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Twenty Italian biomethane plants will each process up to 100,000 tonnes of farm waste a year
Description
Farm waste just became a bankable asset class — and a robotic bee startup got funded by the orchards that will use it.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners made the first investment from its Advanced Bioenergy Fund II, backing Via Verde's 20-project biomethane pipeline across Lombardy, Abruzzo and Campania in Italy, with each plant designed to process 60,000 to 100,000 tonnes of agricultural waste annually. Alongside it, two crop-input groups took full control of businesses: BRANDT bought all shares of Mexico's Agrícola Innovación, now “Altiara, A Brandt Company,” based in Pachuca; and BioFirst Group bought the remaining 14.71% of Brazil's Biotrop from Aqua Capital and Zempar, completing ahead of schedule a 2023 deal valued at BRL 2.8 billion (EUR 532 million).
Also this week: BloomX raised a $13 million Series A led by Elah Fund, with Rothschild, OurCrowd, Sadot and kibbutzim Magal, Horashim and Eyal backing its YAHAV2400 pollination platform; Darling Ingredients closed the sale of its CTH sausage casings business to Germany's SARIA Group to pay down debt; Antobot unveiled the U502 UV-C strawberry robot at Fruit Attraction in Madrid with commercial launch in 2027; Pairwise licensed its Fulcrum CRISPR platform to Belgium's Rainbow Crops ahead of the EU's 2028 genomic techniques route; Harvest Singularity broke ground on a $69 million greenhouse in Newberry, Florida, backed by a $5.6 million Florida Job Growth Grant; Napa wineries including Opus One and Dominus Estate pledged $2.5 million to red blotch virus research; Soilytix released its LOAM genomic AI models; iBOI, Acceleronix and Quectel launched an eSIM GPS cattle ear tag in Brazil enabling livestock credit; and the Purdue University/CME Group Ag Economy Barometer fell 12 points to 123, with a record 52% of producers naming input costs as their top concern.
This week's paid edition, Low Country, analyses 114 Dutch agriculture and agtech records from 1 January to 26 September 2026 against 104 a year earlier: recorded capital rose from $48.6 million to $170.3 million, though FrieslandCampina's whey protein program accounts for 60.8% of it. Subscribe to the premium edition for the full Trends Analysis and what to watch through 2027.
In this episode:
(00:00) Cold Open
(00:35) The Impact Scorecard
(02:29) Corporate and Financial Shifts
(05:03) Innovation and Public Strategy
(07:34) Market Signals and Operations
(08:43) Close
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Mentioned in this episode:
2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews
2025 Precision Ag Report by iGrowNews