The multi-million dollar project to transform the agritech sector into a global competitor is on track.
The $14 million project to transform New Zealand’s agritech sector into a globally competitive ecosystem is on track, Callaghan Innovation group manager of agrifood Simon Yarrow, who’s leading the initiative, says.
The Government is committed to growing the agritech sector, which already earns around $1.4m in exports annually, and Callaghan Innovation, AgriTech New Zealand and a variety of government agencies are collaborating on the project.
“It’s all about commercial outcomes. Primary sector manufacturing, biotech and digital-based technology companies are trying to deliver things like yield efficiency, profitability and increasing sustainability and quality,” Yarrow said during a recent online seminar.
“The tagline, ‘New Zealand agritech, good for New Zealand and great for the world’, really captures what we’re trying to achieve, which is both to help New Zealand agriculture and grow the sector globally for New Zealand.”
Callaghan has broken NZ agritech down into six different segments: three “foundation” sectors – farm and pasture, horticulture and forestry; and three emerging areas – “cleantech” (around climate change and carbon technology management), hemp and medicinal cannabis, and aquaculture.
“We’re interacting with tech companies, producer companies, R&D organisations, investors, government agencies and industry organisations so we can develop better technology and services for those customers and stakeholders,” he says.
Over the past six months, a range of services have been developed to address specific needs, such as how to find the right funding and advice, finding the right partners to test new technology, how to scale-up from a local market-focused business to a global player and how to be “future-ready”.
“We’ve observed the level of future insight skills over five years, interacting and trialling different initiatives, and it’s fair to say we believe New Zealand agritech sector is not future-focused enough,” Callaghan agritech innovation advisor Shane Dooley says.
“We know future-prepared firms outperform the average by a considerable amount,” he says, citing a European longitudinal study that shows that conclusively.
He says, particularly since 2020, that following trends is a very poor way to predict the future and that the trick is to spot signals instead.
“Successfully preparing for the future actually happens by identifying and having the discipline of looking for signals, being able to pick them out from what you see and essentially accepting that anything can be different in the future,” he says.
As an example, he tells the story of American agritech company Greentech Robotics.
“The chief executive knew the market for lettuce growing in California really well and he picked up on what is now not such a subtle signal of a labour shortage for weeding lettuce, and picked up on the experience of growers with rising labour costs and falling labour supply to pick and weed lettuce all year round,” he explains.
The chief executive also picked up on consumers’ changing attitudes to sprays and herbicides.
“They’ve now developed a really cool weeding robot that they deploy in the US. It’s a great example of really scanning the horizon for signals,” he says.
AgriTech NZ chief executive Brendan O’Connell says the Agritech Industry Transformation Plan is different in that it’s a “whole of government” project with multiple agencies, including MPI, MBIE, Callaghan Innovation and the Ministry for the Environment, working together.
“I think it’s fair to say that different agencies have different parameters at different times and different reporting structures, so to actually have a conscious effort to bring them together is really quite unique,” O’Connell says.
One of the key areas being focused on is data interoperability and O’Connell believes the voice of the agritech sector is now being heard on this and other topics of importance to primary industry.
“Farmer groups like Federated Farmers, levy groups, DairyNZ and others have been involved in those conversations. It’s through the role of AgriTech New Zealand, but also the ITP as an initiative, that the voice of agritech is now being heard when it comes to digital foundations and role of data with agritech, regulations and innovations,” he says.
And, he is sure that NZ is well placed to be a significant player globally in agritech.
“Agritech is a sector that is thriving globally, a sector for which New Zealand has a good set of capabilities, a reputation that is known in some quarters and is well-received quarters that we bring it to. We know the level of investment in agritech around the world is growing significantly and continues to be a significant investment class for reasons of feeding and protecting our planet.”
