Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top United Kingdom based CEO’ operating in the Agriculture space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Trevor Lockhart
Chief Executive Officer of Fane Valley
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About Fane Valley: Fane Valley is a Agri-food industry co-operative involved in the processing of milk, red meat, cereals, potatoes, animal feeds and supplies.
Keiran Olivares Whitaker
Founder & CEO of Entocycle
Environmental engineer, YC alumni, five years expertise in rearing insects, passionate environmentalist, deep sea diver.
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About Entocycle: Entocycle’s automated insect farm produces environmentally friendly insect protein to feed farmed animals.
Linda Bell
CEO of MIRICO
Linda holds a DPhil in Chemistry from Oxford University and an MBA, she has had extensive experience of leading and growing science-based international businesses in a range of industrial and process industries. She served as managing director of Servomex Group Ltd, part of Spectris, where she was involved in the supply of gas analysis instruments to blue-chip companies in petrochemical, chemical, laboratory, environmental and healthcare fields.
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About Downing LLP, Fera Science Ltd, MIRICO: Transformational gas measurement
Kizito Okelue
CEO & Founder of KODGAV
Kizito is the Founder of KODGAV. Before structuring KODGAV as limited liability company in October 2019, he worked as a sole proprietor developing business strategies. Beyond being an Entrepreneur he’s a fitness avid and creative.
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About KODGAV, KODGAV UK: Agtech platform creating new data driven food systems by integrating African smallholder farmers into a global supply chain.
Ben Scott-Robinson
Co-Founder and CEO of The Small Robot Company
Ben is the founder of The Small Robot Company. We have a mission to help farmers feed the world while regenerating the planet. We call this the Fourth Agricultural Revolution. Our service of robots, are called Tom Dick and Harry, and the brains of the operation, Wilma. Previously he ran Ordnance Survey’s internal agency creating beautiful products and campaigns with the world’s best maps. Before that, Ben started many startups, and worked as Creative and Experience Director at Top 10 digital agencies such as Digitas and Sapient.
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About The Small Robot Company: The Small Robot Company is delivering per plant farming for the world’s largest crops.
Stephanie Race
CEO of Crop Performance
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About Crop Performance: Crop Performance provides predictive analytics for sustainable agriculture to transition growers to regenerative practices.
Matija Zulj
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of AGRIVI
Matija is the founder and CEO of Agrivi. Matija believes that if we provide knowledge and technology to all food producers, we can provide enough food for everyone and keep agriculture sustainable. He holds an MSc in computer science and an MBA. Agrivi is an agri-tech startup that is creating the global agricultural eco-system with vision to change the way food is produced. With an intelligent cloud farm management solution, we help farmers to increase their productivity and find buyers for produced food. Agrivi is the winner of World Startup Competition 2014
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About AGRIVI: AGRIVI is a global agritech company with the market leading farm management software
Gilad Gershon
CEO of Tropic Biosciences
Gilad Gershon is an experienced AgriTech entrepreneur and venture capital investor, including at Pontifax Global Food and Agricultural Technology Fund and Grovepoint Capital. He is a former Navy Ship Commander in the Israel Defense Forces (Ret. Lieutenant Colonel), and holds a Bs.C. in Industrial Engineering (with Honors) from Tel Aviv University and an MBA (with Honors) from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
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About Tropic Biosciences: Tropic Biosciences is a pioneering leader in the development of novel high-performing commercial tropical crop varieties and traits.
Ian Wheal
Founder and CEO of Breedr
Ian Wheal is the Founder and CEO of Breedr.
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About Breedr: Breedr is a productivity and marketing platform that’s transforming the livestock supply-chain.
James Kent
CEO of Xihelm
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About Xihelm: Xihelm is automating robotic, laborious handwork.
Bill Thompson
CEO of Redag Crop Protection
Bill has extensive experience of biology-based businesses at corporate, SME and start-up level. He has been Global Business Director for one of the major agrochemical companies, Managing Director and owner of a CRO, and COO of start-up Plant Impact, as well as consulting to Private Equity/Venture Capitalist-backed companies in the biology sector.
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About Redag Crop Protection: The engine of discovery for the agrochemical industry.
Jamie McInnes
Chief Executive Officer of Hectare Agritech
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About Hectare Agritech: Hectare is an agritech company focused on exploiting current inefficiencies and deficiencies in the farming industry supply chains.
Charlie Guy
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of LettUs Grow
Charlie Guy is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at LettUs Grow.
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About LettUs Grow: LettUs Grow design aeroponic irrigation and control technology for vertical farms.
Xiong Chang
CEO of Tensorfield Agriculture
Xiong is passionate about leading teams with a laser-focus on delivering customer value. He studied Manufacturing Engineering at Cambridge University and worked as a design engineer at GE Energy before moving to investment banking where he led global projects as Agile Product Owner among other roles. His mechanical design for one Beetl robot was included in the Top 10 Robotics Start-Ups at CES 2017 by Robotics Business Review.
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About Beetl Robotics, Tensorfield Agriculture: Tensorfield Agriculture is building the next generation of agricultural machines with a focus on applications for specialty row crops.
Anders Gundersen
CEO & Founder of Sensonomic
Anders has experience from C-level strategy consulting, academia and the finance industry. He has been project lead on multiple projects in Scandinavia, UK and East Africa. Realising that land management issues are inherently complex, and that decisions affecting people, nature and businesses are often made with too little information, he founded Sensonomic to provide better data for decision making and risk management. Anders holds an MBA from the University of Oxford and an MPhil in Economics from the University of Bergen.
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About Sensonomic: Sensonomic creates computer simulations of agricultural systems to optimise yield, improve operations and increase resilience.
Tashia Tucker
Co-Founder & CEO of Olombria
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About Olombria: Olombria is an agricultural technology that curates fly behaviour, to increase pollination and ensure greater crop yields.
Alex Fisher
Founder & CEO of Saturn Bioponics
Alex has driven the Saturn Grower technology from initial experiments through to market ready product over the last 7 years. He has significant experience in all aspects of the technology and its application in the commercial growing market place. He is working with some of the UK’s leading horticultural crop growers, processors, industry figures and researchers, as well as with commercial partners in international markets. Alex has overall responsibility for the direction of the company but remains involved with all customers at both sales and support levels.
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About Saturn Bioponics: Saturn Bioponics provides crop production systems to improve profitability by increasing yields and reducing labour and resource costs.
Alexander Fisher
CEO of Saturn Bioponics
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About Saturn Bioponics: Saturn Bioponics provides crop production systems to improve profitability by increasing yields and reducing labour and resource costs.
Andrew Diprose
CEO of RootWave
Andrew specialises in finance and strategy. He joins from Alpha Financial Markets Consulting where he worked for 10 years to help it grow from a start-up to the world’s largest dedicated investment management consultancy. Prior to Alpha, Andrew worked at Accenture. During his time as a consultant, he has lived and worked in the UK, France and USA and has also worked extensively across Europe.
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About RootWave, Ubiqutek: RootWave is an electronic company that develops tools that kills weeds using electricity.
Leo de Montaignac
CEO of Weedingtech
Leo de Montaignac joined Weeding Technologies as CEO in 2014.
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About Weedingtech: Weedingtech is a British company that designs and manufactures innovative weed control technologies for the amenity and utility markets.
Ella Kalnina
Chief Executive Officer of Arlabion
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About Arlabion, Commercialization Reactor: Arlabion is an agri-tech company developing a novel seed treatment to protect crops against fungal infection.
Perez Ochieng
CEO & Director of SACOMA
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About SACOMA: SACOMA develops and supplies innovative healthy and FREE FROM snacks.
Adam Dixon
CEO & Co-Founder of Phytoponics
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About Human Alchemy, Phytoponics: Phytoponics designs and manufactures Deep Water Culture (DWC) hydroponic growing systems for supply to commercial produce growers.
Minshad Ansari
Founder and CEO of Bionema
Minshad is founder and Managing Director of Bionema Ltd and has over 20 years in bio-pesticide development with a proven track record of delivering of IPM strategy in agricultural, horticultural and forestry sectors. He has more than 70 research publications and is a regular invited speaker at biopesticide conferences. He has extensive experience in strategic R&D planning, operational management, business and technology development. Minshad completed his PhD at Ghent University, Belgium and is a qualified BASIS advisor in Crop Protection (Commercial Horticulture). He is responsible for strategic and operational management of the company.
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About Bionema: Bionema creates chemical-free pest management solutions for horticulture, turf & landscape, & forestry sectors.
Maryna Kuzmenko
CEO of Petiole
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About Petiole: Petiole is global platform for plant phenotyping with smartphone
Richard Hobson
CEO and Founder of Herdsy
Richard Hobson holds a B.A. in Finance & DBS(IT) from the Michael Smurfit School of Business. He has a diverse skillset as he is both a Software Developer and an Accountant who has worked in these roles for IBM and Aviva. Under Richard’s leadership, Herdsy has grown from a kitchen table business to one that has won international awards and was a finalist in 2018 for Cambridge Agtech Company of the year.
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About Herdsy: Herdsy automates and analyses farm animal data and converts it into valuable profit decisions for farmers.
Jill Hewitt
CEO of National Association of Agricultural Contractors
Jill Hewitt is thew CEO at The NAAC.
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About National Association of Agricultural Contractors: National Association of Agricultural Contractors represents and supports the interests of land-based contractors.
Jill Hewitt
CEO of National Association of Agricultural Contractors
Jill Hewitt is thew CEO at The NAAC.
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About National Association of Agricultural Contractors: National Association of Agricultural Contractors represents and supports the interests of land-based contractors.
