Technology for Agricultural Supply Chains

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Agricultural technologies are meant to make our food system more efficient. Nowhere was there more examples this past year of the need for efficiency improvements than in our delicate supply chain. That’s why agtech investor Janette Barnard sees opportunities to invest in companies that can not just help producers, but help the supply chain that impacts us all.

Barnard… “Supply chain is the crisis right now, it's in the news. We should expect more venture capital to flow into that category now, just like happened in fintech. If you think about the history of the amount of capital that flowed into fintech-type companies after the financial crisis of 2008- 2009, then you know, it kind of had a slow start, but then a few years ago you started to see more of those companies IPO, which led to more capital flowing into the category. And I think now we're at that point of a lot of it was originally consumer-facing, we've seen more, more and more of that come into B2B type context. And so now it's coming to ag and there's a lot more on the crop side, that's just starting to filter over to the livestock side.”

One of the biggest drivers of agtech investment has been investor interest in areas like financial technology or fintech and climate. Could freight technology be the next wave of investment into ag?