Bushel® closes $47 million investment round

Date:04-22-2021

Bushel, an independently owned software company and leading provider of software technology solutions for growers, grain buyers, ag retailers, protein producers and food companies, announced closings on its $47 million Series C investment round. The oversubscribed round was led by Lewis & Clark AgriFood, a St. Louis-based food and agriculture focused investment firm, and Continental Grain Company, a global holding company focused on agriculture, food and protein production. Participation from new and existing investors include Cargill, Scoular, Germin8 Ventures and others. In addition, Consolidated Grain and Barge Co. is expected to close their investment in the round in the coming weeks.

The infusion of growth capital and continued partnership of the syndicate will introduce payments, credit, trading offerings and increased data services, including capabilities to help consumer brands sustainably source commodities in the global grain supply chain. The funding will also accelerate Bushel’s current product offerings that currently deliver value to growers, commodity buyers, ag retailers and consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs).

“We are excited to invest further into Bushel alongside some of our high-value partners like Cargill and Scoular,” said Chris Abbott, Co-Head of Continental Grain Ventures. “Bushel is one of the leading independent software companies in agriculture, and serves as the critical link connecting growers to grain buyers, processors, brands and consumers. This funding accelerates deployment of new offerings and embedded capabilities throughout the food and ag value chain. We believe it results in better outcomes for growers and the supply chain.”

Bushel’s platform now reaches 40% of grain origination in the United States, resulting in inarguably the largest technology network effect among growers and grain buyers in the U.S. today. $22 billion of grain is contracted annually within Bushel’s ecosystem. Bushel’s collaborative ethos will continue to accelerate adding new participants throughout the value chain, particularly CPGs and consumer brands, that will benefit from upstream and midstream data insights and help deliver on sustainability promises.

“Bushel is here to win for our customers and their growers,” said Jake Joraanstad, CEO and Co-founder of Bushel. “We are here to build on the agriculture industry’s century of infrastructure investment. We’re here not to disrupt but instead, to collaborate and help lead the industry into the digital age with strategies that make sense and provide value for all stakeholders in the ag and food value chain. We serve as the independent integration hub that saves businesses significant manual effort, time and expense, while also strengthening the relationships between growers and agribusinesses through secure, proven and easy to use software products and services.”

“As Food and Agriculture specialist investors, we see Bushel as the leader in connecting disparate data systems in the ‘messy middle’ of the food and agriculture supply chain,” said Larry Page, Managing Director of Lewis & Clark Agrifood. “Digital innovation has landed on the farm, but few companies are focused on the digital side of agriculture (or lack thereof) from the farm gate and beyond. We hear so much noise in the space with very little real traction. As Bushel has consistently gained market share, it has become clear that the ability to connect data with physical grain has significant value for many stakeholders in our food system.”

Monthly, 60,000 growers use Bushel’s products and services and nearly 2,000 grain buying locations across the U.S. and Canada trust Bushel to power their grower-facing and internal software products. Bushel’s platform integrates into multiple grain accounting systems, trading desks, farm management systems, insurance companies and market feeds to allow different software systems to work with each other. Current grain data-sharing processes are manual and fragmented, resulting in lost productivity and revenue potential. Bushel’s technologies aim to solve some of the industry’s biggest challenges and bring the grain supply chain together through connected, standardized and properly-permissioned data.

“As a grower myself, and a daily user of Bushel’s products and services, it’s been rewarding to have a front row seat to the work our team is doing to create a great platform for the existing food industry,” said Ryan Raguse, President and Co-founder of Bushel. “This also comes with a deep responsibility to be stewards of the data that flows through the digital infrastructure we’re building. In addition to the responsibility of carrying the data of our customers and their growers, Bushel’s platform also carries the data of many of our employees’ farming operations, including my own. We will continue to set high standards for data security, ownership and transparency in order to protect and empower our customers, our families and the broader agriculture industry.”

In addition to their investment, Cargill has committed to using the Bushel platform to power select internal and external digital tools. Scoular has been using the Bushel platform since 2018. Consolidated Grain and Barge Co. is currently exploring opportunities for utilization of Bushel’s suite of services.

Bushel’s product suite includes its flagship mobile app, websites, trading tools, market feeds, API services and a custom software division focused on agriculture. Bushel has been focused on building software since the company was founded in 2011.

About Bushel

Bushel is an independently owned software company and leading provider of software technology solutions for growers, grain buyers, ag retailers, protein producers and food companies, headquartered in Fargo, N.D. Since launching in 2017, Bushel’s platform has grown rapidly, now powering nearly 2,000 grain facilities across the U.S. and Canada with real-time business information for their producers. Monthly, 60,000 producers utilize Bushel products and services. Bushel is focused on bringing innovative software products and solutions to the agriculture industry.