Four opportunities that could shape the next wave of agricultural technology

Speakers at the recent World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London pointed to four areas likely to shape the next wave of agricultural innovation, according to an AgNavigator analysis of the discussions.

The first is resilience finance. Farmers are often expected to pay for irrigation, soil health, new genetics or precision technology whose benefits flow to processors, traders and retailers too. "If we expect that the farmer carries all the risk and that the benefits are reaped somewhere else in the value chain, then it's definitely not going to work," said Geert Maesmans, R&D vice president at Cargill. Costs could instead be shared among banks, insurers, governments and supply-chain partners through blended finance, sustainability-linked lending, insetting and insurance.

The second is a new way of funding agtech. Much of the past decade's money followed a software-style venture playbook, but farm technologies take longer to develop, validate and sell. "The unicorn is a myth in agtech," said Michael Lee, managing director of Syngenta Group Ventures, who suggested working back from realistic exit values of roughly $100 million to $400 million. Smaller equity rounds combined with venture debt, structured finance and corporate partnerships could produce fewer spectacular deals but more sustainable companies.

The third is integration: the winners may not have the best product but the one that fits farms' existing systems. A biological that forces farmers to redesign spray programmes, or a robot that does not work with their machinery, may struggle. "Generic AI delivering generic advice is gonna deliver very little, if any, value to local farmers," said Jeff Macdonald of IBM.

The fourth is agricultural risk intelligence that can put a number on compound risks, such as a drought arriving as fertiliser and fuel prices rise. "We cannot transition and we cannot adapt to something that we haven't quantified," said Ana Gonzalez, senior adviser at Risklayer. Platforms combining climate, soil, crop, commodity and financial data could serve farmers, banks, insurers, food manufacturers and investors alike.

Photo: Shreesha Sharma / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: AgNavigator