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.
Does the average citizen actually need to care about how their food is produced? This is the central question Australian author and journalist, Gabrielle Chan, set out to answer. Her latest book, “Why you should give a f*ck about farming” details her firm conclusion, that yes, if you eat food, you should in fact care about agriculture.
While the old days of agriculture as the top contributor to GDP is over for most Western countries, Gabrielle argues the future of food and farming is becoming increasingly important for a raft of other reasons such as climate change and food security.
Mark Wootton is well-known in the Australian agriculture industry as a pioneer in carbon-neutral farming. In 2011, Jigsaw Farms, his family property in south-west Victoria, achieved carbon neutrality - undergoing a process he openly admits was at the time, both “arduous and not necessarily commercially rewarding”.
But his passion for sustainable farming and lowering carbon emissions continues. His latest venture is a “Super Ewe” - where he aims to genetically create a dual purpose sheep.
Mic Fels and his wife Marnie crop about 11,000 hectares in Esperance, Western Australia. But Mic is not your average farmer. He's an early adopter of technologies and farming systems (e.g., Controlled Traffic), and an innovator, building and commercializing a range of software products and machinery through his company, iPaddock.
On this episode, Mic shares where he is- and isn't- getting value in agtech, and what he's learned about both startups and farming from his journey as an entrepreneur.
