All over the world, there has been much conversation and work done around creating agrifood innovation ecosystems, now the focus is shifting toward what makes a top functioning one.

Let’s start with with what an innovation ecosystem actually is:

An “innovation ecosystem” is the term used to describe the various players, stakeholders, and community members that are critical for innovation. In terms of an agrifood ecosystem, this includes farm businesses, government, research and development corporations, agripreneurs/startups, consumers and the broader community, universities and value chain partners. Each plays a significant role in creating value in the larger ecosystem by transforming new ideas into reality through support and investment. It is essential that all components know and respect their roles within the system, if we can align all players, we can fast track innovation.

What then does an agrifood ecosystem need to thrive?

Here are five key factors that are necessary to lower the barriers to getting started and accelerate the turning of agrifood ideas into reality:

1. There must be a mechanism which enables collaboration, a clear pathway for the ecosystem to connect and interact with each other.
2. Education is essential for all components of the ecosystem to understand the bigger picture, and what their role is.
3. An agricultural ecosystem must have a clearly defined culture of:

- transparency and generosity

- embracing failure and learning

- celebrating, highlighting and sharing the stories of success

- embracing creativity and trying new things

- inclusive and diverse

4. Long term commitment is required to the agrifood innovation ecosystem development — it takes time to build! There must be continual activities and events that engage the whole system.

5. The ecosystem must be led by agripreneurs and innovators — they need to be the driving lifeblood of the innovation system.

The overarching crucial component of a successful agricultural ecosystem is TRUST. This is the enabler of collaboration and trust is built through consistency, integrity, benevolence and the ability of all involved to perform their part and be able to be relied upon to deliver what they say they will.

If we can build a global agrifood innovation ecosystem, it will yield results of increased expertise and productivity, increased job growth, increased diversification, and a faster rate of investment over time, in solving the food and agriculture challenges of the world.

About the Contributor:

Jessica Fealy farms with her husband and four children at Blue Sky Produce, a family owned mango, lime and avocado orchard located in Mareeba, Far North Queensland. Jess is an experienced Chartered Accountant and Community Engagement practitioner and is the founder of Back Paddock Business, which provides business and communications support to rural enterprises. She is a Board Director with Northern Gulf Resource Management Group and also sits on the Agrifutures Australia Advisory Panel, and the Regional Economies Centre of Excellence Advisory Panel. Jess is the co-founder of the Future Agro Challenge Australia, sits on the board of the Australian Agritech Association and has extensive experience working in the regional startup and innovation space.

There is no doubt that 2020 has been an unusual year due to COVID-19, but Australian agriculture and agricultural innovation is still kicking along. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that as the second least subsidised agriculture industry in the world, and with one of the most volatile climates on the globe, disruption and overcoming challenges are pretty much business as usual for the agriculture industry in Australia.

Agriculture is Australia’s fastest growing sector and second only to mining in terms of its importance to the national economy. However, the productivity growth of the Australian

agricultural sector has slowed down in recent years. This coupled with the global challenges of a rising demand for food from a growing population, changing consumer expectations, increased competition from developing nations, and an ever changing climate, means innovation is more important than ever for Agriculture in Australia.

With this in mind, in 2017, the National Farmers’ Federation of Australia announced a vision for Australian agriculture to exceed a farm gate value of $100 billion by 2030. The $100 billion vision is an important direction that many people, businesses and institutions in the agricultural industry are showing a willingness to focus on and organise themselves behind — mainly because of its simplicity and implied promise of greater sustained prosperity for Australia.

However, this is an ambitious goal which will require world class innovation to drive the transformational productivity gains required to meet the $100 billion figure. Research commissioned by Agrifutures Australia produced a baseline projection which came up with an estimated Australian farm-gate value of $84.3 billion by 2030, which is $15.7 billion below the $100 billion target.

So, there is a lot of work to be done and the Australian agricultural innovation ecosystem is really only just getting started.

The World Bank defines an innovation system as “a network of organisations, enterprises, and individuals focused on bringing new products, new processes, and new forms of organisation into economic use, together with the institutions and policies that affect their behaviour and performance.” The system, which includes people, culture, policies, laws and infrastructure, defines the way in which different agents interact, share and use knowledge.

While still in its infancy, the agricultural innovation system in Australia is facing a number of challenges:

1. Lack of understanding of exactly what the Australian Agricultural Innovation ecosystem is and who the players are in it.
2. Low levels of cross- organisation, cross-sector, cross-country collaboration and trust
3. The innovation culture in Australia is hindered by its relatively low risk and failure tolerance
4. Historically, Australian innovation does not generally target international markets. Instead, the focus has primarily been on the Australian market.
5. Australia is ranked the lowest of all OECD countries on collaboration between industry and research.

The good news is that the work is happening. The last two years have seen the preparation phase for the development of agricultural innovation in Australia. This has involved a range of preparatory activities aimed at identifying the parameters of the agricultural industry’s investments and government’s policy response. It has also included a range of investments aimed at developing the core capacities and capabilities of industries and governments to address.

In 2018, the 2030 Industry Roadmap was developed by the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) in conjunction with key industry stakeholders. Consultation was facilitated and occurred with leaders across the agricultural value chain including researchers, farmers, agribusinesses, educators, the community and government. This document now becomes the yardstick by which the Australian agricultural industry will measure their success, and hold themselves to account. The NFF led a 6-month consultation effort to inform the Roadmap. It began with a Discussion Paper which distilled insight from leading experts, before commencing a nationwide roadshow, where they spoke to over 380 farmers and other industry experts to field their views. The 2030 Roadmap carries the full endorsement of the NFF’s member organisations, who reviewed and provided input on this plan throughout its development.

In March 2019, the Australian Government Department of Agriculture and Water Resources commissioned Ernest and Young to develop a shared vision for the future of the Australian agricultural innovation system. The comprehensive report, ‘Agricultural Innovation —

A National Approach to Grow Australia’s Future’, outlines a future where there is an opportunity for Australian agricultural innovation to modernise and achieve greater and more diverse outcomes from investment in innovation, to adopt a more coordinated approach to respond to future opportunities, threats and trends, and to better position Australia as a globally relevant agricultural innovation system.

The global agritech market is growing (US$19.8Bn in 2019), but Australia’s share of the pie remains small (US$90M in 2019). Now is the time for action in the Australian agricultural innovation ecosystem. In 2020, we are starting to see the Australian agricultural industry and government consider and implement a number of options identified during the preparation and planning phase, as highlighted in the reports above.

We’ve seen the birth of the EvokeAg agrifood tech conference, QLD Agtech Month, Tenacious Ventures, Australia’s first dedicated agri-foodtech Venture Capital firm, the formation of the Australian Agritech Association, Agritech hubs, incubators and accelerators are popping up all over the country; Muru D, SproutX, Farmers2Founders, AgFrontier, UNE Smart Region Incubator, Rocket Seeder to name just a few, as well as the Australian AgTech community coming together via virtual, Australia-wide AgTech Meetups and Slack Channel.

Only by working together will the agriculture industry solve complex problems, accelerate progress, avoid duplications and create a vibrant, connected & more prosperous future for the Australian agri-food tech sector.

There is definitely movement at the station in terms of Agricultural Innovation in Australia, watch this space world.

About the Author:

Jessica Fealy farms with her husband and four children at Blue Sky Produce, a family owned mango, lime and avocado orchard located in Mareeba, Far North Queensland, Australia.

Jess is an experienced Chartered Accountant and Community Engagement practitioner and is the founder of Back Paddock Business, which provides business and communications support to rural enterprises. She is a Board Director with Northern Gulf Resource Management Group and also sits on the Agrifutures Australia Advisory Panel, and the Regional Economies Centre of Excellence Advisory Panel. Jess is the co-founder of the Future Agro Challenge Australia, a Board Director with the Australian Agritech Association and has extensive experience working in the regional startup and innovation space.

“Robots are going to be taking away our jobs.”

This was what my nine-year-old son was told by a classmate at school recently after the local newspaper ran an article on my husband, who is currently undertaking a Nuffield Australia Farming scholarship, studying robotics and its applications for the horticulture industry.

This school yard statement is indicative of the sentiment in our rural community around the topic of robotics and automation in agriculture.

It is a valid and widespread concern among the broader agricultural industry and the world at large.

Predictions are that up to 50 per cent of today’s jobs are at risk of being lost to automation.

Robotics promises to be one of the most exciting and disruptive technologies of the 21st century, with huge implications for farming labour forces, whilst promising gains in productivity.

For example, Japanese company Spread announced last year that robots will carry out all but one of the tasks required to grow tens of thousands of lettuces each day in its indoor automated farm.

Closer to home, Australian company Fastbrick Robotics has developed a robot that can lay 1000 standard bricks in one hour — a task that would take two human bricklayers the better part of a day or longer to complete.

The thing is, automation isn’t new. Tractors replaced the horse in the 1940s and GPS auto steer is now a standard feature in almost every new tractor. Smart phones are carried in the shirt pockets of most Australian farmers.

It is a recurring pattern, repeated over time: as technology improves, it reduces the amount of labor required to achieve the same output.

So far, this phenomenon hasn’t produced extreme unemployment because automation can create jobs as well as replace them.

However, the fear is that in today’s world, the technology will become so advanced that there won’t be anything left for humans to do. Instead of merely transforming work, technology might begin to eliminate it.

In my view, this is an extreme and rather gloomy outlook on the future. There is much more to be considered.

Thanks to my husband’s studies, I’m now familiar with the concept of ‘augmentation’. Augmentation in ‘ordinary speak’ is the idea of maximising the strengths of humans and our ability to navigate unpredictable scenarios, with the strengths of machines and their non-human abilities such as infinite access to information, data collection, infrared vision and GPS mapping.

The technology around robotics and artificial intelligence will continue to improve — the challenge is how to ensure jobs and living in regional Australia improves too.

It is exciting to contemplate the possibilities for farming when many hours in the day are freed up by the automation of repetitive, time consuming tasks.

Agriculture will not be immune to job losses from automation, however due to the practicalities of robots operating in difficult environments such as paddocks, the industry may be afforded a little more time to structure a robust framework for the inevitable changes automation will bring.

Our regional and rural areas need to embrace innovation and creativity. These skills will become imperative in job creation, upskilling and reskilling our local workforces.

People, not robots, will be responsible for creating the opportunities to keep our communities in meaningful and well-paid work.

To ensure a positive outcome from mass automation, the agricultural industry must develop a planned and considered response through education and smart policy creation in this arena. Today. Now.

I have been home a week now and have finally set the body clock back to Australia, Blue Sky Produce farm time.

What was this Startup Catalyst Mission thing all about, I can hear some of you ask? Well in the words of Mission Leader Baden U’Ren, “Startup Catalyst takes awesome aussies to Boulder, Denver, San Francisco and Silicon Valley to experience really innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystems, to learn from them and bring our experience back to benefit our communities”. Thanks to some generous support from Advance Queensland I secured a scholarship spot to attend the 2019 mission.

I’ve been reviewing my notes and my copious tweets from the mission and trying to figure out how on earth I am going to summarise everything I have learnt from an amazing week into a blog post of some description that I can share? There is just soooooo much swimming around in my head.

Founder of Startup Catalyst Aaron Birkby, wrote this great article recently about ‘Suspending reality to engineer moments of clarity’ . This line sums up perfectly the opportunity the Startup Catalyst Mission offered me.

“once we suspend reality by removing all that noise of normal life, suddenly we are left just with our self and our inner thoughts, it’s like achieving inbox zero for the brain”

So — I’m going to try to distil my learnings from this experience into ten dot points, here goes — I never said they would be short dot points …..….

1. I’m a chartered accountant by trade, I love me some stats and numbers and I think it is a good place to start with why startups and entrepreneurialism are so important. Thanks to a great meeting with Stephanie Garnica, Director of Global Business Development for the City of Denver, I saw first hand how and why Startups can have a positive and sustainable impact on economic development. Colorado’s startup scene ranks 5th in the USA. Denver, the capital of Colorado, is the 4th fastest growing city in the US, ranked the 3rd best place to live in the USA, and one of the most productive metro areas in terms of GDP, with the labor force growing three times faster than the national average. Colorado’s population is just over 5million, Queensland’s is just under 5 million. There are many similarities between our states ………. I also loved the philosophy behind the building of the County of Boulder. The idea was simple: make a city a great place to live (lots of green space, national parks etc) and people figure out how to make a living there.

2. Our job as startup ecosystem builders in our communities is to reduce the average input costs for startup businesses to allow them to succeed. Or in the words of the Unreasonable Group who we also visited “ we need to remove as many obstacles as possible, create as many serendipitous collisions as possible to enable startups who can change the world for the better 🌎 — do that as soon as possible!”

3. “Ideas and businesses all start with the stickiness of human connection.” This quote came from a great meeting with Heather McKenzie from Conduit Accel discussing the mental health realities of the entrepreneurial journey. This made me realise I have to do a LOT more work on my human connecting abilities. Also — humans caring and supporting each other is a really vital part of ecosystem building.

4. David Cohen from Techstars (yes — we really did get to meet him!) said ‘cultural change’ has to happen first in startup ecosystem building. Trust, collaboration, consistency, benevolence #givefirst, integrity, inclusiveness and ability are all necessary components of a thriving startup ecosystem. Regular events help build relationships that enable a supportive culture to thrive.

5. David Cohen also said ‘we can’t hear you’ about seeing and knowing about Australian Startups and the ecosystems that have supported them. Storytelling is an important part of success and paving the way for momentum to build.

6. The mission ‘normalised’ Boulder and San Francisco for me. They are not mystical, magical places where startups rise — they are just a town/city like any other — they just have some good systems/people/culture which enables the magic. This allowed me to see that not only can we totally do this in Australia, but in regional Australia too!

7. Our mission was cleverly structured so that I really got to see the ‘big picture’ of how a whole startup ecosystem fits and works together to make the magic happen. Entrepreneurs, Investors, Education, Corporate and Government are all essential pieces.

8. As a result of a fantastic meeting with David Adams from Rockies Venture Club, I finally feel like I have a basic understanding of the investor side and potential associated tax advantages, of the startup world. Angel Investment, Venture Capital and Corporate Investment can all be levers to drive economic growth via startups in local communities.

9. I loved the ‘just get in and do’ attitude we experienced in the US — there was no fuss if an event was not ‘professional’ ie if technology for a powerpoint slideshow wasn’t working, or there were not heaps of people attending, or not a special venue (ie build and brews — just at the back of a pub) — they just get in and give it a crack. A mental note for myself that ‘doing’, even if it is not perfect, is much better than ‘not doing’!

10. Lastly, my favourite memory from the trip? When Mayor Desmond and CEO Eileen from Wujul Wujul Aboriginal Shire Council introduced themselves in a meeting in their own indigenous languages and Des informed us all that you say Wujul Wujul twice, because it is that good 😜😂. It is so hard to describe what a beautiful moment it was, the goosebumps it gave me and how proud I felt to be Australian and a part of the team. We had a very mixed group of people on our mission and it made for awesome learning and sharing with each other. Diversity adds value.

I’ll finish with my testimonial — put it in your calendar for 2020 and get on the next Mission people!

“The Startup Catalyst Startup Community Leaders Mission is an amazing experience! It combines learning, human connection, knowledge sharing and having some fun via new experiences, all in the one turbo charged week. The mission is an accelerator for personal development and building capacity in our Australian startup communities to drive economic growth. I cannot recommend a spot on the mission highly enough!”

PS. Make sure you check out #scleaders19 hashtag on twitter for heaps of great notes and pics from the trip!