When a Boston-based technology company showed John Creighton one of the best prices for corn he had seen in years, the farmer signed up to sell 75,000 boxwoods through his network.
What followed were months of headaches. The company’s paperwork, on which farmers rely to track grain quality and deliveries, was a disaster, Creighton said. Sometimes trucks would come to the farm to pick up at midnight and many loads of their grain would disappear. The months passed without fully charging the grain, compared to the 72-hour journey with local elevators. He was paid, he said, after threatening to complain to regulators.
“They had a great level of sales,” said Creighton, who works in Illinois and dealt with Indigo in 2019. “It became a complete cluster.”
The source of Mr. Creighton’s frustration was Indigo Agriculture Inc., a startup that had set its sights on the U.S. Farm Belt with the idea of using cutting-edge technology to reshape the agricultural industry.
Instead of selling directly to local cooperatives or to a handful of huge grain buying companies, farmers could use a platform to find buyers anywhere and choose the best price offered. Indigo would also market special microbes to make the seeds more productive and farmers could enter a program to sell what they produce at guaranteed and premium prices.