Crowdfunding: MiiMOSA active in Paris and Aix-en-Provence to support the agribusiness transition

Working toward healthier and more sustainable farming and food

Florian Breton spent nearly seven years thinking about forming a crowdfunding platform dedicated exclusively to farmers. As he and five friends in Paris were launching the French ag-tech representative association La Ferme Digitale ("The Digital Farm"), he was laying the groundwork for his vision with MiiMOSA, a financial tool to help launch environmentally responsible projects in the food industry. Since its inception, nearly €100 million has been raised in France and Belgium. In pursuit of its mission to tackle the ecological and environmental challenges of the 21st century, MiiMOSA opened an office in Aix-en-Provence in 2021.

The goal is to ensure that farmers occupy their rightful place in the green and sustainable revolution that gave rise to MiiMOSA in 2015. Its founder, Florian Breton, firmly believes that when it comes to the environment, food and energy production, farmers hold many solutions for the future. His platform gives these producers the ability to solicit donations from citizens to finance their eco-responsible projects. Crowdfunding was booming in France at the time, but all the platforms were general interest. MiiMOSA succeeded by specializing.

In addition to donations with or without benefits, the platform added crowdlending. The platform, which is regulated by the French authorities, presents the repayment conditions for each project (term, interest rate, maturity dates, etc.), thus establishing a framework for investors' contributions. Since the pandemic, more and more people have realized that they can be agents for change. Between 2020 and 2021, MiiMOSA added a record number of new "general public" contributors. Out of 400,000 registered members, 25,000 are active as investors.

An office in southern France

In September 2021, MiiMOSA opened an office in Aix-en-Provence. The founder felt a need to branch out into a region with strong project potential and to be close to the field, in the provinces.

"We thought it was important to have an office in Provence-Alpes-Cotes d'Azur area, more specifically, in a city at the intersection of the three regions that account for nearly 40% of the potential agricultural and agribusiness market in France (Occitanie, AuRA and PACA). We plan to fund more than 2,500 initiatives in these three key areas alone by 2024. Having a local presence ensures that we have a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the financing needs of entrepreneurs," explains Florian Breton, the founder of MiiMOSA,  who used the real estate touring program run by Provence Promotion when he was fleshing out his plan to expand to Provence.
The average age on the 40-person team is 32. Ten employees have decided to leave Paris to come and work in the south of France in downtown Aix.

Serving a new kind of agriculture

Since MiiMOSA was created, more than 6,000 projects have found financing, amounting to nearly 100 million euros channeled to the agribusiness transition. Some 20% of these contributions support the creation of companies by new-school farmers committed to sustainable development, while the remaining 80% has gone to transform farms, diversify production or generate additional income for farmers by, for example, installing solar panels on sheds to further the energy transition.

For projects that require more than €100,000, in January 2022 MiiMOSA created the first lending fund in Europe dedicated to agribusiness. With €50 million provided by ADEME, Carrefour, Groupama Méditerranée, the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation and the European Investment Fund, it aims to accelerate the transition of large-scale farming. The projects are evaluated by MiiMOSA's financial and industry experts against around 40 criteria that take into account all the positive impacts generated.

The start-up MiiMOSA is involved in the La Ferme Digitale association whose members are start-ups from France's ag-tech sector, which will play a strategic role in the farming of the future. MiiMOSA has also expanded in Belgium, giving it a solid foundation to plan for the future and deployment at the European scale.