farm Dog is working towards filling that market gap,” Carole Jett, former deputy chief of staff at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and a Farm Dog advisor, said in a statement.

Farm Dog expects the market for its solutions to expand over time as farmers in the developed world face increasing pressure to adopt sustainability technologies and the number of small and medium-sized farming enterprises in the developing world increases due to consolidation.

The company embarked on a seed funding search in April this year. A $750,000 seed funding round compares well with the median seed round of $250,000 achieved by agriculture start-ups in the first half of this year, according to AgFunder’s Midyear AgTech Investing Report.