“Maybe we should make a database of all the agtech solutions, categorize them, and put it on a website for farmers.”
I have heard this, or something like it, way too many times. No matter how well intentioned the effort is, it’s not only infuriating but also a huge waste of money.
“More awareness” is hardly ever the unlock code for agtech adoption.
More awareness is not the answer
Overwhelmingly, the go-to solution for lack of adoption seems to be to increase awareness. Bigger booths at more trade shows. More grower meetings with fancier handouts. More impressive digital marketing giveaways. Media placements and podcasts. Tools and databases.
Technology vendors are certainly guilty of this. But so too are research organisations, government, and industry groups.
There are at least two problems with the exclusive focus on awareness. First, getting attention is not the same as building a reputation.
And second, the adoption process is not:
Awareness ⇒ Adoption
There are three (arguably much more important!) additional steps to address.
The phases of adoption
Customers do need to know a product exists before they can make any decisions about it. Farmers are no exception. But awareness about an agtech company or product is just the beginning.
Interest
It’s easy to assume that once someone knows about a product, it’ll be obvious that it’s interesting. In reality, piquing a potential customer’s interest is much more complicated.
Evaluation
While in immature markets vendors will often find customers who didn’t know a solution to their problem even existed, to scale, companies must also win when compared to alternatives.
Trial
No one gets fired for hosting a demo or attending a field day. But this is another situation where it’s easy to falsely assume “once they see it, they’ll get it.” Challenges like support costs, applicability to local operating conditions, and skill or capability gaps must be overcome.
pexels.com: Flo Maderebner
Navigating the messy middle: adoption is a psychology problem
However comforting the idea that “once customers know about the products, they’ll sell” might be, it’s essentially never the case at any kind of meaningful scale because adoption is a psychology problem, not an awareness problem (If you’re not convinced, check out this study from the CSIRO on getting sugarcane farmers to change practices).
There’s no silver bullet solution to agtech adoption, but there’s plenty of useful work to be done.
Startups can do better at customer discovery, develop (non-promotional) educational materials, design business models that understand the difference between users and beneficiaries, and develop partnerships to reduce support costs.
Industry bodies can subsidise or incentivise commercial trials to give farmers confidence about how solutions will perform in localised conditions and across product and seasonal lifecycles.
Researcher organisations can conduct independent validation of the claims different competing products make.
Sarah Nolet is Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Tenacious Ventures. A globally recognised food systems innovation expert, Sarah has developed, implemented and executed strategies and programs for some of Australia's leading organisations and agtech startups.
This article originally appeared at the Tenacious Ventures blog. Republished with permission.
