Promotion of innovation

The agribusiness and food industry makes an important contribution to the attainment of societal and ecological targets. Innovations and technical progress are needed to ensure the competitiveness of enterprises in this industry while also combatting climate change and promoting resource conservation. This is particularly true in the face of rising demands for animal welfare, product quality, and environmental protection.

Therefore, Rentenbank has stepped up its promotion of innovation and new technologies for a sustainable and viable agribusiness and food industry. We support the innovation process from market introduction to scaling of especially innovative methods and products.

To facilitate the commercialisation of innovative ideas, we promote agriculture-related start-ups in the early financing phase from the “German Federal Government’s Special-Purpose Fund Administered by Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank” (Special-Purpose Fund). The promotion entails a low-interest subordinated loan for an amount of up to EUR 800,000 per applicant in combination with a grant for consulting services (innovation voucher). By means of this promotional activity, we create an incentive to develop innovations and new business models in the agribusiness and food industry.

In this line of promotional activity, we approved four start-ups with subordinated loans totalling EUR 3.1 million (2023: seven start-ups with EUR 4.4 million) and with innovation vouchers from the Special-Purpose Fund totalling EUR 0.2 million (2023: EUR 0.2 million).

In 2024, the programme conditions for the Innovation Fund’s “Research for Innovations in Agribusiness” expired as of 30 June 2024 and were not extended. Thus, existing research was still promoted, but no new research was approved in 2024.

In cooperation with the farmers’ insurance carrier “Sozialversicherung für Landwirtschaft, Forsten und Gartenbau” (SVLFG), we initiated a coaching programme for women in agriculture, the main goal of which is to provide advice and counselling to encourage more women to start agricultural businesses. We will provide EUR 200,000 for this purpose by the end of 2025.

Increase in venture capital investments

The venture capital market again had to contend with special challenges in 2024. After the boom phases of the last few years, financing conditions in this market deteriorated further last year. Rising interest rates, a tense geopolitical situation, and a greater focus on profitability on the part of investors caused investors to hold back on new investments, in a continuation of the trend that had begun in the previous year.

Despite these difficult conditions, investors continued to exhibit an interest in trailblazing innovations, particularly in the ag-tech and food-tech segments, that hold the promise of overcoming global challenges such as climate change and food security. By virtue of our strategic orientation, we are in a position to continue investing selectively in venture capital funds with high potential as a means of stimulating the sustainable development of this sector.

We invested in five new venture capital funds in 2024: Blue Revolution Fund L.P., Nucleus Capital Fund II GmbH & Co. KG, Extantia Climate Flagship II G m b H & Co. K G, Forbion BioEconomy Fund I Coöperatief U.A. andAENU Fund S A SICAV RAIF. Thus, we have expanded our portfolio to include 11 equity investments.