Farmers don’t have it easy. Despite doing all the work on the ground and taking the biggest risks in terms of crop selection, it’s the farmers who have the lowest incomes in the entire agriculture industry. One of the main expenditures that farmers have is seeds: when it comes to seeds, it’s the massive agrochemical companies like Bayer (which just bought Monsanto) that dominate and command hefty prices for their seeds, which tend to be GMO. In fact, US farmers spent $22 billion on seeds last year, 35 percent more than they did in 2010—an increase that can’t be explained by additional acreage. To help farmers battle against rising seed prices, a five-year-old startup by the name of Farmers Business Network (FBN) is developing non-GMO seeds directly with plant breeders, cutting out a string of middlemen that push prices upward. FBN’s corn seeds ship directly to farmers for $115 a bag, which is a heck of a lot cheaper than the average price of $270 a bag for GMO seeds. On top of that, FBN has developed a data network that allows farmers across the country to upload the price they’re paying for seeds. The wealth of data allows farmers to see that they’re paying vastly different prices for the same product, bringing transparency to an industry that has long been deprived of it.
This startup is empowering farmers with cheaper seeds and transparency
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