“I’ll be looking to talk about a lot of the trends that we're seeing come through in biologicals, in terms of circular agriculture,” Pete said.
“Circular agriculture, rejuvenating soil health, replacing chemical use and really looking to mitigate some of the issues of climate change using technology.”
Farmers2Founders is the Australian and New Zealand arm of a global suite of companies offering growth services to agri-food tech companies.
“We offer growth services to agri-food tech companies, all the way across that maturity spectrum, from I've got an idea, all the way up to I’ve fully saturated the Australian market,” Pete said.
The company focuses on helping start-ups achieve on-farm success through adoption.
“Getting startup’s messages to farmers is what is going to drive us towards that agricultural and food production system that is really going to be able to be resilient against everything in the future; economics, climate, international trade,” Pete said.
Farmers2Founders operates a tech farm pillar that connects producers with start-ups through a problem-led matchmaking service.
“Our tech farm, pillar of the business, is a problem-led matchmaking service effectively for producers to tech companies themselves, so we typically engage with the producer and start to chat about what their problems look like with our suite of ag tech consultants,” he said.
The organisation has successfully deployed technology through its Tech Farm program, a project supported by the Future Drought Fund, which successfully deployed $3 million of technology onto about 75 farms.
Pete identified a common challenge among ag tech start-ups.
“Our innovation and program development is really focused on supporting start-ups to build themselves through various intervention-based approaches,” he said.
“More often than not, the biggest thing that we find with ag tech start-ups coming through our programs is that they really don't know the root problem that they're trying to solve.”
To find out when Farmers2Founders head of product and program manager Pete Walsh will be speaking, check the Small Farms Learning Hub schedule
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