(Re)Defining Entrepreneurial Ecosystems For Agrifood Technology

What does an optimal agrifood tech entrepreneurial ecosystem look like?

Currently, leading economic development theory holds “cluster initiatives” to be a prime example of effective innovation space. According to a recent Brookings Institute report, successful cluster ecosystems include five elements: 1) focus on establishing an ecosystem over short term job gains; 2) Industry-driven, University-fueled, and Government-funded; 3) a collectively placed big bet on a unique opportunity; 4) leadership from passionate, dedicated champions; and 5) a physical center as an anchor.

I believe that developing agrifood tech ecosystems based exclusively upon the cluster initiative model will fall short when it comes to the furthering agriculture technology. Yes, we need, to some extent, to incorporate all five of those elements in agtech ecosystem, but we need more than that, and we need to be cautious about interpreting any element too literally.

Agglomeration around a physical center is valuable, and to some extent necessary, but it’s also highly limiting, both in terms of sector overlap and geography. In the case of agriculture, this limitation is especially problematic.  Crop and animal production are reliant upon natural resources and climate in a way that few industries are. No one is more intimately familiar with agricultural systems and corresponding pain points than farmers are. Food production tends to largely be in rural areas (yes there is a place for urban production and vertical farming, but that discussion is for another day.) A strong ecosystem needs to include rural innovators and urban innovators, ideally working together to challenge one another’s assumptions and build upon one another’s ideas.

Agrifood tech presents a huge opportunity for a wide variety of stakeholders, but only if connectivity between stakeholders exists. Everyone wants to live in a world in which all people have access to sustainable and nutritious food, but everyone along the way has a different agenda and different priorities. Corporations, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial support organizations, farmers, agronomists, farm service providers, scientists, researchers, NGOs, policy makers, universities, and consumers are all trying directly to work towards the goal of feeding the world, but everyone has a different set of priorities. And those groups, when specifically focused on agrifood, aren't enough. We need to be pulling in people with from various industries and diverse backgrounds so that processes and technologies from various sectors can be creatively implemented in agriculture (and eventually, vice verse.) We need to do this while dealing with the geographical needs of agriculture. Fortunately, we're in a world that is increasingly facilitating, and even demanding, remote work, so it is possible to overcome these connectivity barriers. 

All of these factors present an opportunity to redefine the elements that must go into an agtech entrepreneurial ecosystem.

I don’t know, right now, what the ideal ecosystem, or web of ecosystems, looks like. I do know that moving towards an optimal system will require engagement of a diversity of stakeholders. There are many elements to explore related to this issue, from examining specific examples of ecosystems and understanding their replicability, to further exploring the needs, incentives, and capacities of specific stakeholders. As such, I’m going to writing (and co-writing) a series of relevant pieces with some friends and colleagues with a broad range of agtech experiences and knowledge - stay tuned!

In the meantime, please reach out if you’ve got questions/ideas that you’d like to see covered. 


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I'm focused on driving investment towards sustainable agrifood technology. I co-founded and currently serve as the Executive Director at The Yield Lab Institute, the non...