In this list we'll focus on the green startups in the farming industry that we wrote about this year and that shared their vision and values with us regarding sustainability. We won't be able to cover the entire green farming startups ecosystem in this list, but step by step, we will look out for those who want to contribute to a more equitable world and that want to tell us more about their journey.

Frizon Group

Teofil Dascălu is the CEO of Romanian company Frizon Group and also a farmer who practices sustainable and circular agriculture. He also collaborates with many famers from Romania, but also from abroad, who share his vision.

Frizon started its activity back in 2013 and currently manages and farms some 4.500 hectares of land in Romania and it is one of the main companies in our country that also focuses on the idea of precision agriculture.

Teofil showcased its solution during an event organized by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Romania, which we attended, as well, where speakers have discussed the challenges and the opportunities in the sector of sustainable farming in the context of climate change and geopolitical pressures.

His team collaborates with farmers who are opened to applying these practices and it uses next-generation equipment and software solutions in order to automate as many processes as possible. The main crops the team plants on rotation are corn, sunflower, soya and wheat.

Back in 2021, the Frizon team was able to set the foundation for the first fully digitalized farm in Romania, with an integrated system of IoT devices, such as sensors, automated tractors and communication solutions.

The purpose of these solutions is to maximize production and the performance of the crops, while reducing the risks, at the same time.

Read more about Frizon Group and the way this startup aims to modernize Romanian agriculture from this article on Green Start-Up.

eAgronom

eAgronom is an agriculture-focused climate tech company helping farmers adopt sustainable practices for the health of their farms and the planet and this year, company officials announced a major European expansion into Czechia, Romania, and Ukraine.

eAgronom partners with farms to install real-time soil crop monitoring and yield planning technology, providing detailed insights tailored to making farms more efficient and effective carbon sinks. The associated carbon credit program directly subsidizes farms working to restore and regenerate soil, while eAgronom’s verification and certification processes incentivize financial institutions to provide more favorable lending terms to farmers and landowners implementing these soil health and carbon sink measures.

Backed by local teams in all three countries already recruiting local farmers, this expansion is tailored to the needs of each market and agricultural landscape. In Czechia, eAgronom will focus on building a carbon program distribution network alongside local partners. In Romania, where the market skews toward big crops, eAgronom is focusing on developing its input resellers network and targeting individual farms.

It has already engaged the input reseller company AGRICROPS CHIM as a partner due to its strong presence in northeastern and eastern Romania, and are in the process of partnering with another significant reseller company to better cover the northwest, west, and central regions of the country.

To promote its carbon program and regenerative agriculture, eAgronom works with a local network of agronomists, consultants, farm-centric companies and banks in every country it services. On-the-ground support will be available in the Czech, Romanian, and Ukrainian languages.

Read more about eAgronom and its green farming solutions from this article on Green Start-Up.

Climate Farmers

Climate Farmers is a startup cofounded by Philippe Birker, who shared his findings on how regenerative agriculture helped farmers across Europe at Climate Change Summit in Bucharest.

Living on a family farm in Western Germany when he was a kid, Philippe saw the struggles of his family members who maintained the land and moved to Berlin and then, Amsterdam, to build a life in the big cities. While working for some impact startups, he realized that he was missing nature and the lifestyle of a farm.

Alongside eight international partners, Philippe built a small team and moved to Portugal, where due to the high rate of village abandonment, authorities let those interested build on broken up houses without a permission.

Thus, the group of visionaries bought a small village in 2017, made up of 12 houses and several hectares of land, to practice regenerative agriculture.

"Agriculture is now one of the main causes for climate change. 24% of all greenhouse gas emissions are coming from agriculture", Philippe said, pointing to a few papers published back in the 1980s that were suggesting we could capture carbon emissions through regenerative farming.

When Climate Farmers started working with farmers who wanted to be more eco-friendly, there were around 100 of them and now, there are around 10.000, as per Philippe but the numbers don't scale enough to keep up with the 10.5 million that are in the EU.

For the team at Climate Farmers, in order for regenerative agriculture to really take off in the EU, at least 10% of the farming land in the region needs to be worked on using sustainable practices.

The company works with its 150 consultants that are being backed by farmers, so that the knowledge they are sharing comes from people with experience, who can give useful advice and information.

The strategy the team at Climate Farmers builds for each farmer is tailored to their needs and conditions and is based on soil type, weather conditions, but also climate change patterns and how the local ecosystems could be affected in the coming years.

Learn more about Climate Farmers from this article on Green Start-Up.