Platform Farmers Business Network prepares arrival in Brazil

The North American platform, Farmers Business Network (FBN), which analyzes agrochemical applications, is preparing to launch in Brazil.

Valued at US$3.9 billion, FBN sells and distributes inputs for 33,000 producers in the United States, Canada, and Australia, covering a total of 34,300 hectares.

FBN is a large ecosystem of three platforms and is already considered one of the biggest “unicorns” in agribusiness worldwide. It began with analytics applications in 2014, starting in 2016 with the sale of inputs directly to the producer, and, finally, in 2018, also offering the sale of financial products.

The system gathers information from the various machines on the farm: tractors, harvesters, and agricultural implements in a single environment. FBN complements this data with new insights from satellite images, comparing production with nearby properties.

This information points out whether each herbicide worked, whether the planting was well executed, which seed variety worked best, and whether the harvest was good or bad. “It is not rocket science. What we did was to unite all the available data on a single platform and make it accessible to producers,” said Felipe Yazbek, head of New Business Development.

The company set up a marketplace – a distribution channel combined with market intelligence.

FBN set up 25 warehouses, 500 sales representatives, and the entire logistics infrastructure with distribution teams to supply its customers.

“Eighty to ninety percent of the pesticides used by farmers already have expired patents,” stated Yazbek. He said that he went after the records already authorized by US agencies and went to China to outsource the production, creating his brand.

For example, just for soy and corn the company has more than 20 registrations of generic products. The startup also bought a seed company, vaccines for cattle, mineral salts for cattle, among others.

Now, the startup has announced a series G round of investment that received $300 million, led by Fidelity Investments and accompanied by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM). With this round, the company reached a total of US$870 million raised since its founding, in 2014, and reached a valuation of US$3.9 billion.

“My job is to find new opportunities for FBN. We are looking at Brazil and India, which are two major players in agriculture. We are seeing legal, legal, and regulatory issues. In addition, we are in contact with professionals who understand agribusiness in Brazil, providing market studies and competition analysis,” Yazbek revealed in recent interviews.

(Editing by Leonardo Gottems, reporter for AgroPages)