While the agricultural industry has faced labor shortages for years, the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the issue. Visa programs like H-2A offer some help for farmers in short supply of workers, but the application process tends to be long and complicated. Farmers looking to hire H-2A workers often have to apply 60 to 75 days in advance of needing the extra help. Those applications can then take up to 30 days to be approved.
For many farmers, managing the long-winded H-2A application process on top of existing workers is inefficient and overwhelming. This and other labor issues causes crops to go unharvested, creating waste at a time when food shortages are rising globally.
One company trying to help farmers better manage their workforce is Seso, which on Thursday raised a $25 million seed funding round. The round was led by Index Ventures.
With Seso’s agricultural workforce management platform, applying for H-2A workers takes minutes instead of hours. The platform offers a number of essential recruiting and workforce management tools including compliance, visa automation, applicant tracking and digitized record keeping.
“America has the most productive agricultural system in the world, but it’s dying if we don’t have a labor force in place,” Seso founder and CEO Michael Guirguis said in a statement. “We all treasure food that is grown locally. We built Seso to ensure the workforce is in place to ensure American agriculture and its workers continue to thrive.”
Guirguis was inspired to found Seso after watching his cousin’s farm struggle to recruit enough workers to meet harvest demands. His cousin wanted to buy a nearby property to increase crop yields, but lacked the workforce to do so. After realizing labor shortage was not just something his cousin with dealing with but a widespread issue in the agricultural industry, Guirguis set out to find a solution. By guiding farmers like Guirguis’ cousin through the H-2A process, U.S. farms can supplement domestic workforces and decrease the amount of crops that end up rotting in fields.
“Seso is taking an innovative and laser-focused approach to tackling a major problem in an underserved vertical — U.S. agriculture,” Nina Achadjian, a partner at Index Ventures, said in a statement. “Their software provides vital tools that will have a positive social impact on the labor force and ensure that American food production can meet its full potential. This investment will fuel Seso as the company enters the next phase of its growth.”
Seso plans to use its new funding to build additional HR software and financial services for its platform, expanding its reach among workers and addressing a $14.8 billion market opportunity, according to the company.
The funding comes after a successful first year of growth for Seso. Since 2021, the company has signed more than 80 customers, seven of which are of the 20 largest agricultural employers in the country, according to a company statement.
