More than 50 years after the conclusion of the space race, the term moonshot is enjoying a revival. According to Google Ngram Viewer the phrase is more prevalent in print today than ever before¹. We are still inspired by the spirit of ambition and determination this term evokes.

This year the World Agri-Tech Innovation summit had its own moonshot theme:

How do we create a climate-resilient agricultural system?

Climate change is reshaping the world and redrawing maps in our lifetimes. Agriculture has a uniquely complicated relationship with climate change. It’s a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions and also vulnerable to climate instability.

Thousands of agricultural technology (agtech) experts gathered at this summit to discuss this challenge. How the changing climate is already disrupting crop yields today. How important it is to address these issues with urgency. Diverse technologies were on display, from gene editing, to AI, robotics, and more.

We need all these approaches to get ahead of climate change.

And we need more. Agtech remains overlooked relative to its potential to change the world.

How is it overlooked?

• Agriculture contributes ~15% of global GDP. Raw agricultural product alone is worth >$5 trillion. Despite this scale of output, agtech startups receive 5.5% of venture capital. In 2022 more venture capital went to crypto than to improving the world’s food supply²³⁴.
• Even investors that focus on mitigating climate change have under-allocated capital into agriculture. Energy and Transport sectors account for 1/4 of total emissions and receive 3/4 of early-stage climate investment. The remaining 1/4 goes into the much larger source of emissions spanning Buildings, Industrials, and Agriculture⁵.

There are great opportunities to leverage these discrepancies. Investors could focus on the higher impact, less crowded sectors to generate outsized returns. Similarly anyone can maximise their personal leverage to make a positive impact on the world by working in these sectors.

As of posting we’re both raising and hiring at Wild Bioscience. So if this resonates consider reaching out.

Agricultural innovation has unmatched scaling potential.

• There are 8 billion people on the planet that need food. Per capita consumption is increasing such that food demand would rise by 50% by 2050⁶. 2 billion of these people are also farmers by trade. That’s a huge group of customers to benefit because of breakthrough products.
• Agriculture’s footprint is titanic. Emissions aside, ½ of the Earth’s habitable surface is farmland⁷. It’s by far the number 1 driver of biodiversity loss and number 1 consumer of freshwater⁸⁹. Even small improvements in efficiency, if scalable, can have a huge impact.

Agricultural innovation has a track record of making the world a better place.

• Roughly 1 in every 2 people alive today owe their existence to synthetic fertilizer¹⁰. If the Haber-Bosch reaction stopped tomorrow, billions would starve by the end of the year. No medical breakthrough has had close to this much impact on our collective health.
• Genetic technologies have already started to transform farm productivity. Crop protection traits boost yields by safeguarding harvests from pests. Without them the 2020 global harvest would have required 23 million hectares of extra farmland. So these traits spared a UK-sized area of wild habitat¹¹. These traits also cut insecticide spraying while raising living standards for farmers¹².

We need to cultivate more moonshots.

Blending a colossal and ancient industry with frontier technology is challenging. But moonshots that achieve this can dramatically improve outcomes for people and the planet. We can only realise this potential if we aim high, set ambitious goals, and strive for a better future. Or as put in 1962 by JFK:

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

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1. Michel et al., 2011, Science. – Querying Google Google Ngram Viewer for ‘moonshot’ and ‘moon shot’. Data downloaded April 2024 and plotted in R using ggplot2 library. ↩︎
2. Burford-Taylor, 2024, AgFunder News ↩︎
3. Faostat database, accessing the value of crop production in 2022 – retrieved April 2024 ↩︎
4. Dealroom SAAS guide – retrieved April 2024 ↩︎
5. Cox et al., 2023, PWC state of climate tech investment analysis – retrieved April 2024 ↩︎
6. van Dijk et al., 2021, Nature Food ↩︎
7. Ritchie & Roser, 2019, Our World in Data – retrieved April 2024 ↩︎
8. Tilman & Williams, 2021, The Royal Society essay series on Reversing Biodiversity Loss – retrieved April 2024 ↩︎
9. Hoekstra & Mekonnen, 2012, PNAS ↩︎
10. Ritchie, 2017, Our World in Data – retrieved April 2024 ↩︎
11. Brookes, 2022, GM crops & food ↩︎
12. Karthage & Quaim, 2012, PNAS ↩︎