Agricultural cooperatives exist to help farmers get access to cheaper services and equipment by pooling their resources and needs. Instead of purchasing an expensive piece of equipment to use seasonally, I can work with the three other farms in the area to share and pay less as a result. Do you need a truck to make deliveries? What if the same three neighboring farms also need access to a delivery vehicle? What if you could fit all four loads in one truck and you can, again, decrease the cost to all three by pooling together? This is the idea of a cooperative.
Greenhouses and vertical farms haven’t had access to the agriculture cooperative structure. Until now.
The Agrilyst Platform is a digital cooperative for greenhouses and vertical farms. Using Agrilyst, growers manage their operations and bring intelligence to their workflow.
This gives us a unique picture of what’s going on in the operations on an aggregate basis. For example we know that growers are paying about 20% more than they should be for various inputs. They do this because they buy through distributors, order when they need product rushed, or buy from far away. There’s also a lack of transparency in pricing which puts the burden of negotiation on the grower. We want to break this model.
We recently announced a partnership with Smithers-Oasis, a worldwide leader in providing solutions throughout the plant and flower supply chain from propagation to consumer. The partnership allows us to connect growers directly to the supplier and automate their inventory purchasing. This saves growers tens of thousands of dollars every year.
We’re committed to finding every point in the supply chain where we can save or earn growers money based on the insights we can gather. This includes partnerships with sensor companies, lighting manufacturers, seed companies, nutrient companies, data companies, retailers, investors, banks, governments, and more. We’ve chosen to build a true platform and are excited to partner with others in this endeavor.
This is just the beginning. We can’t wait to show you what’s next.
If you’re a supplier of products or data to the indoor agriculture industry and want to be part of the Agrilyst Platform, I’d love to hear from you. Reach out at: akopf@agrilyst.com.
