Tech is a critical part of agriculture—no matter if it’s autonomous tractors, space imagery, or flying drones. But even the most ambitious ag tech companies need funding.

Enter Astanor Ventures, an EU-based firm specializing in ag-tech venture funding.

• Astanor Ventures, founded in 2017, manages a portfolio of over 30 startups specialized across the ag industry, including vertical farming, autonomous equipment, AI, and insect breeding.
• The firm’s assets under management represent about €500 million.

We spoke with Valerie Christy, impact investor at Astanor Ventures, to discuss the firm and its outlook when it comes to investing in and leading ag tech startups.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What sort of tech companies does Astanor invest in? What is the portfolio made of?

I specifically am in the US, and I work with a lot of our US companies. You have a company like Monarch Tractor, which is an electric-tractor company, and so not only the notion of the same as any electric car but the reduction of emissions switching to an electric vehicle, for example, [has] huge impact on the farms…

Monarch is super interesting because you think about how much a farmer needs to pay to be able to have those boots on the ground, driving the tractors around, recording all the data, applying all of the practices on the field, and Monarch can be autonomous. A farmer, in theory, can pull up his phone in the morning from bed and see how the tractors have set out and begun working. It’s an example of not just a carbon emissions solution, but many impactful solutions on the farm level.

Keep reading here.—JM

Between Web3, the metaverse, and artificial intelligence, the retail world is committed to experimenting with emerging technologies.

Here are some of the most interesting, surprising, and notable retail experiments with emerging technology from March 2023:

• Levi Strauss announced a new partnership with Lalaland.ai to build AI-generated fashion models. The original announcement indicated that this technology would help the company “increase diversity,” by expanding the skin tones and body types of the “people” modeling each clothing item, ensuring shoppers can always find models who look like themselves.
• Panera Bread began rolling out Amazon’s palm-scanning technology, Amazon One, for contactless payment for loyalty members in-store in St. Louis. According to the brand, touchless checkout will bring a more personalized experience to its members, including personalized recommendations and first-name greetings.

Keep reading here.—MA

Stat: Residents of Paris, France, voted to ban e-scooter rentals—with a ~90% majority.

Quote:  “I clearly had to grow into it…I thought that the public focus on Apple was because of Steve [Jobs]. And so that was my mentality taking over the CEO role, particularly without him, after his death, I thought the fixation and so forth would go. And it didn’t.”—Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, in a GQ profile

Read: How Mexico’s $100-billion auto-parts industry is “reinventing itself for the EV era.” (Rest of World)

Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Microsoft plants seeds in the agriculture industry
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• Consumers aren’t connecting their smart appliances to the internet