The best in new and innovative global agtech startups were on show at evokeAG in February, and the Farm Innovation Network (FIN) was there.

It’s the largest showcase of agrifood tech and innovation in the southern hemisphere, hosted annually across different cities in Australia, and this year’s evokeAG event in Melbourne brought together the brightest minds from across the sector.

As FIN scouts the best in new and emerging technology globally and matches it with keen kiwi farmers to test practical application on-farm, evokeAG is a key indicator of both industry trends and emerging tech.

FIN’s Elliot Mercer and Wilson Huang were there and offer their key insights and ‘best bet’ new startups that are primed for New Zealand paddocks.

Best bets

ALBON
Transform wastewater into soil amendment using algae. This is applicable to New Zealand in terms of potential for wastewater and fertiliser run-off treatment. Algae-based wastewater treatment turns waste water and fertiliser run-off into biochar and soil products.

 

Carbon Asset Solutions
Real-time soil scanning and mapping technology for measuring soil condition, productivity and carbon potential.

 

AquaTerra
Deep soil moisture and temperature sensors that help farmers monitor subsurface conditions for irrigation and pasture decisions.

 

Sultech
Sulphur fertiliser technology designed to improve nutrient delivery and performance versus conventional sulphur products.

 

UTAGS – RFID livestock identification cow earrings that make cattle tracking, scanning and movement recording faster, safer and more accurate.

 

Jupiter Ionics
Electrochemical green ammonia technology for lower-emissions fertiliser and energy production.

 

GrazeMate
AI-enabled drone platform for autonomous livestock monitoring, mustering and farm surveillance.

“The companies I found most interesting were Carbon Asset Solutions and ALBON. Both have a clear value proposition for farmers, improving farm profitability while supporting sustainability, which I see as two critical success factors for agtech adoption at scale,” Huang says.

In an environment where many companies are scaling back or delaying emissions reduction targets, consumers are also becoming less willing to pay a premium for “green” products and are experiencing climate fatigue, where repeated climate messaging leads to psychological and behavioural exhaustion. Agtech can no longer rely on sustainability alone to drive uptake, he observes.

In short, agtech solutions need to deliver tangible financial benefits for end users, and both ALBON and Carbon Asset Solutions stood out on this basis.

Huang says it was great to see two of FIN’s portfolio companies, Cooling Crops and Solena Ag, are on the evokeAG roadmap.

The bigger picture

A question Huang was asked repeatedly during the evokeAG event was ‘what are the major challenges Australian agriculture is facing’? Consistent themes included productivity pressure, climate-driven volatility (particularly around yield), labour constraints, limited access to capital (especially at the early stages), and slow agtech adoption.

“The same challenges also show up in New Zealand agriculture, which reinforces that there is a real opportunity to collaborate across the Tasman, from research and development through to co-investment and joint piloting of agtech solutions to address these shared constraints.”

Huang was excited to see advances in small-scale automation, including Agovor, which showcased at evokeAG. “Three years ago, labour-saving automation was largely confined to large-scale, expensive machinery, such as Carbon Robotics, which was built primarily for very large, commercial farms in the US.”

Huang observes more companies developing smaller, more cost-accessible automation. Even major platform players, such as Carbon Robotics, are scaling down their offerings to suit smaller farms as well. “As New Zealand’s agricultural demographics shift, with the 20-30-year-old age group steadily declining over the last 10 years, I see small-scale automation as a practical solution to relieve labour constraints and lift productivity in New Zealand.”

Watch this space.

Mercer’s key takeaways from evokeAG were progress versus perfection, and a buzz around the ability to use technology to improve performance and efficiency. What came through strongly was that farmers have a real willingness to adopt tech, but time is the limiting factor.

The role of AI

The use of AI and its implication for farmers was a hot topic of conversation, Mercer said.

The key takeaways here are twofold. Firstly, how it can help today:

  • Admin – drafting documents for compliance, recording information, preparing reports
  • Data interpretation for decision making
  • Communications

Secondly, how it could improve agtech:

  • Precision agriculture – AI enhanced imagery (drones/satellites) to identify pasture performance, variability, pest outbreaks or irrigation inefficiencies earlier.
  • Animal monitoring – pattern recognition from wearables and milking systems to detect health or fertility issues sooner.
  • Effluent and emissions management – optimisation models to improve dosing, timing and system performance (relevant for emissions reduction technologies).
  • Farm system optimisation – integrating weather, soil, feed and financial data to recommend whole-of-farm adjustments.
  • Automated reporting – linking farm management software to compliance and sustainability reporting automatically.

For farmers, actions now are to just start. A starting point could be using AI for emails or analysis. Build an understanding of data sources – where is the information? How can I access it? Is it accurate?

“Proactively ask about AI integration roadmaps for existing and new systems, look at what’s coming, when and how it could help you,” Mercer says.