Unsurprisingly, therefore, in such times the focus and interest on corporate venturing only increases and the final member of agriculture’s ABCD quartet, has this week joined the ranks.
Max Clegg has become head of LDC Innovations, the corporate venture capital unit of agricultural commodities trader Louis Dreyfus Company’s downstream division now run by Thomas Couteaudier.
Dreyfus is the D of the so-called ABCD quartet of global commodity traders that includes Archer Daniels Midland Company, Bunge and Cargill, which have been active CVCs for years.
LDC Innovations will invest in food and farming firms while also announcing a change of head for its innovation business.
Ian McIntosh, CEO of Louis Dreyfus, said: “Over the coming months, we will invest in early-stage companies with the potential to transform the food and agriculture industries.”
Like its peers, Dreyfus has been looking further down the food chain in response to declining profits in trading and shipping crops, according to Reuters. Food companies, whether Tyson Foods, Danone or Smithfield, have also been expanding their venture activities, either directly or as limited partners of specialist VCs, such as Cultivian Sandbox, DCVC and Agfunder.
As have other parts of the ecosystem, such as equipment makers, Kubota, John Deere or Yamaha, and financial services specialists, such as Rabobank and Farm Credit Canada (FCC), which last month partnered with venture capital firm Forage Capital to raised a C$100m ($72m) fund.
And as Batukhtina said for March’s GCV report: “The status quo in ag and [its related] financial sectors are changing. There is a shortage of labour and whether we will exist as demand from customers is for smaller machines not big machines with huge margins.”
These changes could bring in new types of related corporation, such as Husqvarna and Stihl, which make robotic garden machinery and have been expanding their venturing activities in the past two years.
We are delighted to welcome Huqvarna and its corporate venturing head, Mark Johnson, as the latest member of the GCV Leadership Society and look forward to hearing more on this topic in a discussion at the GCV Digital Forum 2.0 on 29 September.
