Monsanto Growth Ventures made its inaugural Brazil investment in Grão Direto, a grain marketplace that primarily transacts via mobile and WhatsApp. Monsanto contributed about half of the R$2.3m investment, with participation from Canary and OpenVC.

SP Ventures is preparing to launch its second venture capital fund, which will exclusively focus on agtech opportunities. The firm is also expanding its geographic focus outside Brazil, and it is planning to invest in up to 20 startups across Latin America.

BTG Pactual launched BoostLab, an accelerator to scale up Brazilian startups with existing revenue and clients. The first cohort includes fintechs Liber Capital and F(x) (both backed by e.bricks Ventures), and Neurotech; as well as Clicksign, Zigpay and agtech startup Agronow (backed by SP Ventures).

Fund: Barn Investments Executive: Flavio Zaclis, Founding Partner News Coverage: Search LAVCA

SP Ventures invested R$3m in JetBov, a Brazilian management platform for beef cattle breeders. 

Strider, an agtech pest-monitoring platform, has been acquired by agribusiness giant Syngenta for an undisclosed amount. Strider’s investors include monashees+, which led a US$3m Series A in 2016 with Qualcomm…

AGTECH Fundo FIMA, a fund created by BNDES and managed by Inseed, made a R$5m investment in Smartbreeder, an agtech startup specializing in smart crop management software. (StartAgro) O Fundo…

SP Ventures, Syngenta Ventures, Bunge Ventures and Endeavor Catalyst made a US$6m Series A investment in Argentine agribusiness marketplace Agrofy, with participation from current investor farming conglomerate Cresud. Cresud and…

Agfunder made an undisclosed investment in Brazilian agtech startup Solinftec through its new co-investment vehicle.  TPG also made an undisclosed investment in Solinftec 2017 through TPG ART, the firm’s Alternative and Renewable Technologies growth equity platform.…

Argentine agtech accelerator Glocal, impact investor NESsT, and others made a US$350k investment in Auravant, a precision agtech startup accelerated at NXTP Labs & Wayra Argentina. (iProfesional) Auravant, empresa que…