Arable Labs has closed a $4.25 million Series A funding round to expand its predictive data business for farmers.

The funding round was led by Middleland Capital’s agriculture technology fund and S2G Ventures. Other investors included Chase Field, Spark Labs and Cantos VC.

Predicting crop yields is about as difficult as predicting the stock market, which is a problem for farmers whose livelihood depends on maximizing their yields using the resources they have. Arable Labs wants to take some of the guesswork out of farming by combining connected sensors with predictive analytics.

The startup’s Arable Mark sensor measures a wide range of environmental factors that can affect crop yields, including rainfall, humidity and air temperature, along with more specialized measurements, like canopy biomass and chlorophyll. Farmers can install multiple sensors across their land, providing detailed information down to the individual crops.

Arable’s cloud-based Arable Insights platform takes this data and uses predictive analytics to monitor crop health and anticipate its expected perishability and yield well ahead of harvest. In a statement, Arable Chief Executive Adam Wolf said that predicting crop yield is important not only for the farmers themselves, but for the entire agricultural supply chain.

“Middleland and S2G are rare investors who understand the whole food supply system, from genetics and chemistry, to production agriculture, to the brands that bring it to our tables,” said Wolf. “What joins all these players is their shared exposure to production risk, of simply not knowing what will come out of the field in a month or even a week out. We’re excited to bring predictive analytics to agriculture and make a dent in the trillions of dollars wasted when food doesn’t make it from field to fork.”

Arable said it will use the new funding to expand its data science capabilities. The company also plans to add new integrations to its Arable Insights platform, including Valley Irrigation’s AgSense and Irrigation Exchange.

Brian Mixer, managing director of Middleland Capital, will be joining the Arable Board of Directors as part of the funding deal. In a statement, Mixer highlighted Arable’s successes in landing major customers from the Fortune 500 and from research institutions and government agencies.

“Adam and his team have developed a clear value proposition as the critical business intelligence that connects producers and processors,” Mixer said. “Accurate forecasting is in many ways a holy grail in agriculture, and Arable has brought together a rare group of product engineers, biologists, and mathematicians to solve this critical issue in the food supply chain.”

Photo: Arable Labs