WeFarm Raises $13M To Grow Global Farming Network

The London-headquartered Wefarm network for independent farmers has raised $13 million in a Series A funding round led by True Ventures, TechCrunch reported on Tuesday (Oct. 29).

The round brings the total raised to $20 million. In addition to True Ventures, participants in the funding round included AgFunder and June Fund along with earlier investors LocalGlobe, ADV and Norrsken Foundation.

Wefarm will use the funds to add more farmers and expand solutions to assist the private farming community.

“We are building an ecosystem for global small-scale agriculture, on behalf of farmers,” Wefarm Founder and CEO Kenny Ewan told the news outlet. “This is probably the biggest industry on earth,” he said, noting it accounts for about 75 to 80 percent of the global supply chain, “and yet no one has built anything for them. This is significant on many levels.”

There are some 500 million small-scale farms globally, Ewan said, with about 1 billion people working to produce crops like rice, coffee, cattle and vegetables. 

“For 90 percent of our users, we are the only digital service they use, so we have to make sure we can fulfill their trust,” Ewan said. “This is a network of trust for the biggest industry on earth and we have to make sure it works well.”

Wefarm enables small-scale farmers to connect with one another to solve problems, share ideas and spread innovation. Its nearly 2 million registered users generated $1 million in sales in the company’s first eight months of operation by connecting farmers to local suppliers.

Wefarm’s growth is “faster … than both Amazon and eBay in their early stages,” Ewan said in the report.

Last month, Mastercard and Rabobank partnered to offer a digital platform to 1 million farmers in emerging markets. The product will make it easier for farmers to sell produce and builds on the Mastercard Farmer Network. Rabobank’s Banking for Food vision reaches agricultural regions in Europe, Africa and Asia.

The partnership will grow across Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt and India. Farmers in these countries have limited finance options.