A discussion of the future of farming, including technological innovations, opportunities, and challenges for producers

1. The Future of Farming:
Technological Innovations,
Opportunities, and Challenges for
Producers
Roger Royse
Royse Law Firm, PC
Royse AgTech Innovation Network

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. The Changing Agricultural Markets
• Harvested cropland & agricultural labor work
force declined over time
• Agricultural production increased
• Productivity increase
• Agricultural methods have changed

7. 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)

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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)