Fairfax Financial Holdings, a Toronto investment management firm and the majority owner of embattled agtech company Farmers Edge, is proposing to take it private just two years and eight months after it went public. 

Fairfax has offered to buy out Farmers Edge shareholders at 25 cents per share, a nearly 99 per cent discount from the $17 the Winnipeg-based company fetched after going public in March 2021. Farmers Edge’s executive team has yet to review the offer, but the proposed arrangement nonetheless cements a sharp climbdown for the company, a former stock market darling backed by a major Silicon Valley investor that had big ambitions to dominate the burgeoning global agtech sector.