Hello from the field!
October brought events across the region, key moves in the sector, and a few milestones worth sharing. Here’s what happened and what caught our attention.
đź“… Featured Appearances
GLOCAL at URUCAP Private Capital Forum, Montevideo
Our Managing Partner Beatriz Ponce de León joined the panel “Breaking Boundaries: The Impact of Regional Venture Capital on the Consolidation of the Latin American Market” at the 2nd edition of this leading private capital forum in Uruguay, organized by ANII, Uruguay XXI, and URUCAP. October 8 | Montevideo
We Invest + UBS Breakfast, Montevideo
Beatriz Ponce de LeĂłn joined the breakfast organized by We Invest LATAM and UBS, alongside Sylvia Chebi (ThalesLab), Carmen Correa (Pro Mujer), and Sara Goldberg (URUCAP), a conversation on women, capital, and impact in the region. October 6 | Montevideo
GLOCAL at ClimaLab, Rosario
Bernardo Milesy joined the panel “De la inversión al impacto: nuevas soluciones para Argentina” at ClimaLab, a space bringing together climate, investment, and innovation. October 14 | Rosario
🏆 GLOCAL Game Changers: What’s Next
Coming soon: the GLOCAL AgriFoodTech Map, a new resource mapping over 300 AgriFoodTech startups across 27 countries in Latin America. Stay tuned.
What It Takes to Get on a Global Corporation’s Radar
In a piece published in Agrofy News, we shared the key takeaways from our webinar with Tom Greene, Global Leader of Corteva Catalyst™: how Corteva approaches external innovation, why it sees Latin America as a source of differentiated science and what it takes for a startup to get on a global corporation’s radar. Read here →
Relive the webinar “What It Takes to Scale Innovation in Agriculture”. Watch here →
NERA AgTech Revolution: An Insurance Startup Wins the Pitch Competition
At the AgTech Revolution Networking Day, where GLOCAL participated as Ecosystem Partner, Suyana Climate, a startup focused on making agricultural insurance more affordable and accessible for producers facing climate risk, was selected as the winner among 44 competing companies. Read also the coverage from Bichos de Campo →
đź’Ľ From Our Portfolio
Circular Launches CircularPlus Community
Our portfolio company launched CircularPlus Comunidad, a new program designed to support truck drivers both on and off the road, with everyday benefits, tools, and resources tailored to the realities of professional drivers in Latin America.
microTERRA Featured in Grupo Animal: The Aquatic Lentil Transforming Food
Mexican food media outlet Grupo Animal published a long-form piece on lemna, the aquatic lentil at the heart of microTERRA’s technology, tracing how this tiny plant, originally used to restore degraded water systems, became the source of a novel food ingredient capable of transforming texture and flavor perception. The article puts microTERRA as a company turning environmental science into food innovation.
Ucrop.it at Expo Agrofuturo 2026, Bogotá
Our portfolio company exhibited at Expo Agrofuturo 2026 (Corferias, Bogotá, Oct 21-23) in the AGSTAR 2026 space, presenting its field-to-market digital traceability for coffee, cocoa, and other Colombian export chains, audit-grade and ready for the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and buyer standards. A signal of Ucrop.it’s expanding presence in Colombia, where EUDR compliance is fast becoming a market-access requirement for European buyers.
Kilimo Featured in WEF UpLink Report on Scaling Water Innovation
Kilimo was featured in the World Economic Forum / UpLink’s new report “Making Water Innovation Work: Enabling Large-Scale Deployment,” which maps what it takes for water solutions to move from pilot to scale. Kilimo’s model, combining technology and applied science with strong on-the-ground partnerships alongside farmers, is cited as a reference for how water decisions can scale basin by basin.
Puna Bio: From the Atacama Desert to Global Markets
Forbes Argentina profiled our Tucumán-based portfolio company, built around extremophile microorganisms after over 20 years of research. With more than US$10 million raised, a Series A led by Corteva Agriscience with the Gates Foundation as a minority investor, revenues above US$1 million and a projection to triple sales this year, the company is expanding directly into the US, Brazil, and Paraguay, and via partnerships into Europe, Australia, and Africa. CEO Franco MartĂnez Levis: “The challenge isn’t the science, it’s the macroeconomic and regulatory conditions for attracting investment and engaging with the world.”
đź“° Industry Highlights
Corteva Spins Off Its Seeds Division Into Vylor
On October 1st, Corteva officially launched Vylor, its agricultural genetics and seeds spin-off, with a “CRISPR first” strategy and a portfolio valued at US$19 billion, including over 3,000 scientists and 137 research units globally. Brazil is its second-largest market today and its top expansion priority, with the goal of doubling soy licensing market share to 30% by 2030. A significant structural move for a company that is also reinventing its biologicals strategy in Brazil as a global export platform.
Read also: Nova Corteva vê Brasil como plataforma global para exportação de biológicos →
Japan Enters Brazil’s Digital Grain Trade
Marubeni, one of Japan’s largest trading conglomerates, has entered the digital grain trading market in Brazil. Following Zen-Noh’s 30% stake in Grupo Cereal (covered in our August newsletter), this is another signal of Japan’s growing strategic interest in Brazil’s agricultural supply chains, now moving beyond physical logistics into digital infrastructure.
Argentina’s Agro Sector Invested Nearly US$15 Billion in the 2025/26 Season
A record-setting season for Argentine agriculture: the sector invested close to US$15 billion in the 2025/26 campaign, with expansion in planted area and adoption of higher-cost inputs driving the figure.
Argentina Pushes Oil Companies Into Farming by Tying Its Water Fee to Agricultural Investment
Neuquén will double the water fee for oil and gas operators, but grants a 50% discount to those that fund irrigated farm projects — peas, lettuce, alfalfa, forage, sugar beet — and returns rates to July levels if they also reuse flowback water, targeting at least 10% of fresh water per frac stage. A policy experiment that turns an energy extraction cost into a lever for agricultural investment, with implications for how water-intensive industries are being tied to rural development in Patagonia.
Ag Biotech Leads the 2025 FoodTech 500, and LatAm Is in the Picture
Forward Fooding’s deep-dive into the Ag Biotech category of the 2025 FoodTech 500 maps 48 companies across 17 countries shaping the future of biological crop inputs, from gene editing and soil microbiomes to biostimulants and biological crop protection. The category produced the #1 company overall (Pairwise), with investment increasingly concentrated in deeptech and upstream solutions. Two Argentine companies from our portfolio and network made the list: Puna Bio (#142, extremophile microbes for soil health and crop yields) and APOLO Biotech (#155, RNA-based technologies for crop protection), a GLOCAL Game Changers 2026 participant.
🔎 Featured AgriFoodTech & ClimateTech Rounds and Deals
Biofirst Acquires 100% of Biotrop, Completing a R$2.8B M&A in LatAm’s Biologicals Sector
Belgian group Biofirst (formerly Biobest) acquired the remaining 15% of Biotrop, Brazil’s leading biological crop protection company, three years after the original R$2.8 billion deal. Biotrop, which posted R$900 million in revenue in 2025 and is now expanding in the US and Europe, becomes a fully integrated division of Biofirst, which is explicitly targeting becoming the world’s largest pure-play biologicals company. A landmark exit for Aqua Capital and a signal of maturation in LatAm’s biologicals M&A landscape.
Yara Growth Ventures Invests in Stenon, a Soil Sensor Company Growing in LatAm
A fertilizer giant investing in technology that helps farmers use less fertilizer: Yara Growth Ventures backed Stenon, a German startup with a real-time soil nutrient sensor, which is actively expanding in Brazil and Latin America. A relevant signal for the precision agronomy space in the region.
BloomX Raises US$13M to Pollinate Crops with Robots, Starting in Peru and Mexico
Israeli agtech BloomX closed a US$13M round to scale its robotic pollination technology, with its first LatAm clients among avocado and blueberry producers in Peru, and expansion into Mexico next, before entering the US market. A first commercial toehold for robotic pollination in LatAm’s high-value fruit sector.
IDB Invest and Proparco Strengthen Partnership to Mobilize Private Investment in Latin America
IDB Invest and Proparco, France’s development finance institution, signed an enhanced cooperation agreement to streamline co-financing and reduce duplication in jointly backed deals across Latin America and the Caribbean. The agreement plugs into IDB Invest’s Originate-to-Share model, which allows other DFIs to participate in transactions it structures, a mechanism designed to multiply private capital mobilization without requiring each institution to build its own origination pipeline. Proparco’s focus areas in the region include renewable energy, infrastructure, agribusiness, healthcare, and education.
🍏 Food for Thought
TIME Names Six Agriculture Innovations in Its Best Inventions of 2026
TIME Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2026 list included six agricultural innovations, from gene-edited crops and AI-driven soil analysis to novel pest control and precision irrigation tools. A useful snapshot of where mainstream attention is landing in the AgriFood innovation space, and which technologies are crossing from niche to narrative. →
Thanks for reading. As always, the best conversations happen after the newsletter, we’d love to hear your thoughts!
GLOCAL TEAM
