Tech startup, trying to be Amazon for farms, runs into agricultural giants

He was Charles Baron, co-founder of Farmers Business Network, or FBN, a Silicon Valley startup that is trying to build an Amazon-like online marketplace for agricultural supplies. Major farm retailers and wholesalers have urged farmers and suppliers to avoid the platform, in some cases circulating letters and emails warning that FBN’s goal is to gather and secretly sell data on crops and farms. After FBN purchased a Canadian agricultural supplier in 2018, some large farm-supply companies stopped providing their products to the business, leaving FBN unable to sell them. Bayer AG, the world’s largest supplier of biotech seeds, tractor maker Deere & Co., grain giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. and other companies in recent years have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build data-powered platforms geared toward selling farm-management services, while also deepening their own view into farms. In 2016, officials for CHS Big Sky, a Montana branch of the biggest U.S. agricultural cooperative, warned farmers in a letter that FBN wasn’t doing anything different than the typical farmer-owned retail operation. FBN in June 2018 sued Univar in a Saskatchewan court, accusing the Illinois-based company of making false statements and encouraging other farm suppliers to avoid doing business with the startup.