The Agtech Disruption Myth

Prime Future 188: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy

According to AgFunder, ~$54 billion in venture capital was invested in agtech between 2013 and 2022. We recently talked about how not one of those investments has led to a crystal clear example we can point to of how an incumbent was driven to irrelevance or how a status quo practice or product was clearly displaced despite every agtech startup's intent & expectations.

But I've been wondering if that is the wrong way to measure the impact of disruptive technologies. 

I've been re-reading The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton Christensen. It's a must-read, and believe me, I'm not about to refute the late great Dr. C.

But the entire premise is around great companies that fail as a result of not responding well to new technologies.

A lot of the examples are in consumer-facing businesses where disruption by new technologies seems to happen quickly, visibly, and loudly. That is not true in agtech.

Maybe the agtech disruption myth is that the number of fallen giants is the best measurement of the impact of a new innovation.

Today, I want to offer four hypotheses about what disruption might actually look like in our highly industrialized, highly consolidated, highly efficient modern agricultural economy.

Y'all know that I'm just over here learning out loud so these hypotheses may or may not be right. But if they are even directionally accurate, then it frames up the need for a different ethos for agtech in the next decade which would impact everything from what types of problems get tackled to how emerging companies get funded.

To see those hypotheses, join other innovators in livestock, meat, & dairy as a Premium Subscriber.