September was one of our biggest months of the year. Check out what happened and what caught our attention across the AgriFoodTech world.
🏆 GLOCAL Game Changers 2026: The Final Pitch
On September 2, the 7th edition of GLOCAL Game Changers held its Final Pitch at the Santa Fe Business Forum in Rosario, Argentina, broadcast live as a hybrid session. Nine finalist startups took the stage representing Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, showcasing solutions spanning biotechnology, biologicals, livestock, food ingredients, artificial intelligence, precision agriculture, and agricultural finance.
They pitched to an outstanding jury: Sandra Sainz (Sonen Capital), Alex Bondar (Acre Venture Partners), Bruno Vitali Bello (ADM Ventures), and Tom Greene (Corteva Catalyst™).
The 9 finalists of GLOCAL Game Changers 2026:
✫ Secuoian (Colombia) | ✫ Bio Natural Solutions – BNS (Peru) | ✫ Typcal (Brazil) | ✫ Agscore (Brazil) | ✫ BEAM CropTech (Argentina) | ✫ BOLD AI SAS (Argentina) | ✫ Ergo Bioscience (Argentina) | ✫ Norman Agricultura Cognitiva (Mexico) | ✫ Gurí (Uruguay)
This edition is supported by Corteva Catalyst™ as the Main Partner.
✨ Relive the Final Pitch Day on our YouTube channel →
A lot more ahead of us! ➡️ Stay tuned for the GLOCAL AgriFoodTech Map, coming in November.
🌾 Also in Rosario: GLOCAL at the Santa Fe Business Forum
The Final Pitch was part of a broader week at the Santa Fe Business Forum 2026, a five-day event connecting companies and investors from around the world, with B2B meetings, investment rounds, training sessions, and visits to productive circuits.
- Beatriz Ponce de León moderated the panel “From Innovation to Adoption: How to Scale AgTech in Latin America,” alongside Alex Bondar, Bruno Vitali Bello, and Mark Brooks.
- Bernardo Milesy moderated “The Next AgriFoodTech Opportunity: Why Latin America and Why Now?”, with Francisco Jardim, Victor Favaro, Sandra Sainz, and Tomás Denecken.
🌱 GLOCAL Community Day in Uranga, Santa Fe
We also hosted the GLOCAL Community Day in Uranga, Santa Fe, where capital met real innovation in the field. The program included networking, roundtables with investors, founders, and AgTech leaders, a session on 2026 capital flow trends, a classic Argentine asado, and a tour of crops in the field. A space to connect and nurture the ecosystem. Thank you to everyone who joined!
📅 Coming Up Next
🚀 AgTech Revolution Networking Day
As Ecosystem Partner of this NERA initiative, we’re joining a space that will bring together startups, companies, academia, banks, funds, and institutions. Featuring an AI and technology panel and a Pitch Session with the finalists of the AgTech Revolution Open Call.
📅 September 30 | 4:30 PM | 📍 Malloy’s Costanera, Buenos Aires
👉 Register here
📌 URUCAP Private Capital Forum
📆 October 8
The second edition of the Private Capital Forum organized by ANII, Uruguay XXI, and URUCAP, with the support of Uruguay Innova, takes place in Montevideo on October 8. The forum gathers local and international private capital leaders around an agenda covering Venture Capital, Angel Investors, Private Equity, M&A, and strategic networking, with a focus on investment trends and opportunities in Uruguay and the region.
Our Managing Partner, Beatriz Ponce de León, will join the panel “Breaking Borders: The Impact of Regional Venture Capital in Consolidating the Latin American Market,” alongside Eric Acher (Monashees), Antonio Peña (Kamay Ventures), Clorinda Mántaras (Sancor Seguros Ventures), and Miguel Furian Campos (Canary).
💼 From Our Portfolio
Frizata: How to Scale a 100% Online Food Business
José Robledo, partner at Frizata (our Rosario-based frozen food portfolio company) shared the keys to scaling a direct-to-consumer (D2C) model with no physical stores and no supermarket presence. The formula: a “stocker” customer profile buying 7–8 boxes every 45 days, a cold-chain distribution network across Argentina, and an obsession with customer acquisition cost and recurrence. A practical playbook for any FoodTech founder thinking about D2C.
Auravant Turns 10 and Unveils a New Identity
One of our portfolio companies is celebrating a decade of growth: Auravant, the digital agriculture platform now present in over 100 countries and operating across more than 11 million productive hectares, marked its 10th anniversary with a refreshed brand identity. Ten years of planting together and much more ahead. 🚀
Puna Bio Takes a Step Toward the Global Renewable Fuels Value Chain
Together with Bunge, the Argentine biotech showcased safflower — a low-carbon-intensity (LCI) crop capable of reducing emissions by up to 90% compared to conventional diesel — without competing with food production. A milestone connecting two of our recurring themes of interest: the rise of LCI agriculture and the growing role of LatAm companies in the decarbonization of transportation.
Kilimo Explores Alliances in Shanghai
As part of the “Biosilk Road” initiative — a knowledge and technology corridor connecting Argentina and China — Juan Carlos Abdala (Kilimo’s CTO) joined over 100 Latin American entrepreneurs at a Demo Day organized by the Civil Association for Argentine-Chinese Cooperation. Key observation: China’s largest companies are committed to ESG standards adapted to different settings, a signal increasingly aligned with the sustainability frameworks LatAm ClimateTech companies work with every day.
News from Climate Week NYC
Two of our portfolio companies were part of this global event:
Ucrop.it made its case for what comes next after the pledge: as over 40 food and beverage companies signed onto outcome-based regenerative agriculture programs, Ucrop.it positioned itself as the evidence layer — declared data, satellite validation and explicit methodology combined into one audit-grade Crop Story per grower, reportable across SAI/FSA, EUDR, 45Z, Scope 3 and TNFD frameworks, collected once at origin with no burden on the producer.
Kilimo joined PepsiCo, AgriCapture, and BlueRisk at Regen House for a working session on water resilience in agricultural supply chains — one of the most underaddressed dimensions of climate-smart sourcing. The key message: water risk needs to be embedded into ag supply chain programs with the same rigor as carbon.
🔎 Featured AgriFoodTech & ClimateTech Rounds and Deals
Finanex Raises $30M to Scale Agricultural Financing in Paraguay
Paraguayan agfintech Finanex secured US$30 million from Accial Capital to scale its agricultural financing operations, with plans to quintuple its loan volume to small and medium producers. A signal that agricultural fintech is expanding across Latin America’s diverse productive ecosystems.
Lilac Agriculture Raises $2.3M to Solve the Inoculants “Black Box” Problem
Lilac Agriculture closed a $2.3M round to bring transparency and standardization to biological inoculant application, one of the most opaque steps in crop production. A relevant bet for the biologicals space, where efficacy data and traceability are becoming as important as the product itself.
Robigo Bio Raises from Leaps by Bayer to Commercialize Agricultural Biologicals
Robigo Bio secured investment from Leaps by Bayer to advance its biological crop protection solutions toward commercial scale, another signal that corporate agribusiness is betting on biologicals through strategic venture investment rather than purely internal R&D.
SWEN Terra Fund Reaches €125M, Makes Second Investment
One year after its launch, SWEN Capital Partners’ Terra Fund has raised €125 million and made its second investment, targeting AgriFood companies combining sustainability impact with commercial returns. A signal of growing European patient capital flowing into the AgriFood transition.
Minerva Foods Becomes an Investor in Grão Direto
South America’s largest beef exporter acquired a stake in Grão Direto, the Brazilian agfintech that digitally traded 12 million tons of grains in 2025, with investors including Bayer, ADM, Cargill, Amaggi, Kaszek, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. A secondary transaction marking a successful early-stage VC exit, and a sign that Brazil’s agricultural incumbents are now active participants in the agfintech ecosystem.
Raízen Completes Sale of Argentina Operations for US$1.42B
Raízen — the Cosan-Shell joint venture currently in extrajudicial restructuring — completed the sale of its Argentine operations (primarily fuel distribution) to entities controlled by Swiss commodity giant Mercuria Energy Group for US$1.42 billion. A significant move in the restructuring of LatAm’s energy and biofuels landscape.
📰 Industry Highlights
What Argentina’s Agrochemical Industry Is Asking For
An interview with Federico Landgraf, Executive Director of CASAFE (Argentina’s agrochemical industry chamber) in which he calls for a new national law regulating the use of plant protection products, including a “veedor”: an independent, municipally-appointed professional with the authority to monitor and halt spray applications in peri-urban areas in real time. Beyond the regulatory proposal, Landgraf also addresses the rise of biological inputs, acknowledging that the biological market is growing faster than conventional chemistry, while emphasizing complementarity rather than replacement. A grounded, industry-side perspective on two topics increasingly relevant to the AgriFood ecosystem.
Río Cuarto’s AgTech Cluster Attracts Its First International Company for Real-Farm Validation
The Cluster AgTech of Río Cuarto, together with the CREA network, launched “Real Farms | Real Farmers”, a program inviting international startups to validate their technologies directly on productive farms in the region. The first arrival is EarthOptic (USA), part of a cohort of six international companies visiting between September 2026 and January 2027. A concrete step in Argentina’s ambition to become a global hub for AgTech validation.
Tarken Launches “Estrategista,” an AI Tool to Reinvent Agricultural Credit Decisions
Brazilian agfintech Tarken — which maintains a database of over 200,000 producers and serves 40% of fertilizer distributors above R$100M in revenue — launched “Estrategista,” an AI tool that allows clients to converse with their own credit systems, integrating data on producers, crops, regional history, and financial behavior. Growing at 20% per month, Tarken is positioning itself as the AI infrastructure layer for agricultural credit in Brazil.
Los Grobo Shows Signs of Recovery
Los Grobo Agropecuaria (Argentina’s once-dominant grain trading company, currently in bankruptcy proceedings) reported a positive EBITDA of US$5.3 million in the last quarter of fiscal year 2026, a key milestone for its rescue proposal to be presented in 2027. The company now operates with over 970 clients and 689,000 tons stored annually, with Brazilian group Amaggi appearing as the most likely strategic investor.
🍎 Food for Thought
The Constraints Holding AgriFood Back, and How to Solve Them
AgFunder lays out the structural bottlenecks limiting AgriFood innovation — from fragmented data and lack of interoperability to the difficulty of scaling in complex, regulated supply chains — and explains how its new fund is targeting companies that address system-level constraints rather than isolated point solutions. A useful framework for anyone building or investing in the sector. →
🫱🏼🫲🏽 From our partners
Semana del Clima Rosario
📆 October 14
The second edition of Semana del Clima Rosario takes place in this city, bringing together experts, governments, companies, international organizations, scientists, and civil society representatives around the climate agenda. An event organized by our partners worth following for anyone working at the intersection of sustainability and business in the region.
🧬 Crossing Over 2026 LATAM BioExpo
📆 October 21–23 | Buenos Aires
The first international expo connecting Latin America’s full biotech ecosystem (science, industry, startups, and investment) takes place at the Centro de Convenciones de Buenos Aires. Three days of conferences, business matchmaking, and startup awards spanning biomanufacturing, AI applied to biology, agrobiotechnology, and sustainable bioeconomy.
🌱 Climate Week Argentina
📆 November 9/13 | Buenos Aires
Climate Week Argentina returns for a new edition: a federal, decentralized platform that curates and connects dozens of events organized by multiple organizations around a shared agenda, bringing together entrepreneurs, scientists, producers, governments, companies, and investors. Co-organized by ClimaTech Argentina, La.Impact, Antom.la, and the global Climate Week Network. More info
Thanks for reading. As always, the best conversations happen after the newsletter. We’d love to hear your thoughts!
GLOCAL TEAM
