St. Louis hemp startup raises $2M as it bets on grain alternative to soybeans

By Diana Barr – Associate Editor, St. Louis Business Journal | St. Louis INNO | May 27, 2026

A St. Louis-based agricultural technology startup is betting industrial hemp can become a competitive alternative to soybeans for Midwestern farmers, as it raises more funds to continue its growth.

Saluna on Wednesday closed a $2 million Series A funding round, building on the $3.5 million that the company previously secured. The Series A round was led by St. Louis-based private equity firm Expedition Ag Holdings, with participation from prior investors Missouri Technology Corp., BioGenerator and St. Louis County Port Authority’s Helix Fund, as well as unnamed angel investors.

Saluna, founded in late 2023 by veterans of the CoverCress Inc. oilseed startup, is developing grain-focused hemp varieties designed for use in renewable fuels and animal feed. Saluna CEO Matt Plummer said CoverCress offered a playbook for what it takes to introduce a new crop into the agriculture market.

Founded in 2013, CoverCress Inc. developed an oilseed cash crop, based on the native plant pennycress, to provide winter and spring soil cover between corn harvest and soybean planting. Agtech giant Bayer AG, whose Crop Science Division is based in Creve Coeur, acquired a majority stake in CoverCress in 2022, with the remaining ownership held by existing investors Bunge Ltd. (NYSE: BG), the Chesterfield-based agribusiness, and a subsidiary of a subsidiary of San Ramon, California-based energy giant Chevron Corp. (NYSE: CVX). The lead investor in Saluna’s round, Expedition Ag Holdings, is led by former CoverCress CEO Mike DeCamp, who is also Saluna’s chairman.

“It was a good outcome for many people,” Plummer said. “A handful banded together and thought, what’s stopping us from restarting this?”

Saluna, which was launched with investment from St. Louis-based holding company Hermann Cos. and BioSTL’s BioGenerator Ventures, developed its own unique approach, Plummer said.

Saluna’s strategy centers on developing industrial hemp grown as a grain crop rather than fiber or cannabinoids. Plummer said it offers an alternative crop for growers in the mid-South region of the U.S. who are looking for a new crop that’s competitive with soybeans and corn.

The hemp crop’s oil can be used in renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel, while its protein-rich byproduct can be used as livestock feed, Plummer said.

While soybeans have countless uses as oil and protein, it’s a relatively smaller plant than hemp, Plummer said.

“With soybeans, if you get a 1% gain on yield on an annual basis, that’s considered a win,” he said. “The problem is, if you look at no other metric aside from inflation, that doesn’t really outpace production costs anymore.”

Hemp plants, on the other hand, “have the structural ability to support significantly more grain production than soybeans,” Plummer said.

Hemp was illegal until cannabis and derivatives with extremely low concentrations of the psychoactive compound THC (not over 0.3%) were reclassified from a controlled substance to a commodity with the 2018 Farm Bill. So until this point, it’s received little attention with modern breeding techniques, he said.

The company argues hemp could outperform soybeans, the dominant oilseed crop in the U.S., by producing more oil per acre. Soybeans typically yield about 18% to 20% oil per unit, or acre, compared with more than 30% for hemp, according to Plummer.

Saluna is using both traditional breeding and emerging technologies to improve yields and develop hybrid varieties. Its goal is to produce a proprietary hemp variety that can be commercialized at scale.

“We primarily are observing phenotypic or physical characteristics of the plant. This includes height, flowering date, branchiness, bushiness, and are crossing those plants into hybrids,” he said. “And then we will deploy those hybrids into the field and test them to see what their yield improvement is over the parents that we select them from.”

Saluna also has some technology methods that it plans to support with the Series A funding, including molecular breeding and spectral imaging, he said.

The goal is to produce a “marketable variety” of hemp as part of the recent fundraising, Pummer said.

“My prime objective is to develop a (hemp) variety that yields enough and performs well enough that we can enter that into a commercial system,” he said. “It’ll still be a little while after that until we run exhaustive field studies to ensure we can provide the agronomic tools and resources to successfully cultivate this.”

While that work continues, the company has begun generating revenue by growing existing hemp varieties. It plans to cultivate about 140 acres in southern Missouri this year and has already secured a buyer for the crop, Plummer said. That also is helping build a commercial base once Saluna develops its own marketable hemp variety, he said.

The startup operates fields in St. Charles County, a seed production facility in Overland, and a field research site and processing facility in Sikeston, Missouri.

Saluna employs about seven people, including Plummer as well as Chief Technology Officer Mike Gerau and Director of Operations Logan Duncan. Staffing increasing during the growing season, up to about a dozen workers.

Startups have faced a challenging venture capital environment, with fewer exits and IPOs the last few years that would allow investors to realize their gains and reinvest in other ventures. Capital also has been concentrated in certain areas, such as artificial intelligence.

Plummer said that while “the fundraising landscape is bleak right now,” Saluna has been raising money by broadening its investor outreach, and that long-term investors who understand agriculture’s timelines remain interested.

“If you’re an agtech company, St. Louis is the spot to be,” he said, noting local institutions and resources such as the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, 39 North and BioGenerator. “They all bring different things to the table, and we’ve relied on those heavily,” Plummer said.

Perhaps the most valuable local resource, he said, is the availability of local human resources. “If you’re a crop or agtech related company, the people that you need to staff your organization are already here,” Plummer said.