For our 100th episode (hooray!), we’ve brought back some of our most popular guests to check in on what’s changed in their businesses and in agtech since we spoke, and the new technologies and opportunities we can all be looking out for. This episode features Mark Wootton, Stu Austin, Sarah Mock, and Derek Norman.
The Silicon Valley model for innovation has worked famously for many software based companies, such as Facebook and PayPal. However, when it comes to agtech, the Silicon Valley template for startup success hasn’t translated very well. This template, of either “user is the customer” or “user is the product” is rather limited in agriculture, where the farming population is small (restricting scale) and the stakes are high.
This episode features Rob Trice, the founder of Better Food Ventures and The Mixing Bowl, along with Sarah Nolet and Matthew Pryor, who both lead the Agthentic Group and Tenacious Ventures. All three guests have a solid tech history in Silicon Valley and discuss why the business models typically used by venture-backed software companies, can’t just be copy-pasted to agriculture.
For some, the concept of hands-free farming is terrifying; for others, the prospect is game-changing and exciting. But, is fully autonomous farming really possible?
In this episode, we chat with Kit Franklin, senior lecturer in agricultural engineering at Harper Adams University in the UK, who in 2016 set out to prove an entire crop cycle could be done autonomously. The project was called Hands Free Hectare, which later expanded into Hands Free Farm after garnering worldwide attention for producing what is believed to be the first crop to be planted, cultivated, and harvested - completely autonomously.
While Kit started this farming experiment simply to prove robotic farming was possible, how transferable is his autonomous trial crop to the real world?
Farmers are under pressure to shift toward lower chemical intensity production. Biologicals are touted as one possible solution, promising natural, chemical-free alternatives to fertilizers and pesticides. But biologicals also have a reputation for being ‘snake oil,’ with companies making claims that are too good to be true, or that don’t stack up outside the lab. So what’s the science behind biologicals, how do we know they work, and how can they get to scale?
This episode features Jarrett Chambers, founder and President of ATP Nutrition, and Shane Thomas, author of Upstream Ag Insights.
How technology was introduced to a 200 year old sheep station.
Cavan Station is a 25,000 acre property, owned by the Murdoch family, which has undergone a significant transformation in the past 10 years. Matt Crozier, the Station’s General Manager, explains how they’re using genetics, genomics, data and software to improve the farm.
Karmen Mehmen is a corn and soybean farmer in Iowa alongside her husband Stan and their son Kyle and daughter-in-law Kerri. Their farm, MBS Family Farms, has grown from 160 acres and 40 cows back in the ‘60s to an operation that today supports 20 families. In this episode, Karmen talks about
How technology has enabled them to manage through substantial growth
Learnings from transitioning the farm to the next generation
How structured coaching and support has helped them become better farmers & business owners
Renée Anderson is a farmer in Emerald, Queensland, Nuffield Scholar, agronomist, and overall champion for the cotton industry. In this episode, she shares her insights from Australia and around the world on social license, science communications, and the role that tech can play in helping farmers both improve production and change the narrative about agriculture.
Today’s episode is all about corporate investments and acquisitions in agtech. Two guests, Derek Norman (VP at Leaps by Bayer) and Jim Chambers (President and General Manager of the Worldwide Agriculture Business at Trimble) cover different ways startups can engage with corporates, from early stage direct strategic investments, to channel partnerships, to acquisitions.
This episode was recorded LIVE at an event we co-hosted with Tim Hammerich, host of the Future of Agriculture podcast. If you're not yet a FoA listener, check out episode 201 featuring AgThentic Partner Matthew Pryor.
Coming to you live from Australia's first national, virtual AgTech Meetup, this panel explores what alternative proteins are, how big they'll become, and what this means for agriculture.
The panelists at the meetup were:
Catherine Tubb, Research Fellow at RethinkX
Paul Wood, Chairman at AusBiotech
George Peppou, CEO/Co-founder at VOW
The meetup was co-hosted by us (AgThentic) alongside SproutX and Platfarm.
This week Sarah is joined by a guest host, Cass Mao, Principal Advisor at AgThentic, to chat with Pete Nelson of AgLaunch about how growers and agtech companies can work together in a model that they call "farmer-centric innovation"
Pete Nelson, originally a farmer and an English major at University, has been actively involved in building the support ecosystem for new agricultural enterprises for over 15 years. He has worked with a variety of public and private sector partners and helped to launch multiple startup companies. More recently, as President of AgLaunch, Pete has been working on sector-specific initiatives to fund, incubate, and accelerate agricultural companies with high growth potential by working with farmers.
In this episode, Pete explains what “farmer-centric innovation” means, how AgLaunch is driving it, and how having growers at the table fundamentally changes outcomes for startups and regional communities.
We hear all the time that we need to "feed the world" and that "agtech can help" But what role will indoor farming play? How do these systems work, what can they grow, and how do they make money?
We believe there will be many viable, profitable farming systems in the future. And that though there is a lot of hype around indoor agriculture, there’s a place for these systems, too.
Today’s guest, Allison Kopf, is an agtech entrepreneur and indoor ag expert. Her company, Artemis, builds software for indoor farms and specialty crops. In this episode, rebroadcast (with updates and edits) from a couple years ago, Allison shares an indoor ag 101. We also cover the challenges for women in agtech, and how we can increase gender diversity at conferences and in the market.
evokeAG, Asia Pacific's largest agrifood tech event, brought together 1300 innovators earlier in February this year in Melbourne, Australia. The jam-packed event featured international experts, innovative farmers, dozens of startups, and much more, showcasing what the region has to offer in agrifood tech innovation.
This bonus episode gives a taste of evokeAG and a live recording of the first panel on the main stage: The Asia-Pacific region and how we are rising. Panelists included:
Andrew Coppin - Farmbot
David Downs - NZTE
John Hartnett - SVG Ventures/THRIVE
Liza Noonan - CSIRO
Sarah Nolet - Tenacious Ventures and your host here at AgTech...So What?
Today’s guest is Alisdair Tulloch, a fourth generation grape grower, who has been on a journey to make his family business, Keith Tulloch Wine, carbon neutral.
In this episode, Alisdair shares:
Why they decided to go carbon neutral;
What practices and technologies they’re using, and what is and isn’t working; and
The financials - what the expensive parts are, and where the returns are coming from.
Agtech is about more than the technologies. It's about new business models in agriculture, and of course the innovators driving changes along the value chain. Today’s guest, Fiona Aveyard, a 5th generation mixed farmer, is definitely an innovator and an entrepreneur.
We talk about how she’s working on a new supply chain and new value add products that can bring more profits to the farm and create jobs in her local community. And she’s doing all of this while facing dust storms and the worst drought in history.
This episode is again part of our series in partnership with Farmers2Founders.
Fee Turner (Bitwise Agronomy) and Lee Coleman (FarmSimple) are both farmers as well as founders of agtech startups. They, along with six other farmer-led businesses, have been selected into the Farmers2Founders Bootcamp program, an intensive 3 month accelerator that is helping them take their business to the next level.
In this episode, Fee and Lee tell us about their farms, startups, and the challenges they're facing being farmers and founders.
This episode is produced in partnership with Farmers2Founders. To learn more, check out https://www.farmers2founders.com/ or follow @farmers2founder on Twitter.
