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Farm Credit Canada takes lead investor role in Pioneer Fund

As Canada’s leading agriculture lender, FCC provides entrepreneurs with the capital they need to grow their businesses through flexible, competitively priced financing and strategic venture capital investments.

Agriculture is uniquely positioned to tackle global sustainability challenges, and the Pioneer Fund will support founders and innovators along the entire agrifood value chain while seeking to earn competitive returns for investors.

SVG Ventures will continue its model of advancing and elevating start-ups in partnership with Alberta Innovates through its Thrive Accelerator Programs and recently launched Thrive Academy, a pre-accelerator program funded by Alberta Innovates. Graduates from these SVG Ventures Thrive administered programs provide both robust investment opportunities to the Pioneer Fund as well as unique insights into participants’ founders, technologies, and business models.

“We are delighted to have FCC join us as lead investor in our Pioneer Fund,” said John Hartnett, Founder, and CEO of SVG Ventures Thrive. “FCC has been a long-time partner and key supporter of early-stage agrifood tech companies, and we are delighted to expand our partnership with this investment.”

“FCC is pleased to be the lead investor in the SVG Ventures Pioneer Fund, which is a natural extension of our involvement in bringing SVG Thrive’s successful global accelerator and platform to Canada in 2020,” said Rebbecca Clarke, vice-president of FCC venture capital. “The Pioneer Fund is an exciting and important next step in bringing needed capital to this growing acceleration ecosystem for start-up and early-stage entrepreneurs and companies in Canada’s agriculture and food industry.”

The Pioneer Fund is the third fund by SVG Ventures Thrive. The Pioneer Fund will make initial investments in Seed to Series A global agrifood start-ups. To date, SVG has invested in over 80 global agrifood tech companies. Their portfolio includes transformational agrifoodtech companies such as Tortuga Agtech, Farmwise, Milkmoovement, Boomitra, Trace Genomics, and Burro.