The DemoDay at Bayer Crop Science's Monheim site taught me a valuable lesson.

After two years of COVID restrictions, meeting people from the agriculture industry at the #LifeHubMonheim #DemoDay event re-reminded me of how important it is to meet people in person from the industry I love – Agriculture. In-person gatherings foster innovation by allowing participants engaging in creative discussions. Thanks to Bayer Crop Science | Innovation Ecosystem and EIT Food Accelerator Network for this opportunity. A special thanks also goes to the other entrepreneurs and the people behind the scenes, without whom the experience would have been incomplete.

What was the purpose of this gathering? The EIT network brought together agricultural corporations and startups. 11 AgTech startups and over 100 Bayer employees discussed how to use technology to solve food production challenges. The startups were Agrisim, Binkiapp, OLCROP, Carbone Farmers, DupliPlant, Fauna Smart Technologies, PAAWR, SMAPP LAB, SmartHive Solutions Ltd. and, Spacenus GmbH. I was there representing Spacenus and presenting its flagship product, ANA (Agricultural Nutrient Assistant). The work Spacenus is doing to make agriculture more sustainable has received a lot of positive feedback. The event provided me a strong validation of the current need for our products as well as further inspiration for myself and my team to work even harder.

ANA (Agricultural Nutrient Assistant) – ANA provides absolute nitrogen fertilizer rate recommendation, allowing farmers to challenge their fertilizer rate decisions. ANA is designed to help with various fertilization application practices like as pre-emergence, in-season, single or multiple fertilization, and so on. This This technology enables consultants to give farmers with data-driven fertilizer rate recommendations, allowing them to serve more farmers in less time. ANA can be integrated into corporate business processes to ensure that the Green Deal aim is met while also making farms profitable.

What were the most intriguing questions raised and answered throughout the event?

1.?What does Bayer hope to accomplish? and why this event? Bayer's goal is to transition to a digital service based revenue model alongside their traditional revenue model – seed and plant protection product sales, which I find quite fascinating. Their pesticide and herbicide industry will shrink over time due to regulatory pressure, and their new approach will enable them stay competitive and, eventually, allow them to move into the digital future and remain relevant. They also intend to achieve GHG (greenhouse gas) emission neutrality by 2030. To accomplish this efficiently, they have invited 11 relevant AgTech startups with complementary technology to their campus who can assist them in reaching their objective while also allowing Bayer colleagues to connect with the startups and explore the potential possibility. That was an interesting approach, in my opinion.

2.?How can corporations and startups learn more quickly while the world faces a transitional challenge of going digital on a global scale? This may be accomplished by inviting complementary and relevant AgTech companies to the corporate campus and allowing corporate scientists and startup founders to meet and learn firsthand. This enables corporate scientists to learn how modern high-tech can assist them with their daily challenges. On the other hand, startups also can gain invaluable insights into corporate business operational challenges, which are crucial to their product development, value proposition design, and timely finding of product-market fit. That is precisely what occurred throughout this event. It was very cool.

3.?What are the prerequisites for the agricultural manufacturer to transition to a digital service-based revenue model? Until recently, the quantity of product sold was the simplest yet most important KPI for agricultural enterprises. However, due to a global shift in environmental policy and a greater emphasis on climate change mitigation, the KPI is no longer adequate. Besides, the accelerated shift toward digitization necessitates changes in corporate business model. Bayer, for example, wants to shift to a business strategy based on digital services in addition to their conventional revenue model based on product sales. John Deere has a similar strategy. Product sales-focused advising services will no longer be sufficient to deal with this change and remain relevant. What do I mean by that? A plant protection manufacturer, for example, may only give a solution for plant protection product recommendations, but they must also provide fertilizer and seeding advice services. By focusing on a single digital service (for example, plant protection advice), the enterprises will be unable to ensure/guarantee optimal yield, resulting in the failure of the service-based model. As a result, businesses that wish to become digital must provide comprehensive recommendation services.

4.?How can small-scale European businesses compete with large-scale, well-funded North American AgTech unicorns? During conversations with other startup founders, it became evident that there is a substantial financing difference between North American AgTech businesses and European startups, making it difficult for European startups to compete on a global scale. Furthermore, businesses at the early stage cannot rely entirely on major contracts with large corporations since customer acquisition time in the agriculture area may be as long as 12 months, which is a deal breaker. So, what other options are there? Startups with complementary recommendation technologies, in my opinion, should join forces to develop and offer comprehensive farming recommendation solutions. This will help them to gain weight and compete with current global scale startups as well as corporations that provide advisory services. I believe in this strategy. So, hello to other entrepreneurs - if you're interested, let us talk.

Finally, one of the most interesting components of this event was the tour of the Bayer facilities - the green houses and their purpose. The information and ideas presented were priceless - what thousands of scientists are doing there, why they are doing it, and how they are doing it. Furthermore, the material lab and robotics for managing material orders were fantastic. If there is another opportunity to learn more about those fascinating things, I will return.

This understanding speaks nothing about what Bayer, EIT, or any other participating startups desire — it is purely my opinion. I considered sharing my own takeaway massages in the hopes of interacting with people who agree or disagree with my understanding and learning, which should lead to accelerated AgTech adoption at scale, allowing farms to be more sustainable and profitable, agricultural environmental damage to be reduced, and AgTech enabled farming to help combat climate change.

Thanks Simon Maechling for the pictures.