Agtech - So What?

Climate change will mean more frequent, extreme weather and more risk exposure for farmers around the world. This increased risk should be a driver for the business of agricultural insurers. But, it’s not easy to predict how climate change and digital-disruption might transform one of the world’s oldest industries.
Actually, we’ve come to realize it isn’t easy to understand how agricultural insurance works at all.
So, in the spirit of learning out loud, we’re releasing TWO episodes this week. This first one dives into the mysterious world of ag insurance with a 101-style conversation with Matt Coutts, Chief Investment Officer of Coutts Capita, and Tenacious Ventures General Partner Matthew Pryor.
We talk about:

• How farmers think about risk and forms of insurance
• What ag insurance products actually do, how they work, who is involved, and what the dynamics are between different players from brokers to master agents
• Why ag insurance, as it is structured today, is a zero-sum game played out between insurers and farmers
• What the different forces are that will shape the industry into the future

Topics: insurance-risk, climate-risk, ag-tech-adoption, agtech-ecosystem

Recently the whole team here at Tenacious Ventures had the chance to get out of town and on to the farm. And not just any farm – we visited Jigsaw Farms, home to sheep farmer and long-time friend of the show Mark Wooton and his wife Eve. While out at Jigsaw, Mark and Eve gave us an update on their vision for “sustainable intensification” and their ethos for farm management.
In that spirit we wanted to revisit our original conversation with Mark that was published nearly two years ago. After the recent visit to Jigsaw, it’s clear there are insights from this first discussion that are still valuable and relevant today, as Mark talks about:

• Balancing the social imperative to farm ethically with production methods that can keep businesses profitable,
• Keeping an eye on emerging trends like ecosystem services markets, and being open to the possibility of accessing premiums where they might emerge
• The growing regenerative agriculture movement, and the need for farmers to think critically about guidelines and principles that are often put forward as dogma
• The primacy of data in every decision that gets made on the farm

Companies: Jigsaw Farms • Topics: regen-ag, carbon-markets, livestock-dairy, natural-capital

It isn’t surprising that most farmers have to be expert planners and investors. But getting an inside view into how a farmer plans for the future of their business is a rare opportunity.
In this episode, you’ll hear firsthand how Hallie Shoffner, a sixth-generation row crop farmer in the Mississippi Delta, makes decisions for her farm and company, SFR Seed. While Hallie is an enthusiastic adopter of new farming innovations, this conversation shows that every decision must be well supported by reliable data and the right incentives.
Listen in to hear Hallie speak about:

• Investing in conservation practices as a tactic to mitigate financial and environmental risk
• What farmers like Hallie want to see from potential partners and vendors in agtech
• How COVID-19 impacted a large project to electrify operations on the farm
• Why many farmers are skeptical of participating in carbon programs and markets

Companies: SFR Seed • Topics: farm-economics, ag-tech-adoption, people-culture, succession

Our latest bonus podcast episode is an experiment.
Rather than organize the contributions that usually make up an episode, we decided to hit record on one of the conversations that are always happening internally at Tenacious Ventures.
It’s a snapshot into how we think, form and test our assumptions, and decide on what might be next.
It also captured the team taking on a pretty hot topic on the mind of everyone in agtech battling with adoption and scaling digitally-native solutions:
Have we in agtech completely f*****d farmers by making them afraid of sharing their data?
Listen in to Matthew Pryor and Sarah Nolet from Tenacious Ventures, and Shane Thomas, agronomist and author at Upstream Ag Insights, work through an emerging theory that uncertainty and fear about farm data is a largely unfounded barrier to adoption.
Throughout this recorded conversation, the team explores questions like:

• Which barriers to adoption are actually grounded in reality when it comes to farmers and farm data?
• How did the agtech industry create such fear around farm data, and who has the greatest leverage to change the conversation?
• Why could improvements in data migration unlock greater adoption of digitally-native solutions by farmers?

Topics: ag-data, ag-tech-adoption, people-culture, business-model

There are many different views about the future of autonomous farming. One is that, out of the emerging autonomous equipment providers and established blue chip suppliers, there will be clear winners and losers in the battle for on-farm dominance. Another is that farming in the future will involve all kinds of autonomous solutions. This second possibility presents tons of opportunities to add value for farmers.
Our guest on this week’s episode is Iftach Birger, Co-Founder and COO at FieldIn, a farm data and autonomous equipment startup founded in Israel. Rather than wade into the fray playing out between new autonomous equipment players and established corporations, FieldIn is attempting to create a platform that allows a mixed fleet of equipment to interact seamlessly.
Iftach joins us to speak about:

• Lessons for the agtech world from being born and raised on a high-value crop farm in Israel
• What’s more important for a scaling agtech startup - building what customers say they want, what they actually need, and what is even possible within the present day constraints
• The intricacies of the farm labor debate as it relates to on-farm autonomy
• How to provide the service alongside the software in an industry that values (but might not pay for) boots-on-the-ground partners in the future

Companies: FieldIn • Topics: autonomy-robotics, ag-data, business-model, ag-tech-adoption

Every decision made by founders, farmers, and leaders in agriculture shapes the future of our food system. Whether it’s the cost per hectare of a biological or the value of a ton of carbon sequestered, the different goals and outcomes that end up in business plans inevitably define how time, energy, and capital are spent.
But there are many outcomes of a healthy food system that don’t fit in a business plan. How do leaders today account for the broad connections between people, ideas, and identities? It’s this fabric that reflects who we are, what we value as a society, and how we interact as humans along the agricultural value chain.
Elizabeth Brennan is Non-Executive Director of publicly-listed regenerative food company Wide Open Agriculture. She is a leader across many other organizations dedicated to innovation, equality, and diversity in our agrifood system, and has a long connection to the Western Australian wheat belt, as well as communities overseas.
In this episode Liz shares her insights on:

• What Australian farmers can learn from other cultures, communities, and different forms of agriculture less geared toward the economics of export
• How her definition of “impact” helps her navigate multiple roles of influence across publicly-listed companies, not-for-profits, and family farming business
• How her experience working in subsistence agricultural communities in Papua New Guinea applies to her work in Australian agriculture today
• What the role social fabric in rural and regional communities means, and how to make sure it isn’t lost in the future

Companies: Wide Open Agriculture • Topics: agtech-ecosystem, people-culture, farm-economics, food-systems

Let’s talk about eggs.
Hardly anything can match the egg for complete versatility. Eggs are a crucial ingredient that unlocksthe tastes, textures, and experiences we take for granted in everything from the simplest home omelette to food manufactured on an industrial scale.
So, how would you approach replacing the egg with a plant-based alternative?
This week on EggTech…So What?, we spoke with alternative-protein entrepreneur Tanja Bogumil. Tanja is the Co-Founder and CEO of Berlin-based Perfeggt, a company working to bring plant-based egg alternatives to market, starting with a liquid substitute used for scrambled eggs and baking.
In this episode, Tanja shares her insights on:

• Her story moving from digital entrepreneurship into food, and finding the best team to “crack the egg”
• How Perfeggt mapped the “jobs-to-be-done” of the egg in the food production value chain, and how this informed their initial product focus
• Why initial alternative-protein products are “a means to an end” to start shifting consumer behavior and creatingpathways to scale
• What future strategies for category dominance in alternative-proteins could look like

Companies: Perfeggt • Topics: alt-protein, food-consumer, marketing-brands, venture-startups

Life is moving pretty fast for founders and investors working in agtech.
Recent years have seen record flows of capital into agrifood, driven in part by agriculture potential to provide climate solutions. And the massive disruptions of COVID-19 meant developed markets received a historic taste of what changes will be needed in a world impacted by climate change and further uncertainty.
So, how have the last few years impacted agtech founders looking to raise capital, and investors on the lookout for opportunities with impact?
For this bonus episode, Tenacious Ventures’ Partners Sarah Nolet and Matthew Pryor asked a group of founders and investors to share what they’ve learned and observed about the state of agtech investing in 2022. As a dedicated agrifood venture fund “born in the teeth of COVID-19”, Sarah and Matthew also offer their take on what has changed and what has stayed the same as we look to the future.
In this episode, you’ll hear from:

• Dr Jasmin Hume - CEO & Co-Founder of Shiru
• Olympia Yarger - Founder & CEO of Goterra
• Alex Logan - Co-Founder of Cecil
• Max Elder - Co-Founder & CEO of Nowadays
• Michael Dean - Founding Partner at AgFunder
• Mark Kahn - Managing Partner at Omnivore

Topics: finance-investing, venture-startups, agtech-ecosystem

Biologicals in agriculture have a wildly exciting future. It’s a segment responding to innovation in science, changes in markets, and the urgent pressures of adapting to climate change. New startups coming into the space are generating plenty of buzz, but there are also established players with products in the hands of farmers today.
Ben Barlow is a veteran executive and the Managing Director of New Edge Microbials, a company that has been supplying farmers with legume inoculants and other biologicals for over 20 years. Growing a business in the biologicals space has been just one more step on Ben’s path from his early days as a bank teller with a front-row seat to new opportunities both on and off-farm, and through to expanding his investment thesis to include companies along the value chain globally.
While Ben has plenty to share about the realities of corporate agribusiness for founders and executives, his story as a family farmer investing beyond the farmgate has lessons for producers as well.
In this episode, Ben shares:

• How farmers can diversify their portfolio to manage for the seasonality and cyclicality of farm production
• Trends in the biologicals market, and what it takes to succeed in a sector with high barriers to entry and costs for R&D
• What it takes for globalized agribusiness to succeed in local markets where people and communities are
• What will be needed for Australia to avoid having a massive disadvantage in biologicals in the coming years

Companies: New Edge Microbials • Topics: biologicals, finance-investing, business-model, ag-inputs

Sustainability in food and agriculture has come a long way. Far from being “the dirty word” it used to be in boardrooms and at farm-gates, it’s now business as usual to expect CSR policies, ESG strategies, and decarbonization targets from all major agri-food companies.
But, according to Jessie Deelo, Chief Hub Officer at Vayda, sustainability is moving beyond typical “top-down” commitments. In her work improving the environmental and social impact of supply chains, Jessie sees a huge opportunity for farmers that already embrace sustainable production methods to connect with brands that need products and, incredibly, good stories to tell. As she tells it, the solutions appearing where grassroots meet top-down imperatives will be the most fair for all parties.
For more information and resources, visit our website.

Companies: Vayda • Topics: supply-chain, ag-data, corporates