Seven Years On, evoke^AG. Returns to Melbourne to Chart Agtech’s Next Frontier

What even is ‘agtech?’ Pioneering a new industry

In 2019 Matthew Pryor had just finished up at Observant, a water management company he co-founded.

“Obviously water’s a resource that Australia has known a lot about and cared a lot about for a long time,” he said.

“But I would find myself in rooms talking about water management and water use efficiency in agriculture, in international settings. And there just weren’t enough Australians in those rooms.”

Matthew Pryor, Tenacious Ventures

After being part of an Australian posse to World Agritech (organised by Austrade), Matt and others realised they needed a peak event for Australia, that brought together people at the intersection of agriculture and innovation.

Then, at the evoke^AG. investor event, Matthew Pryor and Sarah Nolet, launched their idea of a dedicated agrifood tech venture capital firm – a first of its kind.

“So reflecting back on the 2019 event, it’s kind of also the birthplace of Tenacious Ventures.”

While the Covid-19 pandemic brought challenges, global investment in agetch spiked in 2020/21.

Matt recalls those years as when the “agtech industry finally had a voice.”

Putting Australian agrifood innovation on the world stage

Dallas Pearce was part of the “small but mighty team” tasked with bringing the idea of evoke^AG. to life. Back then, Dallas was the Communications Coordinator at AgriFutures (now the Senior Manager of evoke^AG.).

“It was this big bold idea and we had this feeling that we were really building something that’s never been done before in Australia,” she said.

“I still remember that first day of evoke^AG. in 2019, there was such electricity in the room. And that’s a feeling we’ve really tried to make sure that we keep, by building it into something bigger and bigger each year.”

Dallas Pearce, AgriFutures Australia

Dallas recalls how the term ‘agtech’ was being used overseas, but really hadn’t made it to Australian soil.

“We had GPS in tractors, we had agritech. But it wasn’t something that everyone was talking about in that way”, she said.

“And the conversations back in 2019 at that event were really about ‘what is agtech? What does it do? We weren’t at the ‘why’ or the ‘how’ yet.”

But it wasn’t all about the emerging understanding of “agtech.” evoke^AG. was also intent on linking the concept of “agrifood” with agriculture.

Dr Angeline Achariya was the CEO of Monash Food Innovation at the time.

“One thing that stood out for me very clearly, ’cause I’m quite a proponent of this, is bringing ag and food together,” she said.

“Those were separate conversations, like way separate. It used to be food manufacturing and anything that was post-farm, sat at one end and then anything that was farm, sat in another corner.”

Now, there is more understanding of agrifood as a system that also needs to nurture the land, rather than being viewed simply in terms of inputs and outputs.

Angeline says this is especially important, “because we are running out of land to farm. We’re running out of resources that we can continuously convert.”

The future is autonomy, not just agronomy

Matthew Pryor says it’s exciting to walk into an agtech event and see a lot of people he doesn’t know.

“I think it’s just a function of how significantly the industry has grown,” he said.

“We now have a peak body in AusAgritech and internationally recognised Australian agtech companies such as FarmBot and SwamFarm Robotics.”

Indeed, SwarmFarm’s growth accelerated after bringing one of their autonomous bots, (used for crop production) to the 2020 event. Since pitching and securing an investor deal, the business has evolved from being a QLD-based family farm, to a sizable agtech company.

Dallas Pearce says she’s watched its co-founder, Andrew Bate develop as speaker and agtech leader.

“SwamFarm is really playing on the global stage now, with serious capital invested in them. So, Andrew will be one of our keynotes in Melbourne.”

This ecosystem growth, has in turn, helped the agtech industry overcome another key challenge: being seen as an attractive career choice.

“We just couldn’t entice people into the agtech industry before, like you couldn’t even describe what it was,” Matthew Pryor said.

“We needed software and hardware engineers and we were trying to compete with the banking sector and other established sectors. So I think in that respect it has completely transformed.”

Dallas Pearce says we’ve entered an era where automation, AI and data driven decision making is transforming how we’re producing food .

She said the next seven years are likely to be about integration and impact.

“There’s so much technology out there, but now it’s about, well, how does that make an impact? Then connecting the technology, with the policy and the capital to be able to deliver change at real scale.”

When evoke^AG. began, Australia’s startup culture in food and agriculture was in its infancy. Therefore a conscious decision was made to invest in incubators and accelerators to help commercialise the research coming from the agricultural research and development corporations.

Dr Angeline Achariya says the focus now needs to be on nurturing startups.

“The job to do now is actually help them scale, because we know 94 percent of startups fail, right?”

“So we have to help them scale profitably and sustainably in their business model. That’s a huge job to do.” she said.

Should the future focus be on the farm or the value chain?

It’s certainly not easy in the current investment environment, where global agtech funding is in decline and remains under-invested as a sector. This means for startup founders, the day to day realities of keeping their companies running, is a significant challenge.

Despite these headwinds, Australia’s maturing agrifood innovation ecosystem has become more focused on sustainable growth and a whole-of-system approach.

Dr Angeline Achariya, Innovation GameChangers

Angeline says there has been a significant shift in favour of the value chain.

“In 2019, the conversation was ‘how do we digitize farms, whereas now people are talking about ‘how do we create resilient food systems that are going to feed 10 billion people, while regenerating our planet at the same time?”

The conversation has also broadened to food security and food sovereignty, particularly after the Covid pandemic.

“Those two terms have never come on the radar, certainly not before my time,” Angeline said.

Matthew Pryor stills see on-farm tech adoption as being important, not just for farmers but for the entire ecosystem; to ensure the technologies that are developed in Australia, also remain here.

It’s this notion of “sovereign capability” that Matthew believes is key to ensuring farmers are direct beneficiaries of having an agtech ecosystem in the first place.

“Because one of the potential challenges is that, as companies grow and they take on capital, some of their capital can come from international sources. This is fabulous, except for when those companies end up more focused overseas.” he said.

evoke^AG. as the “connector”

Dallas Pearce is busily preparing for her 7th evoke^AG. … and its grand return to Melbourne in February, at the Convention and Exhibition Centre. It’s the place to have these tough conversations about how to move the agrifood sector forward.

“We see evoke^AG. as the connector,” she said.

“We are that platform, where it might have taken months to get a meeting with an investor and a startup, you can do that in the one space”.

Matthew Pryor says it’s worth remembering that the ecosystem we have now was not an accident, rather it was strategically designed.

“So I think we need to find the right forums, and evoke^AG. presents these opportunities to say, okay, what’s the next seven years look like? And consciously design that.”

Dr Angeline Achariya also noted the importance of inclusive leadership being modelled at evoke^AG., such as the access to free childcare and the Groundbreakers program for young people.

“I’m sure it comes at a cost. But putting these things in, makes it really easy for more diversity and inclusiveness. And when you have those voices, I think you have such a richness in conversation that you can’t have without it,” she said.

Like this article? Dive in deeper to what the next seven years might look like at evoke^AG., in a live podcast recording of Agtech… So What? Join host Sarah Nolet for the panel “The Seven-Year Itch: Investment, Innovation and Impact.”

Kirsten Diprose is a contributor to AgriFutures and the founder of Rural Podcasting Co.