Changes in the way food is grown will soon represent risk to existing dominant players worldwide and create new opportunities in agriculture, according to a report by cleantech analysis and consulting company Kachan & Co.
Increasing population, climate change, rising fossil fuel prices, ecosystem degradation and water and land scarcity are making today’s food production methods increasingly unsustainable and driving important new innovation in agricultural technology, according the report entitled Latest Agricultural Technology Innovation: Companies and breakthroughs most likely to help the world produce more food with less.
“Agricultural technology innovation hasn’t been as high profile as other cleantech sectors like renewable energy or transportation, but it potentially has more immediate importance to us as a species, particularly if we start seeing crisis events around food availability,” says Kachan analyst Shannon Payne, primary author of the report. “And while attracting only a fraction of the capital of other cleantech segments, there’s an active exit climate, with innovative companies consistently being acquired by leading firms.”
The 59-page study defines the agricultural cleantech category. It uncovers and profiles dozens of promising companies developing new clean, sustainable agricultural technologies.
Sectors examined in the report span crop farming (including natural fertilizers and amendments, biological control of weeds, pest and disease, precision irrigation and fertilization, land management, biotechnology, tools and equipment, waste innovations and transport decay prevention), controlled environment agriculture (including hydroponics, aeroponics, vertical farming and improved greenhouses), sustainable forestry, animal farming waste innovations and aquaculture (including health and yield, containment and waste innovations).
The report found aquaculture to be the fastest growing sector of the category, growing at eight to 10 per cent per year. The report profiles nine important aquaculture technology vendors.
One of the sectors profiled by the report—innovations aimed at increasing crop yields—has been increasingly associated with genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. But alternative approaches are being promoted by new companies.
“There are an increasing number of approaches to increasing yield and controlling pests that are 100 per cent natural,” says Kachan managing partner Dallas Kachan. “We found companies that stimulate plant growth through selective breeding, by activating plants’ natural defence mechanisms or by harnessing plants’ own gene repair mechanisms. Innovative companies in agriculture are increasingly leveraging biology, and not chemistry or genetics.”
