Around the new year I like to reflect on previous episodes and pull out insights that I think are important for the future of agriculture.

As I reflected on the content from this past year, an insight became immediately clear: agtech has a long way to go. As much as we talk about the money that has poured into the industry and how much potential there is for the future of agriculture, progress has been, by most measures, slow. And change - in a lot of cases - has been minimal. This isn’t an indictment on anyone in the industry, instead it’s a statement that we all probably don’t say often enough: innovation is hard.

There are some real forces working against the advancement of agricultural innovation. Today’s episode explores these barriers that are holding back the entire sector and profiles companies that are directly addressing and trying to eliminate those barriers. Loyal listeners know that I love this idea of enabling technologies. Which is to say, breakthroughs that open the floodgates for numerous future breakthroughs. The stories you’ll hear today are examples of companies trying to create something that enables future innovation. In some cases, with their technology, in others: with their business model.

Here are the five barriers holding agtech back:

Too much risk being put on the buyer (in most cases, the producer)
Limited rural Connectivity
Lack of integrations between ag technologies
Scarcity of precision-first implementation equipment
Inability to find product-market fit

*LISTEN TO THE EPISODE FOR TWO ADDITIONAL BARRIERS*

Companies featured:

Growers Edge www.growersedge.com

SWARM https://swarm.space/

Leaf https://withleaf.io/

Rantizo https://rantizo.com/

In10t https://in10t.ag/

FoA 238: 5 Barriers Limiting Agtech (and the companies breaking through them)