AgBiome, an agriculture tech company headquartered in North Carolina and focusing on microbial biologics for crop protection and soil health, recently filed a notice with state officials stating that all 123 of its employees, including its two co-CEOs, may be laid off by Dec. 15.
The notice, called a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification is required by federal law within a 30-day period of when mass layoffs from companies of 50 workers or more are contemplated. In news stories and press conferences, company executives are insisting they want the company to stay in business. They say the issue is not any drop in demand for their products, but difficulty in raising capital in a tight capital market.
In response to an inquiry by High Plains Journal on its website, AgBiome said, “We will continue to produce, market, sell, and support our products for the foreseeable future. We are confident that Howler and Theia will continue to be critical biological solutions that growers will depend on to safely grow their crops for many years to come. Our products are validated as the best biological fungicides ever. Our products compete effectively with synthetic chemicals.
“Our discovery platform has driven a rich pipeline and partnerships inside and outside our core crop protection business. Unfortunately, we needed to raise capital in an extremely challenging VC and private equity market. Many excellent companies, including AgBiome, are struggling to raise capital. We are continuing ongoing discussions with potential partners and investors that would push forward the Company’s products, platform, and science. While we remain optimistic, we wanted to ensure that our extraordinary employees have an opportunity to immediately explore other alternatives.”
AgBiome was founded in 2012. Its trademarked microbial fungicide, Howler, was its first product and the first pseudomonas chlororaphis product to be commercialized. Howler fungicide provides broad spectrum protection against a variety of foliar and soilborne diseases. Theia is a microbial fungicide and was selected from more than 100,000 microbes using AgBiome’s in-house platform to provide a high level of disease control. It can be combined with Howler because it uses a different mode of action. In the company’s last financing round in 2021, it raised $116 million.
David Murray can be reached at [email protected].
