A global Silicon Valley investment platform for agriculture aims to nurture the Canadian agri-food industry by teaming up with a Calgary hub that helps startup businesses.
SVG Venture’s Thrive business accelerator program will be a resident partner in Platform Calgary’s new Platform Innovation Centre, where it is launching the Thrive Agrifood Innovation Digital Hub for Canada.
“Canadian innovation will continue to play a huge role in the future of global agriculture,” John Cassidy, managing director of Thrive Canada, said in a statement. “Together, we will nurture the fast-growing agri-food innovation community, and in doing so, accelerate the technologies and jobs of the future that will fuel our economy from here in the heart of Calgary.”
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The partnership will tap into Alberta’s strengths as a hotbed of entrepreneurial and technological innovation to help agri-food startups develop their businesses and find investors, said Jen Lussier, director of growth at Platform Calgary.
“I think there’s an incredible amount of potential … historically, Alberta’s obviously heavily, heavily focused on investment in energy, and so I think there’s a huge opportunity now to shine a light on ag investment and ag tech investments.”
Invest Alberta, a crown corporation that helps attract global investment to the province, said agriculture is foundational to Alberta’s economy. The industry employed 69,800 people and contributed $9.68 billion in gross domestic product in 2020, it said.
“Alberta has seen rapid growth in its value-added food processing industry. The sub-sector …was Alberta’s largest manufacturing sector, with $15.5 billion in food manufacturing sales in 2020.”
Thrive describes itself as a global agri-food investment and innovation platform that brings together everyone from investors to universities, along with top agriculture, food and technology corporations such as Bayer, Kubota and Land O’Lakes.
“With a community of over 5,000 startups from 100 countries, the Thrive platform invests, accelerates and creates unparalleled access for entrepreneurs to scale globally to solve the biggest challenges facing the food and agriculture industries.”
The Thrive Agrifood Innovation Digital Hub will likely support early-stage Canadian startups across a wide range of agricultural ventures, said Lussier. They could involve everything from animal health and food safety to automation and predictive maintenance involving artificial intelligence, she added.
The federal-provincial Canadian Agricultural Partnership provided $200,000 to support a collaboration in 2020 between Thrive and Olds College in Alberta. It enables startups to test their technologies at the college’s Smart Farm, which is a working grain and livestock operation that involves everything from robotics to artificial intelligence.
Lussier said the collaboration between Thrive and Platform Calgary will instead assist startups with things such as their business or revenue models by providing a central gathering place for different types of programming, she said.
As someone who helped found a company in 2015, Lussier said entrepreneurs historically have been forced to seek out assistance from a variety of sources that were “hiding under a whole bunch of rocks… you’re kind of on the roller coaster of wins and losses in your business, and just being able to quickly find the support you need is super, super helpful.”
Nearly 25 percent of Platform Calgary’s clients in 2020 “were in agriculture and food innovation, and this number will only grow with dedicated support and programming,” president Terry Rock said in the statement.
“Whenever a tech innovator walks through the door of the Platform Innovation Centre, they will be welcomed with access to everything they need to achieve success. With Thrive Canada, this now includes all the resources and connections they have within the global agri-food innovation community.”
