To say the (painfully) obvious: the fate of agriculture and climate change are inextricably linked.
The weather dictates what grows where and when, but as the earth warms under a woolen blanket of excess carbon, agriculture is particularly vulnerable in ways you might not expect.
Record-setting heat and drought bake grasses what farmers depend on to feed livestock, warmer temperatures are a blessing for pests and fungi that harm the crops, smoke from forest fires spoil harvestand extreme weather and rising seas make it harder to move everything (including food) around. The threats to food security and livelihoods continue.
No doubt this has some dealmakers in tech salivating. As startups look for ways to adapt the global food system to today’s chaos, we reached seven agtech investors to better understand how the climate crisis has impacted their strategies so far.
“Climate challenges are not new to anyone operating in the wider food and agriculture space, so our approach is to invest in solutions that can help mitigate and adapt to climate change,” Yield lab partner Camila Petignat told londonbusinessblog.com.
Themes the company is looking at “include soil and water conservation, improved crop input utilization, shifting from chemical to biological crop protection solutions and reducing food waste,” Petignat said.
“We could argue,” Petignat added, “that the increased awareness of carbon markets in recent years has created new opportunities at the intersection of agtech and fintech, a space we are interested in.”
India is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change omnivore managing partner Jinesh Shah told londonbusinessblog.com. “Agriculture accounts for 20% of India’s GHG emissions, but the sector is also incredibly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which could threaten India’s food security in the next decade.” he said. Agriculture is responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissionsaccording to the EPA.
Shah added that the company’s strategy is to “invest in startups that align with one or more of our four key pillars: increasing smallholder profitability, increasing smallholder resilience, improving agricultural sustainability, and climate action.” catalyze.” The investor further stated that agtech in India “needs to evolve beyond digital technologies (farmer platforms and B2B marketplaces), and we are looking to agrifood life sciences for long-term solutions to climate change.”
Read the full survey to find out where investors want to invest, what they’re thinking about right now, the best way to pitch and contact them, and understand which emerging technologies have caught their attention.