A whitepaper released today titled Beyond the Hype: How Agricultural Technology Wins Customers and Creates Value explores the adoption challenges that agtech companies face with their farmer customers, and the go-to-market strategy implications for new and developing technologies.
Written by Jonah Kolb, vice president at farm management group Moore & Warner, and Arne Duss, founder and CEO of HighPath Consulting, the whitepaper provides six suggestions for improved adoption:
- Justify the value added by agtech products to cost-conscious customers in a downturn.
- Demonstrate efficacy through independent scientific studies that confirm agronomic feasibility and marketed impact.
- Align distribution of agtech products to the way farm inputs are marketed to farmers today
- Target a niche market to build initial market share and establish a beach head.
- Emphasize ease of use and systems compatibility.
- Match business and technology goals to crop seasonality.
GEOSYS fully supports these suggestions and carefully considers these same topics when working with clients to develop Integrated Solutions for on-the-farm use.
As the authors note, “Agtech is truly a marathon, not a sprint.” GEOSYS couldn’t agree more. Having run the agtech marathon for more than 25 years, we have seen many startups come and go. Many forget that putting the technology together is not complicated anymore. Delivering consistent value to a grower’s business in the complex equation that is daily life in agriculture is the bigger challenge.
GEOSYS will be speaking along with the authors of this whitepaper at AgTech Week, June 21-23 in San Francisco. We encourage you to join us there!
