Agriculture is the most exciting and essential sector in which to pursue a meaningful career. David Yocom and I both see huge potential for positive social impact through agtech, and we’re surprised that more of our peers don’t see this.
David is an Associate at iSelect Fund, a venture capital fund in St. Louis. We both came to St. Louis through Venture For America, an entrepreneurial fellowship program. He’s from the Bay Area (startup land), I’m from the NJ burbs (Wall Street land.) Dave went to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where he studied life cycle analysis in food and agricultural supply chains, and I went to Swarthmore, where, I designed green walls and food computers. We frequently work together through our respective firms, and we run in the same St Louis transplant startup circles. Neither of us came from agrarian background, and we both continue to be relative outliers among our friends & families for working in the a space that requires regular meetings in the rural Midwest.
We think young people should work in agtech.
It’s no secret that young people, particularly post-grads, want their work to make a difference and to be considered high impact. In a survey published by The Society for Human Resource Management, 94% of millenials specified wanting a job where their skills would benefit a cause.
So where do most young young people, rich in energy and technology savvy, look when they want to apply their skills for a cause? Political sciences? NGOs? Clean energy? Animal welfare? Human rights? Where do most young people not look?
Agriculture.
The idea that agriculture wouldn’t be the first place to look for impact minded individuals is almost absurd. There are few other subject areas that so fundamentally impact the human condition across all pillars of society than do food and agriculture. Food and agriculture are immensely important to human and animal health, environmental sustainability and climate change, economic development and equality, and just about any other issue for which one could be concerned. According to the International Food Information Council Foundation's 2018 Food & Health Survey, 6 in 10 consumers place importance in food sustainability. Yet, a 2016 study by Land O Lakes found that only 3% of college grads and only 9% of millennials have or would have considered a career in agriculture. How is it that the majority of people care about sustainable food production, yet most wouldn’t even entertain becoming a part of the system that produces our food?
Agriculture’s branding problem
According to a 2015 EPA report, less than 2% of the population lives on farms, and only 1% of the population actually practices farming. There is an inaccurate misconception that farmers are all old men in overalls driving tractors, baling hay, and recklessly spraying pesticides. Consumer trust in the food system is incredibly low, with only 33% of consumers report strong confidence in the food that they eat. Agrarian stereotypes need to be reversed, and trust in the food system needs to be regained, but neither will happen overnight.
We need more people to begin to engage productively with the existing food system. How do we get there? Agtech.
Agtech is an entry point
As a hybrid of agriculture & technology, agtech presents an entry point to agriculture.
There are some specific subsectors within agrifood technology that are hot right now. Anyone who can get excited about working in the following “cool” subsectors can take the underlying reason for their interest in these areas and extend that reasoning to get excited about other highly impactful areas of agtech.
Indoor Farming
Indoor farming presents an interesting nexus of factors that make it more attractive to young people. For one, indoor farming operations can be located anywhere, depending on the type of facility, which means that there are opportunities to work in agriculture while living in an urban environment. Whether high-tech greenhouses, vertical farms, container farms, etc., there is an aspect of flexibility that indoor farming brings to an urban-minded professional. Additionally, whether justified at this point or not, indoor farming carries with it the brand of sustainability. Significant water reductions, minimal pesticide applications, and no nutrient runoff make indoor farming seem incredibly appealing from an impact standpoint, despite any potential business model hurdles early on.
While we both believe that indoor farming is and will increasingly be an important component of the food system, indoor farming, alone, is unlikely to ever be able to feed the world. In the US, 4% of farmers produce 66% of farm products by value. Incrementally impacting the same environmental variables (water, inputs, pollution, etc) on large-scale, outdoor farming systems has a far greater environmental impact potential. Agtech companies that can effectively market these positive impacts, borrowing some of the sex appeal of indoor farming, should resonate equally strongly with young professionals.
Alternative Protein/Cellular Agriculture
Like vertical farming, the alternative protein space (think Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats) is hot right now. The global cultured meat market is projected to be worth $20M in 2027 and though modest, is growing quickly and gaining a lot of media buzz..
Opportunities for employment with alternative proteins and cellular agriculture companies are becoming increasingly attractive to millennials a for a number of reasons, many shared in parallel to indoor farming as previously discussed. The ability to live in proximity to urban centers, work with cutting edge technology, and deliver on the promises of animal welfare and environmental sustainability are incredibly appealing. In fact, many new age protein companies build their pitches around the water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions attributable to meat production.
While the business and technical challenges of bringing high quality meat and protein replacements to market are becoming increasingly understood, it is hard to argue that cellular agriculture and alternative proteins will completely replace animal protein, globally, at point in the near future. The global beef, poultry and seafood market is expected to reach $7.3 trillion by 2025. Trillion with a “T”. While alternative proteins, new crops, and cellular agriculture have to become a part of the food system at large, the relentless growth in demand for animal protein, from aquaculture to poultry to beef, will continue to increase. We need innovators working to improve efficiency in food production, both animal and animal-free.
We hope to see more impact-oriented individuals investing themselves in agriculture technology careers; our future depends upon it.
