From using robotics to plant crops to installing AI to identify and pick ripened fruit in greenhouses, agriculture-technology is a booming business and its becoming an increasingly popular asset class for Family Offices.

Valued at $17.5M in 2019 and now predicted to add more than $500BN to the agriculture industry over the next decade, the global agritech market is growing at an incredible pace and it is offering the perfect Impact Investing case study to Family Offices interested in making both a social impact and a financial return.

Mckinsey went as far as suggesting that AgriTech could offer $500BN in additional value to the global GDP of Agriculture by 2030, one of seven sectors that, fuelled by connectivity, could contribute $3TRN to global GDP over the next decade.

£1.3BN in UK agritech deals were achieved in 2021 alone in the same year that the US and UAE joint Agriculture Innovation Mission announced an $8BN investment in agritech to make farming cleaner in the lead-up to COP27 and the agritech action is not exclusively reserved for governments.

Ritesh Agarwal’s Family Office recently announced a $2M investment in agritech start-up Agrowave, which builds a farm-to-business mobility supply chain focusing on first-mile logistics and trade supply.

Lakshi Mittal’s Family Office also invested in a digital start-up which was, in this instance, set up to give farmers more power in agricultural markets, dubbed ‘the google for Farmers’.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation earmarked $40M to fund farmers’ access to seeds that have built-in resistance to a changing climate.

DNS Capital, a Chicago-based single Family Office announced an investment in Shenandoah Growers, a leading indoor agriculture business.

CT-based Armonia directly invested in Utz, a non-profit sustainable farming organisation.

Ceniarth, a single Family Office in London invested in Kheyti, an agritech start-up that is helping small farmers earn consistent incomes by offering precision farming technology.

We also recently attended an AgriTech focused event in the community where we heard of a Family Office backing a start-up in America, focused on repurposing food waste as animal feed, another Family Office was digitising the beef trade through BitCow and many more are participating in the agritech revolution by funding anything from growing meat in laboratories to using acoustic technology to attract bees.

There is a price attached to saving the world and its making Family Offices an enviable return. Are you joining them?