Channel Partners
August 26, 2024—In 2023, the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) chose seven winners for its seventh Channel Partner Strategic Awards cycle. This funding addresses gaps in the cleantech and agtech ecosystems, with the goal to eliminate barriers startups face on the road to commercialization.
Many awardees focused on supporting pilot and demonstration projects for startups, particularly those with underrepresented founders and helping underserved communities. Here is the story of how one winner used their award and the impact they made in less than a year.
For AgLaunch, aiding minorities through wealth creation and equity has been at the core of its mission since the beginning.
“Our home base, Memphis, was built on cotton production and the use of slavery,” President Pete Nelson said. “We believe you can’t work in agriculture without understanding and addressing that background. Our goal is to rebuild, redeem, and reimagine equity in agriculture by connecting cultural understanding with technological innovation. Breakthroughs happen when a culture is willing to take risks, but we can’t foster that without recognizing the history and intentionally trying to change outcomes for the future.”
AgLaunch focuses on accelerating climate-smart agriculture and works with a network of farmers in the Mississippi Delta region but has added to its network with farmers across the Midwest, Pacific Northwest, Great Plains, and Southern Appalachia. These farmers, a national network, serve as a testing bed for new agriculture technologies.
“Our farmers provide data, field trials, and expertise and in return, they get equity in AgLaunch Farmers LLC, managed by Ag Ventures Alliance a farmer cooperative,” Nelson said. “They own a piece of the business network, and that’s what allows them to support new startups and get market access.”
AgLaunch focuses on accelerating climate-smart agriculture and works with a network of farmers in 10 states. Photo courtesy of AgLaunch
Since it began, the AgLaunch Farmers has members in 10 states and 30% are Black farmers compared to the overall 1.4% of Black farmers in U.S. agriculture as of the 2017 census. AgLaunch Farmers has an ownership stake in 35 portfolio companies and launched several products now utilized by many farms including drones for targeted pesticide application and imagery for problem identification. Other areas of focus include robotics, biology-based nutrients, better pesticides, improved software, and carbon capture.
With its award from the Channel Partner network, AgLaunch set its sights on increasing the number of women and minority farmers in its network in new regions and finding ways to help underserved markets, like those in an urban setting.
“This is an interesting time in the agriculture industry where there are a lot of changes happening from the farm level through to consumers. Having diverse minds with different perspectives in a business network together, we’re crowdsourcing a view of the future that requires all types of people to create,” Nelson said.
With the funding from the award, AgLaunch worked with the University of North Carolina A&T, a historically Black university that focuses on agriculture, to survey minority farmers and identify those interested in joining its network.
“We wanted to get rid of gatekeeper language and demystify the entire process,” Nelson said. “We ask questions like: ‘Are you using Facebook or some other technologies in your daily life?’ That way we can identify people with open-minded thinking.”
Additionally, AgLaunch is working with Black and female farmers already in the network to further support them in conducting trials, as well as supporting Black and female startup founders. This allowed new farmers to participate who might not have had the resources otherwise. Finally, AgLaunch is working with HBCU Cleantech Initiative to scope out the idea of doing a similar equity model in renewable energy startup adoption in underserved communities.
Nelson says the Channel Partner network support is flexible, so it allows AgLaunch to leverage that funding to get more investments.
“We use the money to seed new ideas and leverage that for follow-on funding,” Nelson said. “Being part of the Channel Partner network has given us access to people who think similar to us. That’s been really good.”