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👋 Welcome back. Deals did the talking this week: three acquisitions changed hands across seeds, ethanol and water, a food-and-ag credit fund closed north of its target, and solar lenders wrote some very large checks. Grab the coffee — this is about a four-minute read.
☕ First, this week's paid edition: Price Support
Our latest Trends Analysis stacks US agriculture activity in the iGrow Intelligence database from 1 January to 23 October 2026 against the same stretch of 2025. Public program commitments jumped to $12.2B from $3.0B, with a single $8.0B USDA relief program doing most of the lifting, while private rounds barely moved at 41 versus 39. Take out the $400M Tessenderlo investment in FMC and the apparent funding surge shrinks to about 15%. Bankruptcies halved to four, buyers shifted toward asset and brand carve-outs, and the edition closes with four signposts to watch into mid-2027.
🏆 The Scorecard
The Andersons agreed to buy ethanol producer Harvestone Low Carbon Partners for $915M, adding about 215 million gallons of capacity.
Atlas-SSI acquired water-control manufacturer Linita Design, widening its dam and hydropower portfolio.
NativeSeed Group bought the assets of 74-year-old Sharp Brothers Seed, extending native-seed cleaning across the Great Plains.
Panamint Capital closed the first phase of a $1.8B green loan for the 1.2 GW Big Rooter solar project in Texas.
Proterra Investment Partners wrapped its third food-and-ag credit fund at $680M, above a $500M target.
The big deals
The Andersons agreed to acquire Harvestone Low Carbon Partners from Energy Capital Partners for an enterprise value of $915 million, roughly half of which the company attributes to expected 45Z and 45Q tax-credit cash flows. The deal folds in three ethanol plants in [North Dakota and Indiana] and about 215 million gallons of annual capacity, lifting The Andersons' combined total to roughly 730 million gallons; closing is expected in Q4 2026 or early Q1 2027.
Why it matters: With nearly half the price pinned to low-carbon fuel credits, this is as much a bet on policy cash flows as on the ethanol itself.
Atlas-SSI acquired Linita Design & Manufacturing, a 35-year maker of custom hydro-mechanical equipment — water-control gates, hoists, stoplogs and trash-rack systems for dams and hydropower. Terms were undisclosed; Atlas-SSI says the deal deepens its water-control and debris-management lineup and could help dam owners add hydroelectric generation.
NativeSeed Group, a Heartwood Partners company, bought the assets of Sharp Brothers Seed Company, a 74-year-old native-grass specialist in [Healy, Kansas], adding equipment and crews that clean and condition warm-season species such as big bluestem and switchgrass. NativeSeed now runs nine regional seed houses serving growers and restoration projects across the Great Plains.
On the energy side, Sunraycer Renewables acquired a 325 MWac Illinois-and-Missouri solar portfolio from Apricus Energy — two MISO projects slated to start construction in 2028.
Follow the money
Panamint Capital reached financial close on the first phase of a $1.8 billion green loan for Big Rooter Power, a 1.2 GWdc solar build on reclaimed coal-mine land in [Robertson County, Texas]. Phase 1 is worth $769 million, with Lloyds, MUFG and SMBC as coordinating lead arrangers; a second phase of over $1 billion is expected to close in early 2027.
Proterra Investment Partners closed Credit Fund 3 at $680 million, above its $500M target, taking combined commitments across the fund and companion vehicles past $1 billion. The capital funds direct loans to lower- and middle-market food and beverage companies.
Among the smaller raises: Circularity Fuels closed a $7 million seed round led by Trucks and DCVC to scale jet fuel made from dairy biogas; precision-ag company Adaviv took an undisclosed strategic investment from Verdex Capital to extend AI crop monitoring into Uruguay and Peru; and Fair Trade USA won a $600,000 grant from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation to build an AI climate-planning tool for coffee, cocoa and banana farmers.
Around the sectors
⚡ On the grid
SOO Green HVDC Link and ONE Nuclear Energy signed a letter of intent to explore moving nuclear power into the PJM grid over SOO Green's planned 2,100 MW underground line from [Mason City, Iowa] to [Yorkville, Illinois], with ONE Nuclear's Iowa project targeting up to 1,000 MW and commercial operation of the line targeted for 2032. Recurrent Energy switched on its 20 MWp Court Barton solar farm in [South Devon, UK], enough for roughly 8,500 homes, while Sungrow took BW ESS's 1,243 MWh Hams Hall battery project in the [West Midlands, UK] from grid connection to operation in 20 days — a site the partners expect to be Europe's largest operational battery by storage. Envision Energy's certified green ammonia bunkered the Terra Clove, billed as the world's first ammonia-powered very large ammonia carrier. Filling out the grid: AEPCO finished a 4 MWp solar carport at [Jaber Al-Ahmad City, Kuwait], Lightstar Renewables won annexation for a 4.95 MW agrivoltaic community-solar project in [Paxton, Illinois], PowerBank secured permission to operate a 3.26 MW community-solar site on a closed [New York] landfill, Inox Solar Americas kept its 3 GW [Greenville, North Carolina] PV-cell plant on track for production in Q2 2027, and Arevon Energy marked a decade running five California solar farms. Eco Wave Power also signed a three-year MoU with WISeQey, SEALSQ and SEALCOIN to pair wave energy with authenticated, automated transactions, with possible uses for AI data centers.
💧 In the water
Arcadis had a busy week on both sides of the water ledger: it was tapped to manage construction of Phase 2A of California's Friant-Kern Canal capacity-correction project — about 2.7 miles of new concrete-lined canal, pegged at $80–98 million — and, separately, named lead engineer for Stage 1 of a desalination appraisal on the Northern Gulf of California that could make up to 500,000 acre-feet of water available for [Arizona]. In [West Virginia], West Virginia American Water is spending $850,000 and $700,000 on two pipe-replacement projects in Fayetteville and Glen Jean. And in [Namibia], Namibia Breweries, WWF Namibia and the Global Water Challenge signed an N$13 million, five-year agreement to shore up water security in the Swakop River Basin.
🌱 In the field
CJ BIO unveiled NewtriSolution, a web-based animal-nutrition platform, at EuroTier, while Seso relaunched its H-2A workforce platform for U.S. agriculture with an AI assistant, "Rootly," and an I-9 audit agent built in. fortyfour switched on its first direct-air-capture unit at a commercial [St. Gallen, Switzerland] greenhouse, feeding captured CO₂ straight into the grower's pipes, and ProFarm introduced Neovo, an insecticide-nematicide aimed at corn rootworm for the 2027 season. On the hardware side, Exedy Drones opened reservations for its AYRE CX ag spray drone, and Farmblox said its monitoring platform now covers close to a million acres, with its copper-theft detection system logging a full year with zero thefts.
🔬 Quick hits
Geothermal Rising named Pilar Montoya its executive director.
Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet promoted Agnes Dasewicz to CEO, effective January 2027.
ATS Energy appointed former Shell executive Ed Ganja as chief technology officer and expanded its board.
RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau researchers reviewed 110 studies on recovering potassium fertilizer from wastewater, finding most of the evidence still early-stage.
SUSTAERO published a report arguing Canada's wood waste could supply more than five times the country's jet-fuel demand.
Jiangsu Muyang Group filed suit against former executives over alleged damage to company interests.
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