Agri-tech: Agriculture doubles down on technology innovation

The virtual Agri-tech Innovation Summit kicked off its virtual event on September 15, welcomed by over 900 executive-level delegates representing 54 countries to discuss how the agri-food landscape is rapidly evolving and address the surging consumer demand for the freshest produce. Within the summit, attendees ranged from the world’s leading seed companies, food, retailers, farm operators, technology providers, and investors.

The summit reflected the massive scale and growth occurring in agri-tech today, the challenges for the sector in the midst of the pandemic, and the imperative need to work on building a robust supply chain. There was much discussion around mutually-beneficial partnerships and communication to extract optimized value from agri-tech innovation and investment.
​For starters, the interest, activity, and investment in technology for Agri-tech have been growing exponentially, archetypes are being challenged, assumptions disintegrated, and innovation is burgeoning. Unquestionably, this will hasten the pace of development within the agri-tech sector.

We had a great time kicking off the virtual conference with many other agri-tech leaders from around the world. We shared our insights and vision on how at Webee we work on how IoT technology can tap into the Agri-tech industry’s most critical issues. It was a fantastic start to an enjoyable and fruitful discussion.

Check out our summit highlights below:

1. The pandemic raised concerns around the readiness of the food system to overcome crises like this as they will most likely be tested again in the future. Building a resilient food system should be one of the main priorities.
2. Food production jeopardizes natural resources and needs to change. As a result, collaboration is vital to redesign the production system sustainably. Invariably, there is a growing demand from consumers to understand where the product they consume comes from and if the production process is an integral one that integrates nature and produces harmoniously.
3. Technology can reduce the agricultural environmental footprint, and producers need the determination to implement innovation. Leveraging the right data can help with decision making and built resilient operations to overcome events such as the COVID pandemic without disrupting the food system.
4. Data is the key to unlock progress and make it much more feasible to create sustainable farming. The sector now has unparalleled access to information and It’s building its momentum for growers to turn Big Data into actionable insights.
5. The potential for technology innovation is significant, but it is highly complex and too fragmented. Farmers need to find integrated agri-tech and IoT solutions where they don’t need to rely on many partners to achieve their objectives. Basically, farmers simply need to plan into the future and think about how they will scale solutions and integrate data sources in a seamless way.
6. Sustainability is no longer an option. It is imperative that organizations focus on the effects of agriculture operations on the environment and ensure they are implementing the changes needed to reduce the environmental impact and the unnecessary use of natural resources.
7. In essence, farming systems must be flexible enough to adapt to make the most efficient use of agri-tech technology. We are offering more than just lip service, we want genuine change. We believe the outcomes will make it all worthwhile. It’s an exciting space to be in right now.  

See the video below if you are interested in learning more about our solutions for sustainable operations.