Best Food and Agriculture Companies in South Dakota, United States
The 34 best Food and Agriculture companies in South Dakota, United States in 2026, ranked by funding and momentum. Funding, investors, founders, valuation, tech stack and live signals. Top: Valley Queen Cheese.
Our analysis of 175 Food and Agriculture companies
$22.9b in tracked funding; 93% of the stack-profiled cohort runs cloud-native; funding activity peaked in 2025.
Ranked: Best Food and Agriculture companies in South Dakota
| # | Company | Disclosed funding | Last round | Stage | Founder | Founded | Tech stack | Patents & IP focus | Recent signals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Valley Queen Cheese Producer of cheese | $2M | 93 mo ago | Early Stage | — | 1929 | Cart FunctionalitySquarespace CommerceSquarespace+19 | — | — |
| 2 | Forpd Full-service lumber remanufacturing and distribution company | $2M | 14 mo ago | Funding Raised | — | 1983 | WordPressMySQLPHP+11 | — | — |
| 3 | Independent Ag Services Provider of crop protection and fertiliser services | $93K | 192 mo ago | Funding Raised | Tanner Buck Owner | 2007 | — | 8 patents Patents concentrated in mechanical & energy engineering | — |
| 4 | Sturgis Meats Retailer of meat | — | 33 mo ago | Funding Raised | Cindy Tolle Business Owner | 1964 | — | — | — |
| 5 | Wild Idea Buffalo Wild Idea Buffalo Co. is an online store for steaks, burgers, and pet food products. | — | 175 mo ago | Funding Raised | Phil Graves CEO | 1997 | Cart FunctionalityShopifySentry+33 | — | — |
| 6 | AgriCare Nutrition Livestock nutrition provider offering a variety livestock vitamin and mineral premixes | — | — | Unfunded | Doug Doell Co-Owner & CEO | 2012 | — | — | — |
| 7 | AgVisors Real estate advisory firm specialising in the marketing of agriculture | — | — | Unfunded | Tyler Waldner Owner | 2018 | — | — | — |
| 8 | AgWrx Agricultural cooperative offering grain and agronomy services, including crop inputs, custom application, and… | — | — | Funding Raised | — | 2019 | Kentico CMSApple iCloud MailFroala Editor+22 | — | — |
Top 5 Food and Agriculture companies in South Dakota
#1
Funding Raised · Rapid City, South Dakota · founded 1983 · 40 employees$1.5Mraised▾
Full-service lumber remanufacturing and distribution company. This entity offers remanufacturing, re-grading, and re-packaging services for lumber. It sources and distributes softwood, hardwood, and treated lumber, along with value-added products such as fence posts, wood pellets, and various home décor items. The company also imports wood components and finished goods from international mills. Services extend to warehousing and third-party logistics capabilities. The business model focuses on supplying lumber products to manufacturers, retailers, and government entities.
- Aug 2025Grant (prize money)$1M
- Jun 2023Grant (prize money)$500K
#2
Early Stage · Milbank, South Dakota · founded 1929 · 321 employees$1.5Mraised▾
Producer of cheese
#3
Funding Raised · South Dakota · founded 2007 · 4 employees$92.8Kraised▾
Retailer of agricultural products intended for the agriculture growers. The company offers soybean seed, crop protection products, chemicals, liquid fertilizers, corn seed and liquid fertilizers, thereby providing good yield and crop safety to its clients.
- Sep 2010Grant (prize money)$92.8K
#4
Funding Raised · Sturgis, South Dakota · founded 1964—raised▾
Sturgis Meats is a USDA inspected butcher shop that offers a variety of jerky flavors. They also offer farm-to-fork meat subscriptions and have received a loan to bolster their processing capacity.
#5
Funding Raised · Rapid City, South Dakota · founded 1997—raised▾
Meat processing company
Funding & investor landscape
Market landscape — 10 sub-themes by coverage
Share of Food and Agriculture coverage by sub-theme.
Regulatory-risk over time rising
Funding & growth over time
funding rising · growth rising
How research on Agritech is moving in the United States
A read on the academic research around Agritech — which themes are gaining ground, the institutions and researchers driving them, and how the tone is shifting. Based on 652 United States-affiliated papers.
- International Food Policy Research Institute25
- University of California, Davis22
- Cornell University22
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign17
- Agricultural & Applied Economics Association17
- Robot1→19
- Agriculture24→127
- Robot4→21
- Climate change2→17
- Agroforestry3→15
- Productivity2→13
- Agriculture35→83
- Food security7→25
- Productivity2→10
- Agricultural economics2→10
- Internet of Things1→8
Where agritech is researched across United States
Location clusters by institution affiliation — each city's volume, stance tone, and a quick read on its hot topic, what's advancing, the opening opportunity, and the main concern.
Who's filing agritech patents in the United States
United States agritech patent filing is accelerating — 24 filings from 35 assignees (2016–2025), led by Microsoft, Vision Robotics, Koselka Harvey; annual filings 1→5.
- Microsoft7
- Vision Robotics5
- Koselka Harvey5
- Wallach BRET5
- IBM4
- X DEV3
- Gerrish Steven R3
- CROP One Holdings2
Common questions
Rohit lives in the feed. He covers what's moving right now — the funding rounds, launches and shifts breaking across the trade press — and ties them back to where the sector is heading.