A Growing Problem: Searching for Startups

Major agriculture companies aren’t just looking to beat their much smaller competition in the AgTech sector. They’re also looking for innovative startups to buy or partner with.

And Matt Wood, founder of SCD Probiotics in Kansas City, has taken notice.

“We’re in competition with large agrichemical companies, but we’re potentially complementary and potentially business partners,” said Matt Wood, founder of SCD Probiotics in Kansas City, whose products utilize live microbes to produce healthier crops.

“These large companies have whole teams of people that are out looking for acquisitions. They buy hundreds of companies a year. And a lot of times they’re acquiring technology that will take too long for them to build in-house or it’s proprietary. So it drives the market.”

SCD Probiotics is building its business organically from the ground up, “and we’re successful,” Wood said. “But if Monsanto came along and said, ‘We can put you in 100 countries and 200 million acres over the next five years,’ I would be very interested.”

Wood said he is talking to some “major players” and “we’re strategically looking at running a process to actually tie up with a strategic partner.”