Soil measurement technology company, Miraterra, has closed a Seed funding round led by At One Ventures. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company focuses on affordable soil measurement that can help unlock access to soil carbon markets and seeks to move regenerative and precision agriculture forward with their novel technology.
A Solution for a Global Challenge
According to the FAO, 33% of the Earth’s soils are degraded and agricultural activities are a major contributor to this. Healthy soils are essential for environmental health, climate, and even human health and nutrition (something we talked about in more detail last week here). For farmers, they are also essential for productivity, economic well-being and on-farm resilience, so it’s no surprise that an increasing number of farmers are seeking strategies to manage soil health. Regenerative farming practices and precision farming tactics are taking root, promising better soil, more efficient use of resources, higher profits, and sometimes revenue from carbon markets. But, as they say, you can’t manage what you can’t measure – so strategies and tools that can support farmers measuring and managing soil health are important.
Miraterra’s novel technology is one such solution to address this growing demand. It seamlessly integrates remote sensing, proximal sensing, and deep learning. In doing so, it is able to deliver results with unparalleled adaptability to all soil types. The data outputs and actionable insights inspire confidence in carbon markets and support growers’ efforts to effectively manage, recarbonize, and build healthy soils.
Specifically, the Seed funding round enabled Miraterra to develop its inaugural, proximal sensing product, the Digitizer. This device combines novel hardware, signal processing, machine learning, and computational chemistry to bring highly sensitive Raman spectroscopy to new frontiers and digitize soil. The Digitizer represents a leap forward in soil measurement technology, making accurate and cost-effective analysis more accessible to farmers and those that work with them.
“A race is on to meet the growing need for affordable, accurate soil data,” says Nate Kelly, chief executive officer of Miraterra. “Some companies are banking on advanced modeling to replace the need for rigorous testing. However, leading soil scientists are constantly making astonishing discoveries about soil and are advocating for even more rigorous testing. Our solution uses a combination of remote sensing, proximal sensing, and advanced modeling to reduce the cost of testing while increasing rigor and reducing uncertainty.”
With this Seed funding the technology will also be ready to be introduced to the market. First, by targeting soil testing laboratories worldwide, who Miraterra believes will be critical partners in gaining trust from farmers because farmers trust their soil testing labs. Thankfully, Kelly explains, “We’ve identified partners who’ve been seeking a solution like ours and are eager to introduce our Digitizer to their labs.”
What Investors See in the Opportunity
At One Ventures, which led the round, invests in deep-tech startups focused on catalyzing a world where humanity is a net positive to nature. For Tom Chi, founder of At One Ventures and former Head of Experience and founding member at Google X, Miraterra’s technology was a long time coming. “I searched for 6 years and assessed more than 50 companies until I discovered Miraterra’s ability to see into soil at 1000x better accuracy than the competition. This gives them an insurmountable advantage in revealing mineralogical, hydrological and biological health of soil.”
Other investors in the round include S2G Ventures, One Small Planet, Overview Capital, iSelect Fund, Starshot Capital, Pelican Ag, and Cisco Foundation.
“Our view,” explained Sanjeev Krishnan, managing partner at S2G Ventures, “is that Miraterra’s technology is filling a critical gap in the agritech landscape. By providing consistent, repeatable, cost-effective measurements and insights into soil health, we believe they can enable the next level of precision agriculture and sustainable farming. We’re proud to support Miraterra’s vision of unlocking the full potential of soil to benefit our planet and people.”
Pelican Ag is a global venture fund investing in high growth and high impact technologies, restoring climate, biodiversity and human health. The Miraterra investment is their fourth and Julia Weber, investor at Pelican Ag, explains, that “Miraterra is a company whose team, vision and groundbreaking technology align deeply with our mission to regenerate nature, food, and farming systems. Their innovative approach to soil measurement has the potential to bring significant advancements in sustainable and regenerative agriculture.”
The Macro Picture
The investment and the investors behind it also represent the growing trend of venture capital allocations to emerging technologies that can support farmers in their journey toward improved soil health and, on a larger scale, agriculture’s shift back to nature and regeneration. According to a 2024 report from Crunchbase and Serena Capital, investment in nature tech start-ups – defined as any technology or solution that either enables the deployment and scaling of nature-based projects or aims to protect, restore, and sustainably manage natural and semi-natural ecosystems – grew 18% year-over-year (YOY) in 2023 and there was a 27% YOY increase in the number of deals. The Food and Agriculture category remains the largest category of nature tech investment across all years from 2020 to 2023. This, despite the overall slowdown in venture capital in 2023. This should send cautiously reassuring signals that funding of technologies and projects that build resilience in our soils may also offer higher than average resilience in the larger tech investment landscape.
To learn more about the landscape of venture capital for regenerative agriculture and food systems, be sure to join RFSI and Pelican Ag for an informative webinar on May 21. Learn more and register here.