A Call to Arms to Agribusiness: Let’s Compete Where It Matters & Collaborate Where We Can in the AgTech Arms Race

By Greg Meyers      

The first word that comes to mind when you think “Oprah Winfrey,” “Katy Perry,” and “Google” is probably not “farm.” But the impresario, the pop singer and the Plex are among a recent land rush of investors into the hot Agtech sector.

How hot? Venture investments in agricultural/food technology companies were the highest on record in 2020, totaling more than US$30 billion across 3,092 deals, according to the AgriFoodTech Investment Report – more than 30 percent larger than in 2019.

Why the gusher of money into agricultural technology? Opportunity born of necessity. Within 30 years Earth is projected to have more than 9 billion inhabitants, and they must be fed while protecting and regenerating the planet’s limited supply of arable soil (only about 11 percent of the globe’s surface). The only way to meet that staggering demand is with the help of digital technology.

This Gold Rush moment in Agtech is reminiscent of a similar period in the early days of the computer/internet revolution, though with starker stakes. In computers and the internet, fizzy utopian founders aimed to “change the world.” Digital agricultural technology needs to save the world.

Agtech must avoid the progress-slowing pattern followed by such earlier novel and transformative technology advances as personal computing and the internet. If you came of age at the dawn of the personal computer era, you’ll remember the Commodore 64, the VIC-20 and the IBM PC. If you came of age during the internet’s early years, you’ll remember Prodigy, America Online and CompuServe (they were Internet Service Providers, or ISPs). 

The pattern both technologies followed: Step 1 – naively think it’s a winner take all market. Step 2 – build a walled garden with the intent of locking customers into a proprietary and closed ecosystem. Step 3 – spend 80 percent of your time and money recreating the same things everyone else has and only 20 percent of your time developing truly differentiated products with a good product market fit. Step 4 – finally realize one company can’t do it all and agree to align around a common base set of capabilities, then innovate on top of open standards. 

Once the personal computer industry allowed Microsoft to build a good enough operating system and Intel to build semiconductors, other software companies could spend 100 percent of their time and talent building innovative software on top. 

With the threat of climate change accelerating, we don’t have time to meander through Steps 1-to-3 in agriculture. Agtech must learn from the computer industry’s early mistakes, jump to Step 4 and swiftly create an open ecosystem of innovative, cross-platform software standards so farmers can benefit immediately from the growing array of digital technologies available, regardless of vendor.

A cautionary tale can be found in healthcare, where digitization has delivered far less than its potential – to patients, practitioners and investors. Digital healthcare technology, such as electronic health records, is everywhere. But, too often, software incompatibility segregates vital patient information in impregnable silos. In some hospitals, doctors and pharmacists in the same building can’t access integrated records for the same patient.  

What Farmers Need & Want: A One-Stop Shop for all those ‘One-Stop Shops’  

In Agtech right now, the same old pattern is repeating itself. Competing companies are battling mightily to reinvent the same functionality as one another, hoping to be the dominant platform for farmers and their advisors. 

This was a major time-waster the first time around, and it’s a major time waster now, when we have no time to waste. The fact is, no farmer wants 30 software subscriptions with 30 passwords all offering a $4 bushel-per-acre advantage but requiring data reentry from one supposedly “one stop shop” to the next. 

What farmers and their trusted advisors need is an ecosystem of companies all striving to build useful, innovative agricultural software that works across platforms. No walled gardens on the farm!

Whichever software a farmer chooses as main point of entry should benefit from the full breadth of innovation across the entire agriculture value chain – the same way all the apps on your phone work together, regardless of operating system or phone manufacturer.

No single company can solve all challenges farmers face. Many companies – established and new – are contributing valuable knowledge and technologies to make agriculture more environmentally efficient and potentially much more profitable.

That’s what farmers and the world need, now. Open standards and universal compatibility will allow us to unlock software’s full potential to support optimal agriculture. And technology providers, my company included, will succeed by delivering innovation and value – not by limiting farmers’ choices.

Let’s work together as an industry to feed the world by making farming more profitable for farmers and more sustainable for the planet, with equitable access to the game-changing innovations created by combining science, agronomy and digital capabilities.

My advice to entrepreneurs in Agtech: Compete on the algorithm, the product and the service—not walling the garden.

Given the enormity of the dual challenges of a burgeoning global population and accelerating climate change, Agtech companies must see ourselves as part of a collaborative community, engaged in the digital equivalent of a global barn-raising.

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Greg Meyers is Chief Information Officer and Chief Digital Officer of Syngenta Group, a global agricultural technology company with 49,000 employees in more than 100 countries.