Incentives for Insights: How Seedz Turns Farmer Rewards into Real Market Intelligence
#10 BAR Stars
The Brazilian loyalty-powered platform giving agribusiness its first clear view of farmer behavior and turning everyday rewards into real market insights
Missing Map
Agribusiness has always relied on farmer relationships, but those relationships do not always provide the visibility or data companies need to grow. Manufacturers send products into complex channels without knowing what happens downstream. Distributors invest in campaigns without seeing how farmers respond on the ground. Even cooperatives, often the closest link to the countryside, operate with significant blind spots.
This lack of clarity creates inefficiencies across the supply chain. Credit teams rely on incomplete risk models. Commercial teams compare scattered pieces of information and hope they are reading the market correctly. Sustainability teams and certifiers often resort to manual reporting and verification just to establish basic ground truth.
Belo Horizonte-based agtech startup Seedz approached this problem from a different angle. Instead of asking farmers to change their routines or adopt unfamiliar tools, the team focused on what truly drives engagement. They realised that if farmers were rewarded for everyday actions that generate better visibility, participation would follow naturally.
Once these rewards are in place, the shift is almost immediate. Farmers begin registering purchases, responding to campaigns and interacting with the platform in ways that show how decisions are actually made, not how marketing campaigns or surveys imagine them.
Engagement Engine
Money drives decisions across every industry, but in agriculture the effect is amplified. Farming is a capital-intensive business with constant cash outflow. When a farmer sees a way to recover part of that spend through rewards or cashback, they pay attention. Seedz built its platform around this reality.
And this value can quickly add up. Some large farmers earn enough rewards in a single harvest to pay for the equivalent of a pickup truck. Others redeem points for agronomic tools, fuel discounts, machinery parts or household goods. The incentives speak directly to a farmer’s daily life, and the response follows naturally.
For companies, the shift is just as powerful. Instead of spending large budgets on advertising campaigns with uncertain impact, they invest a portion into loyalty programs that generate something far more useful: visibility. With a farmer base that now surpasses 150,000 users, Seedz gives partners insight into how real producers behave across regions, channels and seasons.
As engagement scales across the network, these signals reveal patterns that were previously impossible to measure. Everyday activity becomes a source of truth, creating a shared view of the market that companies can finally act on with confidence.
Signals to Strategy
Once farmers begin using Seedz regularly, the platform captures a steady stream of small but meaningful signals. A submitted invoice, a redeemed reward or a campaign interaction may seem ordinary on its own, but together they show how decisions unfold across the season, revealing which offers resonate, when farmers shift between brands and how momentum changes across regions.
These signals form the foundation of Seedz’s intelligence layer. Companies no longer rely on assumptions or field reports that vary by region and sales rep. They can see whether initiatives influence real purchasing behaviour, which distributors gain share and whether loyalty is driven by relationships, pricing or incentives.
This clarity shapes several key partnerships. Mosaic Fertilizantes uses Seedz data to link promotions to actual uptake among growers, refining incentives and product positioning. John Deere applies similar insights across its dealer network and service offerings, identifying where loyalty is strong and where targeted campaigns can drive adoption. Seedz also works with the local consultancy firm Markestrat to help companies compare commercial strategy with field execution and identify where efforts create value.
With this intelligence in place, partners refine their plans with far greater precision. They see which customer segments respond, which cooperatives or dealers drive results, how market share shifts and where budgets should be reallocated. Rather than relying on assumptions, companies act on how the market actually behaves.
Compounding Value
Seedz is unusual in the agtech world because its business model compounds as it grows. Once companies direct part of their commercial budget into a loyalty program, Seedz receives funds upfront for reward issuance and can generate income from this float. It also earns a commission when points are created, again when they are redeemed and retains any unused balance.
Alongside this, Seedz has built a market intelligence product drawn from the behaviour of its entire network, giving partners insight into engagement, channel performance and market dynamics that were previously out of reach. Each new partner strengthens the dataset at almost no marginal cost, creating a moat that becomes harder to replicate with every interaction.
The company has reinforced this advantage through three strategic acquisitions in the past few years. Uberlândia-based Atomic added crop-planning insights and strong farmer engagement. São Paulo-based Perfarm brought operational and management data from producers already using digital tools. Gaivota, backed by Silicon Valley investors, contributed technical tools and integrations that expanded visibility into day-to-day on-farm activity.
With commercial and agronomic data now intertwined, Seedz is well positioned to extend into areas such as credit, insurance, sustainability and any service that depends on verified on-farm information. It is a model that grows in value with every engagement and becomes harder to compete with each turn of the flywheel.
Friends with Benefits
Seedz is built on the complementary strengths of its founders. CEO Matheus Ganem grew up in a farming family in Minas Gerais and understood the financial realities and relationship dynamics that shape rural decisions. COO Daniel Rosa, trained in engineering and product, brought the technical discipline to structure those behaviours into a system that creates insight. They met as students in Belo Horizonte, and together built a model grounded in both field intuition and technical clarity.
Their insight was straightforward. Farmers change behaviour when incentives make sense. Matheus recognised how quickly farm spending accumulates. Daniel knew how to capture the signals behind that spending without adding friction. By rewarding farmers for actions they already take, Seedz created a platform that attracts participation naturally while giving companies a precise view of market behaviour.
That clarity is now propelling the company’s expansion. Seedz entered the U.S. market last year, validating its model in one of the world’s most competitive ag environments and revealing significant room for global growth. With a compounding business model, a strengthening intelligence layer and data reinforced through strategic acquisitions, Seedz is positioned to move into credit, insurance, sustainability and other areas that rely on verified on-farm behaviour.
What began as a partnership between two friends is becoming a model that shows how aligned incentives between farmers and suppliers can move the entire value chain forward.
Thanks for reading.
KFG
Seedz is a Yield Lab Latam portfolio company. Please reach out if you’re interested in connecting with the company or if you would like to learn more about how to invest in high-potential agrifood and climate tech startups in Latin America.
Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.