Indigenous agricultural biotech company receives $2M for R&D and to expand markets

An Indigenous and family-owned agricultural biotech company based in Alberta has announced it has secured $2 million in seed money from an Indigenous-led investment firm.

AdvancedAG, which is based out of the Alberta town of Raymond, announced its partnership with Raven Indigenous Capital Partners on March 31.

The funding will help AdvancedAG further its research and development while expanding its markets, allowing more farmers in both Canada and the United States to utilize the company’s high-performance biological products.

“This investment allows us to push innovation even further—developing reliable, science-backed biological solutions that improve soil health, strengthen crops, and reduce dependence on heavy chemical inputs,” said AdvancedAG’s CEO Joshua Day Chief.

“By helping farmers increase profitability through more sustainable practices, we’re ensuring a productive and resilient future for agriculture.”

AdvancedAG has been around since 2001 when Day Chief’s mother, Dr. Phyllis Day Chief, launched the company. Though she is semi-retired now, she is still a minority shareholder of the company and contributes at management meetings.

Day Chief said that for about the first decade of its existence, the focus of AdvancedAG was primarily on research projects, with not much business going on.

“Here and there we did have some customers,” he said. “But a lot of the work we were doing was on water remediation back then, using bacteria to clean up lakes and ponds.”

Then, in 2016, company officials made a shift and started doing research on crops and agriculture using bacteria.

“There just seemed to be more of a market pull there,” he said. “Farmers were looking for alternative treatments for fertility and things like that and looking at cutting back on their chemical inputs.”

Day Chief said business has been booming ever since that pivot in strategy.

“Ever since 2016, it's been a bit of a blur,” he said. “Nine years of growing this and now we’re coast to coast in Canada, working with all different types of farmers.

“I would say the majority of our business is in western Canada for broad acre farms. But we're actually starting to grow down into Montana and parts of the states as well.”

Day Chief, a member of Kainai Nation in Alberta, has been the CEO of AdvancedAG since 2013. He’s not surprised how popular the company’s products have become.

“It's a biological product,” he said. “It has different bacteria blends that can be used on farms to cut back the reliance of chemical inputs like fertilizer and fungicides and things of that nature.

“The cost of those products, as well as sustainability of using those products, has kind of been in the spotlight. And farmers are always looking at a way of producing better crops, healthier crops at lower cost. And so we're seeing a lot of investment and a lot of interest in this world of biologicals using bacteria to kind of help with that.”

Over the years Day Chief said many others have been interested in what AdvancedAG is offering.

“There was no shortage of interest from investors,” he said. “We had a few that had lined up to talk to us, wanting to get involved, but more just on the capital side of things, whereas Raven really pitched to us that we want to be active and we want to help you guys grow this thing and build a strategy around that. So that was really appealing to us.”

Day Chief said the funding will primarily be utilized on research and development to make AdvancedAG’s products even more appealing.

The percentage of AdvancedAG that Raven Indigenous Capital Partners has acquired with its funding is not being publicly announced.

Josh Alook, an associate with the venture capital firm, is pleased with the new partnership.

“At Raven, we invest in ventures that not only drive commercial success but also create lasting, positive change in their industries,” he said. “AdvancedAg’s leadership in sustainable agriculture and their deep ties to farming innovation and natural solutions made this investment a natural fit."

Day Chief agreed it was an ideal time to connect with Raven Indigenous Capital Partners.

“We've been doing it a long time and I just think just the timing is right for us,” he said. “And we have a growing market here and starting to build a good reputation.”

Local Journalism Initiative Reporters are supported by a financial contribution made by the Government of Canada.