Ag Tech Sunday - An evening of Ag Tech

By Vasudha Panda

It was an intriguing invite that lead me to the plush fifteenth floor offices of Crowe Horwath in Sydney. A friend who works for an IoT firm had egged me on to attend a "Meet-Up" of Ag Tech enthusiasts. There would be entrepreneurs, both successful and striving, venture capitalists, ever in search of new opportunities, networking professionals, graduates and those soon to be, and a few stray inquisitive ones such as myself. The evening did promise to teach me a new thing or two and so, there I was.

It started dauntingly enough, there were almost a hundred members in the room and I knew not one of them. It took me some courage and a bit of wine to greet the person standing next to me. She was Michelle Demers, a PhD student and co-founder of Carapac, a company producing food packaging from seafood waste. We shared our experiences and I was amazed at her passion for her cause. I would realize, over the evening, that it was the common denominator. That zeal was infectious.

Eventually, I had the opportunity of meeting a couple of Venture Capitalists, a student of Agriculture at Sydney Uni and a cattle farmer from drought-stricken NSW. I eagerly lapped up their anecdotes and insights. It sounded alien and familiar at the same time.

The use of technology in agriculture is not recent. Agriculture being extremely labour intensive, demands the use of efficiency enhancing tools. From the era of the Froelich Tractor in the late 19th century to modern day Matrice Drones, the adoption of agriculture technology is imperative at various stages of the crop life cycle for a profitable venture for the farmer as well as the retailer. But is Ag-Tech growing at the requisite pace? The panellists for the evening were established Ag-Tech veterans from America, Britain and Australia. Their discussion opened up a fascinating gamut of topics.

Kevin Baum is the CEO/Co-Founder of AgriWebb. He kicked off the talk with a simple statement, "If we give a drone to a farmer, that doesn't automatically make him a good farmer." He was hinting at a prevalent push strategy in Ag-Tech firms rather than farmers themselves demanding the product. In his opinion, the classic rules of marketing apply. Giving the farmer a value proposition and decision-making tools will pave the way to Ag-tech success, rather than selling them a bunch of hardware and a gig of data they didn't ask for. The common opinion is that farmers are conservative, but so should anyone be, if they are making an important business decision.

Stu Adam, the owner of Agronomeye, stressed upon the need of data. Ironically, Ag-Tech is bursting at the seams with data, just not from the farmers. Currently, a lot of firms are working, dangerously so, on assumptions. Agriculture is a tough nut to crack, your clients live a thousand miles from your workstation, there are a thousand of them spread across and each one has a separate situation going on in his backyard. Sparing some resources and going on a road trip to the hinterlands, in Stu's judgement, isn't a bad idea when you want to hear from your clients.

The topic of investments for Ag-Tech start ups brought forth many interesting views from the panellists. Precision Ag-Tech is as yet in its nascent stages in Australia, a far cry from the US where it has slowly become an integral part of the Agri-Input system. It has a lot to do with the heavy subsidies given to American farmers in a bid to adopt technology. And since it has been around for long, investors see their effective ROI, especially in a sector like Agriculture where turnover period is stretched to decades. In an export oriented agrarian sector like in Australia where the focus isn't only on domestic consumption, subsidies are hard to come by, perhaps eventually making Ag-Tech so competitive. A longer turnover period, farmer reluctance aren't the only reasons stopping VCs from funding start-ups. Due diligence of Ag-Tech firms is mired in difficulties, as per Sarah Nolet, Founder and CEO of the consulting firm AgThentic. Speaking from experience, she says VCs might need a lot more persuasion and successful test cases to convert.

In such a scenario, Jill Storey, CEO at ReadyFundGo believes in the power of crowd funding. According to her, Australians are inclined towards Agriculture, and the power of per capita investment cannot be underestimated. Whether it be equity based or rewards-based crowd funding, Ag-Tech start-ups need to take advantage of such options.

Going forward, for a successful progression, Melissa Brandao, CEO at HerdDog, calls for internal collaboration of different kinds of Ag-Tech firms. She firmly believes that if you have a good product and a good synergy with other service providers, you are most certain to succeed. In her case itself, there are several other companies in the US offering similar products but none provide the value proposition or have the patents that her's do.

While AI might never be able to fully substitute the complex decisions taken by a farmer, it certainly has the capacity of making it easier and relatively error free. To take this forward, whether they have a family background of farming or are humanitarian in their intentions, Ag-Tech professionals must act like an engineer but think like a farmer.

Picture - Panellists (L-R), Kevin Baum, Jill Storey, Melissa Brandao, Stu Adam and Sarah Nolet at the Feeding The Future: Aussie AgTech