Agtech - So What?

While early-stage agtech tends to play in the venture world, it pays to check in with how folks sitting in banking think about their role as partners to startups. Traditional lenders can draw on the best part of a century of connection to agriculture, and potentially offer significant options for financing the growth of later-stage companies.

This week we heard from Romie Basra, Senior VP, National Sustainable Tech Practice Leader, and Karol Aure-Flynn, Food and Agribusiness Industries Advisor at Wells Fargo. As investors and lenders in traditional agriculture, as well as to other tech movements that have boomed (and busted) in recent memory, Romie and Karol joined to speak about:

• Cleantech vs. agtech. How investors in the previous waves of cleantech think about the challenges facing the new generation of startups in ag
• Financing options for startups. What role a legacy provider of finance like Wells Fargo wants to play for growing agtech companies
• Scaling in indoor ag. How a bank thinks about the barriers to scale for companies in a space like indoor agriculture
• Value props to institutional lenders. Why the “unsexy” elements of startup scale matter most to institutional lenders

For more useful resources, visit our website.

Companies: Wells Fargo • Topics: finance-investing, venture-startups, agtech-ecosystem, business-model

The decisions by major food companies impact consumers, farmers, and the environment at every stage of the agrifood value chain. But the status quo strategies of ‘Big Food’ don’t always acknowledge the complex, interconnected systems at play around the world.
Our guest this week is Dr. Nigel Hughes, Senior Vice President of Global R&D at Kellogg. After spending a career in what he would unwillingly call Big Food, Nigel now advocates for the urgent recoupling of the many smaller systems, from farming to processing to distribution, that have become detached as they’ve been optimized over decades.

For more information and resources, visit our website.

Companies: Kellogg • Topics: food-systems, corporates, supply-chain, innovation

We recently launched a three-episode deep dive into the future of risk and insurance in agriculture. Over the course of the series, we heard from one listener who offered to share his experience using novel insurance products to manage the risks of both too little and too much rainfall in his own farming operation. This from-the-field perspective was packed with insights, and was such a powerful contribution to our learning that we asked his permission to use the audio for this episode.

Tom Ferguson is a farmer in Northern New South Wales, Australia, and this week you’ll hear a conversation between him and Tenacious Ventures Co-Founder Matthew Pryor. They speak about:

• Tom’s specific exposure to climate-risk, and why this has led to him exploring new options for insurance
• His process for collecting data, identifying high-impact risks to hedge against, and using this data to strike tailored, parametric policies with insurers
• What the impact of using more data on the farm can be for new insurance products, and what’s holding back the integration
• His adoption of new agtech on the farm, and what factors enabled or inhibited uptake within the business.

For more information and resources, visit our website.

Topics: insurance-risk, climate-risk, farm-economics, ag-tech-adoption

While the term “organic” tends to be associated with small-scale production and a preference for manual tools over the latest technology, organic farming advocates claim their methods can reduce the need for expensive inputs like fertilizers and herbicides, improve soil health, and allow farmers to differentiate their product in otherwise global commodity markets. So, what can commodity agriculture learn from organic farming?

Our guest this week is Amy Bruch, a sixth-generation farmer of row crops, small grains, pulses, and oilseeds, and 2021 Organic Trade Association Organic Farmer of the Year. After starting her career as a systems engineer in food manufacturing, Amy travelled to work on large-scale soil improvement projects in Brazil. This experience “farming in another postcode” then led to her approach managing the family farm back in Eastern Nebraska, and turning nearly 2,500 acres into organic production.

In this episode, Amy talks about:

• How her experience improving degraded, acidic soils in regional Brazil makes her a better farmer at Cyclone Farms today
• The benefits of combining organic production techniques AND new innovations in technology
• How a focus on soil health is a gateway for more farmers to not only sequester more carbon, but also realize meaningful benefits for their crops & bottom line
• Why current organic farming standards are a potential onramp for farmers to adopt more “climate smart” agricultural practices

For more information and resources, visit our website.

Companies: Cyclone Farms • Topics: ag-tech-adoption, soil-health, farm-economics, crops-horticulture

Agriculture is exposed to a complex tangle of laws, trade agreements, and competing visions of the future. For farmers, adjustments by legislators at any level of government can have an impact. So while policy is often an afterthought for operators in tech, the pressure for farmers to be engaged and represented in the formulation of new policy is real.
It’s for this reason that ag has always invested deeply in advocacy groups. Our guest this week is Emma Germano, President of The Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) and Managing Director of her family’s fruit and vegetable business, I Love Farms.
Almost two years into her tenure as President of an advocacy group that positions itself as “the voice of Victorian farmers and rural communities,” Emma joins us to speak about:

• What interests and skills led her to advocacy and working with the VFF
• The role of ag advocacy groups and the ROI they deliver for growers
• Why advocacy groups are under pressure to engage a new generation of members in regional communities
• What Emma sees as the central issues for Australian agricultural advocacy

Companies: Victorian Farmers Federation • Topics: government-policy, people-culture, agtech-ecosystem, farm-economics

Back in May, we published an experimental bonus episode called “The Three Fears of Farm Data”. The conversation centered around the legitimacy of fears held by farmers about sharing their farm data, and kicked off with a particularly hot take:
“We in agtech have completely f*****d farmers by making them afraid of sharing their data.”
The episode got a huge reaction from around the industry - both positive and critical. It’s clear that the conversation around farm data is one that everyone in agtech, from farmers and startups to analysts and operators in agribusinesses, seem interested in continuing.
Our latest bonus episode features Tenacious Ventures Partners and Co-Founders Sarah Nolet and Matthew Pryor analyzing the wide range of reactions that have been sent through over recent weeks. They’ll be discussing responses from:

• Bernie Byrnes, farmer and 2020 Nuffield Scholar
• Eric Taipale, CTO at ag insights platform Sentera
• Dan Shultz, agtech marketer
• Nigel Kleinschmidt, agtech industry professional and friend of the show
• Pip Grant, an operator and listener working in agtech and research
• Rhishi Pethe, author of Software is Feeding the World

Companies: Sentera • Topics: ag-data, ag-tech-adoption, people-culture, livestock-dairy

Autonomous farming equipment and robotics in ag is more crowded than ever. Every new acquisition from an incumbent or deployment of venture capital into the space creates more buzz to sort through in the inboxes of analysts, entrepreneurs, and farmers.
With the industry growing so quickly, it’s helpful to have a bird’s-eye view of what’s happening, and what it means for the future of agriculture.
So, in this week’s episode we give listeners a framework to understand the rapidly moving world of autonomy in ag. Our guest is Andrew Bate, Co-Founder and CEO of SwarmFarm Robotics, who joins us to share his observations on the three major categories of autonomy that are emerging in ag.
Drawing on his experiences as a farmer and founder, and insights from SwarmBot customers around Australia, Andrew speaks about:

• How his experience growing the family farm led to the creation of SwarmFarm Robotics
• What three categories are emerging in the marketplace of autonomy in agriculture
• Examples of the new farming practices that autonomy unlocks
• How SwarmFarm Robotics’ plan to scale differs from the dealership model

Companies: SwarmFarm Robotics • Topics: autonomy-robotics, farm-machinery, ag-tech-adoption, business-model

When it comes to designing carbon programs in agriculture, there is a very real tension between the science and the commercial realities of drawing down carbon at scale. Particularly, the question of how to incentivize on-farm practice changes is one that many companies in ag carbon have failed to answer.
Working at the intersection of these tensions is our guest this week, Emma Fuller, Carbon and Ecosystem Services Portfolio Leader at Corteva Agriscience. An accomplished data scientist and ecologist, Emma began her career in agrifood systems publishing research on West Coast fisheries in the US, before jumping into the world of startups at Granular. After their $300M acquisition by what is now Corteva Agriscience, today Emma designs programs that credit farmers for reducing greenhouse gas emissions or sequestering carbon in their soils.
In this episode, Emma talks about:

• How it felt to move from academia into industry, and how Emma realized that the barriers to scaling carbon programs had little to do with science
• Why Corteva decided to partner with carbon marketplaces, and how this strategy is unlocking more scale and delivering value to both parties
• Conflicts of interest in carbon markets, and whether one company can both measure an intangible commodity and sell it

Companies: Corteva Agriscience • Topics: carbon-markets, soil-health, business-model, corporates

This week we're bringing you the final episode in our three-part series on the future of ag insurance.Our journey started with learning the ins and outs of how the sector currently operates (check out the ag insurance 101 episode here) and then talking to key players about new products and technologies entering the industry (check out Damon Johnson on parametric insurance here).Today, Sarah is joined by Matthew Pryor to talk through their learnings in a live attempt to develop an investment thesis for ag insurance. They cover:

• Technologies and business models shifting the CAC/LTV equation in ag insurance
• How insurance is likely to change as agriculture faces more and more extreme weather events
• What entrepreneurs disrupting ag insurance need to be excellent at
• Possible areas for venture investment in ag insurance, from new products to enabling infrastructure and digitally-native business models

Topics: insurance-risk, climate-risk, agtech-ecosystem, finance-investing

For a traditionally low innovation industry, things are starting to heat up in agricultural insurance.
While it remains something of a black box for many people in agriculture, the forces of climate change and technological innovation are creating the right mix of incentives that could change how the whole industry approaches risk.
This second episode of our exploration of ag insurance (check out the first, a 101 on ag insurance, here!) considers a digitally-native product in the hands of farmers today. Reimagining insurance like this will be the difference between farmers spending hours, days, and weeks dealing with brokers and getting payouts, compared to almost instant quotes, claims, and reimbursements.
In this episode, our guest Damon Johnson, Director of Strategic Projects at Global Ag Risk Solutions, speaks about:

• What incentives are changing to increase the use of more data in agricultural insurance
• How parametric insurance works as an alternative to traditional agricultural products
• What’s involved in developing a parametric product to create new value for customers as well as vendors
• Where digitally-native insurance products might emerge as a value-add for sustainable farming systems and inputs

Companies: Global Ag Risk Solutions • Topics: insurance-risk, climate-risk, agtech-ecosystem, finance-investing