The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

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Transcript of The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

Page 1: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

The Future of Farming: Technological Innovations,

Opportunities, and Challenges for Producers

Roger Royse

Royse Law Firm, PC

Royse AgTech Innovation Network

Page 2: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

Dynamics

• Food Security

• The Rise of Consumerism

• The Declining Labor Market

• The Changing Agricultural Markets

• Increased Rural Internet Connectivity

• Cannabis

• The Introduction of Venture Capital

• The Rise of Big Data

Page 3: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

Food Security

• Factors: climate change, growing global population, rising food prices & environmental pressures

• Impact people’s physical, social & economic access to sufficient, safe & nutritious food

Page 4: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

The Rise of Consumerism

• Grow Local Movement

• Growing middle class’ desire for convenience & year-round food

• Tech development: urban & vertical farming, waste, transport & packaging

• Transparency in supply chain

• GMO & gene editing practices

• Environmental sustainability

Page 5: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

The Declining Labor Market

• Farm labor shortages resulted in increased labor costs

• Technologies (e.g. Farmbot & Blue River Technology) replace manual labor part of farming process

Page 6: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

The Changing Agricultural Markets

• Harvested cropland & agricultural labor work force declined over time

• Agricultural production increased

• Productivity increase

• Agricultural methods have changed

Page 7: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

Increased Rural Internet Connectivity

• Adoption & application of AgTech rests on availability of the Internet

• AgTech is new rural driver for Internet utilization

• 70% of U.S. farms had Internet connectivity (2012)

Page 8: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

Cannabis

• High margin & high cost

• Most high value (legal) crop in the world

• Easier to develop or implement tech compared to other crops

• Lighting (e.g. LED tech), water conservation, hydroponics, aeronautics & robots

Page 9: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

The Introduction of Venture Capital

• AgTech startups raised more than $320 million (2017)

• Increase in Series B financings

• Diverse range of investment themes

• Willing & active venture investors

Page 10: The Future of Farming: Ag Subcommittee Testimony

The Rise of Big Data

• Farm data: site-specific data (e.g. info about seeding rates, soil nutrients, fertilizer, pesticides, water, yield data)

• Meta data (e.g. info about number of acres, inputs applied, crops)

• Big data (e.g. aggregation of farm data from numerous operations)