What Venture-Backed Technology Has Meant for Farmers and Small Businesses

Updated October 2026

The short answer: Venture capital is designed to fund fast growth and an exit, usually a sale or a public offering, within about a decade. That is a fine model for a lot of things. It is a poor model for the software a farm or a small shop depends on every week, because the farmer's interest, a stable, affordable tool that keeps working for twenty years, is not what the investors are paid for. The record bears this out: farm platforms sold or shut down, fee increases announced by email, and billions spent on "agriculture" that never grew a meaningful amount of food. Below is what has happened, why it keeps happening, and what to look for instead.

What has actually happened

Farmigo. Founded in 2009 as CSA software, Farmigo raised venture money from Benchmark Capital, Sherbrooke Capital, and others, then pivoted into running its own online farmers market with delivery. In July 2016 it shut that consumer business down and laid off staff, going back to software. In September 2021 it was acquired by GrubMarket, itself a venture-backed food distribution company. The farms using Farmigo had no say in any of those decisions, and the software they rely on now sits inside a company whose core business is wholesale distribution.

Harvie. Harvie's customizable CSA boxes were popular with farms, and it absorbed Small Farm Central's CSA customers along the way. In September 2024, farms learned that the platform would shut down at the end of the year. Four months' notice, during fall sign-ups. Farms had to pick new software, re-enter member payment information, and tell members that auto-renew would not work. One farm wrote to its members that winter sign-ups would be delayed "while we migrate to a new platform." Harvie was not a venture-backed company in the usual sense, which is the point: the problem is not only venture capital. It is any platform whose future is decided by people who are not the farmers depending on it.

Toast. In 2023, the public restaurant point-of-sale company added a $0.99 fee to customers' online orders over $10 without giving restaurants a way to turn it off. Restaurants found out when their customers complained. After weeks of outcry Toast reversed it, with the CEO acknowledging the company had "crossed the line." The restaurants had done nothing; their platform simply decided it needed more revenue per order.

Etsy. Etsy raised its transaction fee from 3.5% to 5% in 2018 and to 6.5% in April 2022. Thousands of sellers went on strike over the second increase. The fee stayed. Etsy's sellers are small businesses with no alternative that reaches the same buyers, and the company's obligation runs to its shareholders.

Shopify. In early 2023 Shopify raised the price of its Basic plan from $29 to $39 a month, a 33% increase, for every existing merchant. A small business that had built its store on the platform could accept the increase or rebuild somewhere else.

Square. Square's in-person rate moved from 2.6% + $0.10 to 2.6% + $0.15, and in 2025 the company introduced pricing that rises with the number of locations. Each change is small. Each one lands on businesses that cannot easily leave.

Vertical farming. Between 2020 and 2025, venture investors put well over a billion dollars into indoor farming companies that promised to reinvent agriculture. AppHarvest, which raised about $700 million, filed for bankruptcy in July 2023. Bowery Farming, which raised more than $700 million, shut down in November 2024. Plenty, which raised close to $1 billion, filed for Chapter 11 in March 2025. None of this money reached the farms that actually feed their communities, and the "agtech" label it traveled under made it harder for those farms to be taken seriously by the same investors.

Why it keeps happening

None of these companies set out to hurt small businesses. The pattern comes from the structure.

• The money has a clock. A venture fund typically needs to return capital within ten years, which means the companies it funds need an exit: a sale or an IPO. A farm software company that is profitable, stable, and growing 10% a year is a failure by that standard. It has to be sold, merged, or pushed to grow faster.

• Revenue per customer has to rise. Once a platform has the customers it is going to get, the way to keep growing is to charge each one more. That is what the Toast fee, the Etsy increases, and the Shopify price change have in common. It is not greed so much as arithmetic.

• Customers become an asset. In an acquisition, a platform's customer list and sales data are part of what is being bought. The farms on Farmigo became part of GrubMarket's assets. Nobody asked them.

• The product follows the pitch, not the field. A company raising its next round builds what investors want to see: a bigger market, a new vertical, a national delivery network. The feature a CSA farmer asked for at the member meeting does not move the valuation.

• Shutdowns are rational. When growth stalls, closing a product is the responsible thing to do for investors. It is a crisis for the farms using it, but they are not in the room.

What this costs a farm

A farm that changes sales platforms loses more than a subscription. Members must re-enter payment details, which some never do. Auto-renew breaks. Years of order history and customer notes may or may not export cleanly. Staff relearn the system during the busiest season. A farm with 300 CSA members can spend a hundred hours and lose a meaningful share of renewals in a forced migration. The farms that left Harvie in the fall of 2024 did exactly this, during sign-up season, through no decision of their own.

What to look for instead

Ownership is the question underneath all of the others. Before you build your season on a platform, ask:

• Who owns the company, and what do they need from it? A founder-owned company, a nonprofit, or a cooperative can afford to be stable. A venture-backed company needs an exit.

• Who decides when prices change? Look for a published fee schedule and a track record of holding it. Ask what happened to prices over the last five years.

• Can you take your data with you? Full exports of customers, orders, and products, any time, with no fee.

• What happens if the company is sold? Ask directly. If the answer is "that would never happen," that is not an answer.

• Do the people who use it have a vote? Not a feedback form. A vote.

Why GrownBy is organized as a cooperative

GrownBy is run by Farm Generations Cooperative, a multi-stakeholder co-op in which farmer-sellers own 90% and employees own 10%. The board is elected by farmer-members and will always be majority farmer-controlled. Fees fund the cooperative's operations, not an investor's return, and when the co-op is profitable, members receive dividends. There is no exit to plan for, because the owners are the users. Features like free SNAP Online, custom CSA boxes, sell-by-weight tools, and GrownBy Register were built because farmers asked for them at member meetings, not because they would look good in a funding announcement.

That structure is not a guarantee against every risk. Cooperatives can be mismanaged and they can fail. But it does mean that when a decision gets made about your fees, your data, or whether the platform keeps running, the people making it are farmers who depend on it too.

We're not just built for farmers, we're owned by farmers.

Frequently asked questions

Is venture capital always bad for small businesses?

No. Venture capital built tools small businesses use every day, and many venture-backed companies serve customers well for years. The risk is structural: when growth slows or an exit approaches, the interests of the platform's investors and the interests of the small businesses on it can diverge, and the small businesses have no vote.

What happened to Harvie?

Harvie, a CSA software platform, told farms in September 2024 that it would shut down at the end of 2024. Farms had about four months to choose new software and move their members before the next season.

Did Farmigo shut down?

Farmigo shut down its consumer delivery business in 2016 and refocused on CSA software. In 2021 it was acquired by GrubMarket, a venture-backed food distribution company, and continues to operate as part of GrubMarket.

Is GrownBy venture-backed?

No. GrownBy is run by Farm Generations Cooperative, which is owned by the farmers who sell on it (90%) and its employees (10%). Any farm selling on GrownBy can become a member-owner with a $250 share.

What should I ask a software company before signing up?

Who owns you, how have your prices changed over five years, can I export all of my data at any time, what happens to my account if you are acquired, and do your users have a vote.

Read why farmers sell with a cooperative, or book a demo to see GrownBy.

Sources: Farmigo company history and the September 2021 GrubMarket acquisition announcement; farm newsletters published on harvie.farm in September 2024; Toast's 2023 fee announcement and reversal; Etsy's 2018 and 2022 fee changes; Shopify's 2023 pricing update; Square's published rates; bankruptcy filings and closure announcements for AppHarvest (2023), Bowery Farming (2024), and Plenty (2025).