Agtech - So What?

Finding the right solution often starts with finding many, many wrong solutions. When it comes to some of agtech's most beguiling challenges, like real-time, granular soil testing, many startups have found the wrong solution– either ones that simply don’t work, don’t work at the right price, or don’t work in a way that makes them useful enough.  But just because a problem hasn’t been solved yet do...

Longtime listeners have heard Sarah and Matthew talk about ideas like “ecosystem disruption” and “adoption chain risk” and “value architecture,” all of which stem from the works of Ron Adner . Ron is a researcher, strategist, and professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University , and the author of two books, The Wide Lens and Winning the Right Game , both of which have been influen...

Despite a persistent sense of uncertainty in the AgTech market lately, we’re still seeing startups get acquired– even if information about those acquisitions is opaque. Case in point: Syngenta recently purchased Intrinsyx Bio, a biologicals company, for an undisclosed sum.  Why do companies conceal this information? And in this moment when everyone has their eyes peeled for some indication of wher...

Over the last few decades, a lot of products and technologies have promised to disrupt the diets and food buying habits of the world’s consumers. But nothing has made true on that promise quite like the emergence of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. These (as of now) injectables are changing the way people– and their households– eat and shop, and CPG companies, quick serve food bran...

Big news from Tenacious– WE’RE HIRING! Do you share our mission of unlocking impact at scale in agri-food systems? Check out our open roles here .  ... Is agtech a good fit for venture capital, and vice versa? This question - existential for some - is flying around in the ether right now.  We’ve been thinking about both the bearish and bullish answers a lot lately. And we’ve been intrigued by the...

Between COVID-19, Avian Influenza, and African Swine Fever, ordinary consumers are more aware than ever of the risks of infectious diseases on animal and human health, and to society at large. Ag technology that helps farmers better prevent the spread of diseases is more relevant than ever, and that was a big part of the motivation for today’s guest, Rob Hannam , CEO of Farm Health Guardian .  But...

For commercial farming operations, determining whether or not new tools, technology, and practices work can be a big undertaking. From install and setup costs to helping the team involved climb the learning curve for effective use, even when technologies lead to big benefits, it can be tough to get the ball rolling. One farm that we’ve learned about recently decided to turn these challenges into a...

For years the food tech space has been rife with companies eager to replace familiar standbys– from protein to sweeteners to colorings– with cheaper, more healthful, or more climate friendly alternatives. There have certainly been a few successes, but there have also been some big and spectacular failures. Whether we’re emerging from the dust of the most recent bust or have a ways to go still, we’...

There are a few topics in agtech (and in the tech startup world more broadly) that are truly perennial– problems that must be solved again and again in new and innovative ways as markets, customers, and businesses evolve. Adoption is one of those challenges, and go-to-market strategies are another. We’ve been thinking about the challenge of adoption a lot recently, and also what changes in the mar...

When your organization is tasked with the job of getting growers to adopt new technology, there are a few tried, and frankly, not-so-true options to choose from. The world is lightly littered with various flavors of demonstration farms– properties where technologies can be piloted, field days can be hosted, and farmers can be converted from tech skeptics to believers. But in our experience, the pr...

Controlling weeds on farms is a sticky, two part challenge. First, you’ve got to identify the weeds, as distinct from the plants you want to grow. Then, you’ve got to destroy the undesirables and keep the rest. For today’s farmers, these two tasks can seem straightforward, but to do them at the scale required in modern agriculture– not so much.  Identifying weeds, especially with computer vision,...

As the new year gets underway, we’ve been thinking about the likely ups and downs ahead for the agtech world. We’ve been searching for insights in the recent announcement that FMC’s corporate venture capital division is shutting its doors, and thinking about what a trend in CVC pullbacks might mean for the lay of the land in agtech. We’ve also been taking time to think about the agtech companies t...

There’s nothing like the end of another year to have us reflecting on the recent successes in the world of agtech, and the many challenges still left to overcome. One thing that has continued to stand out to us in 2024 is the vital need for more business model innovation.  There’s so much amazing technology that already exists, but for one reason or another, it is not getting adopted or utilized;...

The history of agriculture is a history of selective breeding. Whether it’s plants or animals, humans have been choosing desirable traits and making sure those traits make it to the next generation for tens of thousands of years. The challenge of this work is, of course, the timeline. Groundbreaking and world-changing advances are possible, but we are limited by seasonality, gestation periods, and...

Despite its importance to both agricultural and environmental outcomes, irrigation has not been a terribly successful subsection of agtech. We have our theories about why that is (we wrote a whole report about it, The agtech adoption dilemma: Irrigation ), and many others have also spotted the challenges in this space.  But when Jairo Trad and his team dug in, they saw an opportunity for business...

Depending on where you sit, the supremacy of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) action seems inevitable. Corporates are talking about. Investors are talking about it. Governments, regulators, and even farmers are talking about it. And yet for many of us, the questions of what exactly ESG is, what pursuing these goals means, and how soon acting on them will be mandatory remain unanswered....

Farmland has long been a popular asset among investors for its steady appreciation and resistance to economic downturns. At the same time, farmland is also a challenging asset at times, especially for farmers looking to expand, given farmland comes up for sale so infrequently and is so valuable. In the space between these two needs is where Fractal Agriculture has set up shop, connecting the dots...

When it comes to leveraging capital to fund climate action in agriculture, few ideas get as much play as regenerative agriculture. The idea of production that can not only be sustained but that can actively help renew resources has captured imaginations within the sector and without, giving life to events like the Regenerative Food Systems Investment Forum , where the faithful share strategies to...

There are many parts of the US that are at risk for severe drought and heat in the next 30 years due to climate change. But then there’s Kansas, where some growers pull irrigation water from a particularly vulnerable part of the gigantic Ogallala aquifer, which according to the latest science, may well be fully depleted by 2050. Western Kansas isn’t exactly the heart of the corn belt, but farming...

Despite challenging conditions in financial markets the world over, ambitious entrepreneurs find a way. There are few sectors where that is more true than in agriculture, and despite the industry’s reputation for convention and conservatism, challenging times call for creative measures, and farmers are nothing if not creative.  To learn more about innovative farm business models and the cutting ed...

We’ve been thinking (and talking, and writing) a lot lately about the forces that are shaping the future of agriculture. There are the more obvious ones– artificial intelligence and mandatory climate disclosures– to the less obvious, like the ubiquity of remotely sensed data and geoengineering. All of these forces, and others like them, are not only acting on ag and the institutions the industry d...

When people talk about the impacts of climate change on agriculture, they usually use the future tense. The reality, though, is that climate change already is, and has been, changing global conditions enough to cause meaningful shifts in agricultural production. Case in point, where Florida was once known both nationally and globally as the US’s citrus powerhouse, today the groves are moving North...

Not too long ago, we co-published a paper on the future of AI called “ Yield Maps Killed AgTech Software, Can AI Save It? ” and got a ton of great responses from across the industry. One such responder wrote in from his seat at the Syngenta Group, where he’s helped the organization go from zero to 250 million acres digitally served in just five years. Feroz Sheikh, Chief Information and Digital Of...

This week, we’re breaking down the freshest announcements from the agribusiness, agtech, and broader policy and tech worlds to share insights and ask “so what?” Sarah and Matthew are joined this week by Shane Thomas , author of Upstream Ag Insights. For more information and resources, visit our website .  The information in this post is not investment advice or a recommendation to invest. It is ge...

For better or worse, the biologicals space is still in the process of repairing a reputation that was marred by years of over-promising and under-delivering. Yet big advances have been made in recent years, helping improve agricultural productivity while reducing the industry’s dependence on chemical pesticides and fertilizers.  But discerning between new wave innovation and their more snake-oily...