I wanted to share Ben Palone’s LinkedIn post from a couple of weeks ago and provide additional context. While I was on a CDFA delegation in Australia with CDFA Secretary Karen Ross and a bunch of growers, researchers, and industry delegates, Ben was headed to Sacramento to attend the signing of a landmark five year agreement between the State of California and Queensland, Australia, focused on advancing agricultural innovation, R&D, and disaster resilience. See the link below for the key players who attended, including our partners at UC ANR, CDFA, F3 Innovate, and our friends from Beagle Technology. Queensland Premier David Crisafulli was there for the signing.

There was already an existing MOU with Western Growers and QDPI (Queensland Department of Primary Industries around automated harvesting and non-chemical weeding. There is a follow-on MOU with Hort Innovation in the works. Big thanks to our friends Tom McCue, GAICD (Hort Innovation) and Ian Layden (Department of Primary Industries (Queensland) for all the work that supported and will continue to support the CDFA – QDPI MOU that was signed in Sacramento.

All of this should be convincing folks that the activity level around AgTech is picking up for one simple reason – growers have some real challenge areas around labor and chemistry and robots and solutions that can reduce chemistry usage and/or provide alternative products are both going to be in demand for the foreseeable future. The work Ben has already done with Hort Innovations and QDPI really pushed things forward on the automation front and the work continues as we work on automating harvest activity on crops that impact both states (and both countries).

When Ben and I talk to international visitors or international guests, the message is the same. If you believe that grower challenges are often best solved with innovations, please continue to fund the innovations via agreements like the MOUs in the post below and mentioned above. In a world where AgriFoodTech VC dropped 70% in 5 years and shows no sign of increasing at the moment and likely not until exits (IPOs are unlikely for AgTech and M&A is unlikely to recover fully until grower revenue and margin recovers – and that’s going to take some time from data we are seeing), other forms of private and public capital become more important.

The public part includes deals like these MOUs and the funding to support them. Australian growers (including and maybe especially Queensland) and California growers face similar challenges. That’s why these delegations, trips, and MOUs matter – because the alignment starts and works best with face-to-face work over years. Thanks to Ben for making the trip to Sacramento, thanks to Secretary Ross for inviting me to go on the delegation, and thanks to Queensland Premier Crisafulli for visiting the US and including the signing event on his itinerary (it wasn’t the only thing on his agenda for the trip!)