PE Playbook: Dairy & Agriculture Software
State of Play
With fresh headlines about a potential 145%(!) tariffs on China rattling markets, attention has turned to U.S. agricultural exports, which—at $25B+ annually—are U.S.’s largest export to China by far. That means U.S. farmers are suddenly under the spotlight again, and many of them are relying on Ever.Ag’s software and services to manage their operations and make critical decisions.
What started as a niche dairy logistics business has evolved—under Banneker Partners—into a multi-vertical AgTech platform with one of the most comprehensive stacks in the industry.
Let’s dig into the strategy that took it there.
How Ever.Ag Makes Money
Ever.Ag is a full-stack agricultural software platform (spanning from farms to retailers) serving stakeholders across dairy, grain, livestock, and food manufacturing. The business model blends SaaS subscriptions, commission-based brokerage and insurance, professional services, and data monetization.
Product Line | What It Provides | Revenue Model | Primary Customers |
Dairy ERP & Supply Chain Management | Intake tracking, milk hauling logistics, producer payroll, load planning, compliance | SaaS | Dairy co-ops, dairy processors, milk haulers |
Manufacturing Execution (MES) | Real-time plant operations (pasteurization, packaging, QC), automation | SaaS and data/analytics | Dairy/food manufacturers, beverage processors |
Commodity Risk Management | Hedging, brokerage, futures/options trading for ag commodities | Commissions on trades | Dairy producers, grain marketers, livestock operations |
Crop Insurance Services | Crop yield protection, hail/weather coverage, compliance filings | Commissions on insurance | Ag retailers, grain farmers |
Ag Retail ERP | Agronomy ops, precision ag, inventory, grower CRM | SaaS | Ag retailers, agronomists |
Farmer-Facing Tools (e.g., field-level insights) | Data aggregation, mobile dashboards, weather/price alerts | SaaS | Producers/farmers |
Data & Analytics Platforms | Market intelligence, price discovery, logistics forecasting, CPG analytics | Data licensing fees | Processors, CPGs, retailers |
Sustainability Solutions | Energy usage tracking, feed efficiency, ESG reporting | SaaS | Dairy farms and retailers with sustainability mandates |
As more producers, processors, and partners plug into the Ever.Ag platform, the data gets richer and more valuable—creating powerful network effects across the ag value chain.
Investment Thesis
📈 1. Dairy (relating to the Dairy.com business Banneker originally acquired) is a staple for the global diet
Dairy software may seem niche, but dairy is a $900B+ global market, expected to surpass $1.3T by 2030, per Food & Drink Business.
Source: Food & Drink Business
Despite the rise of alt-milks, U.S. dairy consumption is at an all-time high. Americans may be drinking less milk, but eating more yogurt, cheese, and other dairy-based products.
Source: International Dairy Foods Association
🚛 2. Highly fragmented supply chain but need for speed
Milk doesn’t wait. Raw milk lasts 7–10 days, and even pasteurized milk has a shelf life of just a few weeks. That means the dairy supply chain—from cow to co-op to processor to retailer—needs to move fast.
Source: Research Gate
Meanwhile, the producer base remains fragmented. According to the U.S. census, there are 24,000+ milk-selling farms in the U.S., with most of them being mid-sized operators.
Source: Census of Agriculture
And yet the dairy farms are consolidating. The consolidators need modern logistics, inventory, and compliance tools—which Ever.Ag provides.
Source: Census of Agriculture
💰 3. Scale drives profits, and software enables scale
Smaller farms (<250 cows) earn ~$150/cow annually. But farms with 1,000+ cows earn 3x more per cow. That means margins are tight—but scalable. Every percentage point matters. Larger farms and co-ops are adopting sophisticated software to squeeze every ounce of margin, from fuel efficiency in hauling to precision crop forecasting to futures hedging.
Source: Census of Agriculture
Company History & Value Creation Playbook:
2019: Banneker Buys Dairy.com
Founded in 2000, Dairy.com was an early cloud software provider for producer payroll, load tracking, and dairy logistics. Banneker Partners acquired the company in August 2019 and kicked off a platform roll-up strategy to build a unified ag software business.
2020: Strategic Acquisitions to Broaden the Stack
Under Banneker ownership, Dairy.com pursued several acquisitions to expand its product breadth and enter new markets:
May 2020: My Dairy Dashboard – Acquired majority ownership of this farm-level data visualization tool, offering real-time, multi-source dashboards for dairy producers. Strengthened the company’s data & analytics capabilities.
June 2020: Orbis MES – A manufacturing execution system provider for food and beverage processors. Enabled Dairy.com to offer real-time plant-floor data and operations management, adding downstream functionality to the supply chain stack.
Together, these moves connected upstream (farms) to downstream (processing plants) on a single platform.
2021: Acquisition of Ever.Ag
In June 2021, Dairy.com acquired Ever.Ag, a commodity risk management firm offering brokerage, crop insurance, and technology services across dairy, grain, and livestock. This acquisition brought:
Exposure to broader ag verticals beyond dairy
A high-margin commission-based revenue stream from risk services that they could cross-sell into their core supply chain software customers
A team of market analysts, brokers, and insurance experts who could use and enrich the data residing in the software to productize them into digestible analytics
2022: Rebrand and Unification
In February 2022, Dairy.com, Ever.Ag, and EFC Systems merged to form the current Ever.Ag platform.
With that move, Ever.Ag offered:
Farm ERP software (via EFC Systems)
Supply chain software (via Dairy.com)
Manufacturing software (via Orbis MES)
Analytics & dashboards (via My Dairy Dashboard)
Brokerage + crop insurance (via Ever.Ag)
This combination brought together over 200,000 farms and 600 dairy and agricultural companies into a single, unified technology stack
2024: Expansion Into Energy and Sustainability
Ever.Ag continued to scale its product suite and services through targeted acquisitions:
Acquired Integrated Control & Information Systems (ICIS), a Dublin-based energy and sustainability tracking provider. This added plant-level utility optimization, ESG reporting, and sustainability analytics to the platform—just as food producers face increasing environmental pressure.
Looking Ahead
Since 2019, Ever.Ag has followed a textbook vertical SaaS + services roll-up play:
Start with ERP/logistics in a fragmented sector (dairy)
Expand into MES, risk, and insurance via M&A
Layer in recurring data and sustainability tools
Unify under a single brand to drive cross-sell across verticals
But it’s unclear what the next steps are. They continue to expand the product suite, but is it time for the next, larger PE firm to make a play here?
There are other players in the market for a larger PE firm to continue the roll-up strategy, including Bushel, a VC-backed ag ERP software vendor with over 40,000 producers and 100 ag retailers in the system. Or, perhaps they are waiting for a strategic takeout from the likes of TELUS – a Canadian telecom company that has aggregated over 10 AgTech acquisitions in the recent years to create the TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods subsidiary.
However the exit plays out, Ever.Ag has become one of the most complete AgTech platforms on the market today—spanning cow to cloud, commodities to compliance.🌾