Specialty crop growers are in economic crisis, battling rising input and labor costs, wild weather and geopolitical volatility, all while their access to credit tightens. Thombar, a new financial technology company purpose-built for U.S. specialty crop growers, aims to offer a solution to this economic strain by making growers more financially resilient.
Launched in January, the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Thombar offers a dedicated financial platform that founder and CEO Liron Brish says is designed around the realities of specialty agriculture, an estimated $75 billion to $100 billion segment of the U.S. economy that has long relied on financial products designed for row crops or small businesses outside of agriculture.
Thombar is not a bank, Brish says. It’s a financial technology company that has partnered with i3 Bank in Bennington, Neb., which holds the bank charter.
“Anytime somebody deposits money with us, it sits with our bank partner and is FDIC insured up to $3 million,” says Brish. “Think of it like Chime — Chime isn’t technically a bank either, but your money is fully protected through their banking partner. We’re the same model, built specifically for specialty growers.”
Named for Thomas Barbour Lathrop, a philanthropist and world traveler who reshaped U.S. agriculture by funding the introduction of thousands of new specialty crop varieties, Thombar was born from the realization that specialty crop growers lacked both a financial institution that understands their unique risk management needs and, in many cases, the resources to hire their own chief financial officer.
“In terms of financial risk management for specialty crop growers, best-case scenario, they’re going to an ag bank, but oftentimes they’re focused on corn and soy, so it’s not relevant. It’s completely different,” Brish says. “Or the growers are going to a great bank, a Wells Fargo of the world, but that isn’t going to focus on the specialty crop growers’ actual needs. It’s going to be generic SMB [small and medium-size businesses] or the community bank that doesn’t have the technical wherewithal to innovate on that side.
“That’s exactly where we’re stepping in,” he continues. “The idea starts with first focusing on that customer’s needs — on the multiple variations within the season, high labor demand, the variety of different ways they pay and get paid. In my opinion, specialty growers have more financial complexity than banks see with any other small business in the states.”
An AI-Powered CFO
Brish says Thombar aims to create a kind of financial ecosystem for the specialty grower in which, firstly, they can earn more on their money.
“You can earn up to 2.75% interest, which is especially relevant in the time between harvest and when next season starts. That’s one component,” he says. “The second component is pulling together various lines of credit opportunities for growers. Right now, we’ve got one line of credit opportunity that you can get approved within about five minutes. Money is in the bank tomorrow. It’s only up to $150,000 right now, but if you’ve got this very short gap of, ‘Hey, I got to pay my workers today, and I’m not getting paid until two days from now,’ it’s perfect for that. We have an additional line of credit product that starts at $1,000,000 and requires farmland as security.”
Thombar currently offers:
- Up to 2.5% annual percentage yield on eligible balances.
- A digital banking experience designed around real agricultural cash flow cycles.
- Access to more than $30,000 in grower-only perks (once an account is funded with $5,000 or more) through partnerships with eight specialty agriculture retailers and service providers.
Brish says the third component is a specialty crop grower perks package from one of Thombar’s eight specialty agriculture retailers and service providers. Perks include one free soil sample with Wilbur-Ellis, 10% off hardware in the first year of service with Farmblox, discounted pollination monitoring with BeeHero, set up fees waived with Swan Systems and more. Thombar says it’s working on additional perks.
“We’ve created this perks package specific to specialty growers, as opposed to, if I’m with Wells Fargo, they’ll give me 1% off at the Cheesecake Factory, and that’s not relevant to me as a specialty grower, right?” Brish says.
A fourth benefit — an intelligence platform/risk dashboard where growers can track prices related to everything they grow and much more — has just been launched.
“It’s USDA prices, and we know they’re not always perfect, but at least trendwise, they’re great,” Brish says. “We’re also pulling in real-time diesel prices, real-time trucking prices and availability, real-time packaging prices, and soon we’re going to have real-time fertilizer prices to really give this one-stop shop for the grower.”
Thombar is currently building an AI-driven intelligence layer to connect all the data on the dashboard, says Brish.
“Think about it almost like an in-house CFO for a grower,” he says. “Most growers want to grow. They’re great operators but they don’t necessarily have the time to be the finance expert too. And they don’t necessarily have experience to identify the trade-offs in various credit facilities that we have.”
The AI-driven platform will have visibility into growers’ financials and market forces as well as a QuickBooks integration, Brish explains.
“Now you can start to connect the dots where a grower can ask, ‘Hey, diesel prices are up 20% over last week. What’s that going to do to my break even?’ Well, now you need to sell for $12 a pound as opposed to $11.25,” Brish says. The system will also alert growers to places they can save, like with Thombar’s retail and service partners’ perks.
Or say you want to buy $150,000 in fertilizer. The platform will have visibility into your credit potential, interest rates, perks, cash flow, where you are in the growing season and more, Brish says. It takes this intelligence and makes a recommendation considering all the factors.
“It’s an in-house CFO that is your co-pilot,” says Brish. “Interestingly, Mastercard, just a couple of days ago, announced that they’re launching a similar thing for SMBs, where they’ve got this AI-driven C-suite, which is great, but we know that growers can be very, very different than what Mastercard is going to build for them.”
Brish says the goal is to help specialty crop growers earn more and save more.
“That’s the foundation of this. And then the next step is the intelligence layer on top of that, to help the grower be more active in terms of financial risk management,” he says. “That’s really where we want to get to, is this intelligence layer over the banking that is available right now.”
Growing Together
Thombar is looking for specialty crop farmers who want to grow together, Brish says.
“We welcome any fruit, veggie, nut grower to come sign up, open up a bank account, start earning more right away, and start utilizing those perks. There’s no cost to the grower,” he says. “We’re young. Our bank partner has been around since the 1920s, but we ourselves are young, which means that for anybody who signs up right now, they get to be an integral part of the journey. And what I mean by that is we’re not like any other bank; we’re building these additional intelligence tools for the grower, and we want partners who have opinions and feedback and help us build this out.”
While Brish recognizes that establishing a new financial technology company with banking capabilities is challenging, he’s hopeful specialty crop growers will see Thombar’s value.
“We don’t expect anybody to find out about us today and say, ‘Here, Thombar, take all $500,000 that I have,” he says. “Our hope is that folks put in $20,000 to $25,000.”
Ultimately, says Brish, Thombar will build its reputation by successfully managing the financial side of the business to allow specialty crop growers to focus on their farming operations.
“The North Star mission for what we’re doing is to protect domestic food supply,” Brish says. “We want to keep U.S. farmers farming for domestic food supplies and domestic security. How do we do that? … The way we get there is providing more credit offerings, providing more perks and providing more insights for the grower.”
