AgTech Info Consumption — pro tips on how to stay on top of everything!
I consume a lot of AgTech content. No, I’m serious, a lot lot lot of AgTech content. Podcasts, newsletters, and social media are my three primary platforms for consuming content. After several years of trying out different creators and different methods of consuming, I thought it might be useful to share some of the best practices (aka pro tips) for optimizing your ability to effectively consume AgTech content.
Podcasts
I have been listening to AgTech podcasts for years. I have given several test drives — over time some of them continue to rise to the top and get listened to consistently (almost religiously) while others fade away. It’s not always exactly clear why or how this happens, but it happens. My main objective when I listen to podcasts is to learn new things or hear new takes. A lot of my favorite AgTech content comes from three lenses — grower (operator), startup, or investor. I tend to prefer content that can help growers and startups understand each other better and be more effective at building products and working together with a collaborative mindset. The best podcasts do this regularly.
I continue to test drive new podcasts, but with a perspective of years worth of listening, here are my current favorite AgTech podcasts (not in rank order). And yes, in deference to my claim of pro tips, I am including links directly to all sources referred to below to save you some time in locating them so you can test drive them if you want.
- Business of Agriculture — Damian Mason. Damian has great guests on a variety of ag topics from ag financing to land uses to emerging technology issues like regenerative ag and carbon credits. Damian does a great job of getting to the “so what” in every podcast. I learn something from every podcast of Damian’s. AgTech startups should listen to Damian to get a feel for how growers see their problems. This one is available via podcast app or on YouTube.
- Voices of the Valley — Dennis Donohue and Candace Wilson. Disclosure — Dennis is a colleague at Western Growers and Dennis and Candace are friends — but this would be in the top 5 even if they were not. Dennis and Candace make a great 1–2 combination play on AgTech. Dennis’ experience in agriculture and Candace’s experience with startups and large AgTech players provide a powerful interviewing lens as they talk to growers, startups, and investors with equal ease.
- Future of Ag — Tim Hammerich — Tim does a great job on a wide range of topics and really does try to dive into topics that are at the cutting edge of ag’s future with a lens around things to look for to help see around the corner before it becomes more obvious.
- AgTech So What — Sarah Nolet. As you might expect (since she is an investor and based on the title), Sarah takes a very pragmatic approach and regularly looks for the so what factor around multiple topics — regenerative, future of fertilizer, Mineral launch, and why is autonomy so hard have all been recent podcast episodes.
- Fresh Takes on Tech — Vonnie Estes. Vonnie casts a wide net from CEA to after-farm-gate around go to market to “food is medicine” topics to automation solutions. Much of the content focuses on where things are going with an eye on the future and trying to determine what can cause a step change (or greater) function. Food waste, sustainability, organic production, plastic dependency, and robotics have all been podcast episodes.
How I listen to podcasts
- App — I use Apple’s podcast app to find, follow, and organize my podcasts. Rumor has it there are better third party options but I started with Apple and it does plenty of things well so I have not looked into third party podcast apps. I hear good things — but no first hand knowledge.
- Speed it up — in an effort to get through more content, I started experimenting with the speed options. For most podcasts, I can listen comfortably at 1.25 or even 1.5x. When I’m on an actual Zoom call with Damian Mason and the Business of Ag Success Group, I get a chance to hear what his real voice sounds like. Speeding it up greatly increases your throughput on podcasts. Give it a try — it’s worth the trial and error.
- Build a station for your AgTech podcasts by going to the Library Page settings widget (top right — looks like a gear), selecting New Station, and then go into the Station and choose Station Settings to choose which podcasts to add. As you might guess, I have one called AgriFoodTech that holds all of the ones above (and a few others) so I can easily go to all of them at once.
- Download for plane rides and long drives. Flights and drives are perfect podcast times, but you need to remember to download the podcasts first. Voice of experience here — I’ve been burned in the air, on the 5, and on the 101 multiple times. Take the 5 minutes the night before you fly or drive a while and download episodes. Then use the play next capability to queue them up in the order you want them.
Newsletters
Newsletters are another form of content I consume regularly. There are a lot of quality AgTech Newsletters these days, and more are added regularly on Substack, Medium, and other platforms. I generally find new newsletters from posts on LinkedIn (my most commonly used social media platform) and Twitter (second most). These three are a cut above. Shane and Rhishi are prolific with their weekly efforts so they are a heavy read (and entirely worth the effort folks!) The weeks I can’t get to Janette’s I have to blame Shane and Rhishi for needing so long to get through them.
- Upstream Ag Insights — Shane Thomas. Shane goes very deep on a huge variety of topics and really has the best compilation of sources and analysis going (in my opinion). His work gets quoted regularly at events and his newsletter is read by thousands (rumor has it the number may be 10,000+ at this point). He is a master of curating great content, providing context, and looking at the “so what” from many of the bigger AgTech announcements and financial releases. He does a particularly good job on inputs and company analysis.
- Software Is Feeding The World — Rishi Pethe. Rishi is part of the Google Mineral team and his weekly newsletter sits squarely at the intersection of tech and ag. Rishi does a great job of looking at where things are at now, where they’re going, and again (recurring theme for my favorite content) getting to the so what. Like Shane, Rishi was quoted an awful lot at World Agri-Tech in SF a couple of weeks ago, which is well earned for both based on the quality content they put out every week.
- (Honorable Mention) Prime Future — Janette Barnard. Janette focused on the animal protein value chain, so expect a lot of topics on livestock and how it works it’s way through the production system and to the consumer. It’s the best newsletter in that space. A lot of my day job is specialty crop focused, so livestock is not as much in my sweet spot — but that’s not a knock on Prime Future.
- (Honorable Mention) Anything by Seana Day. Seana doesn’t do a regular newsletter but was one of the early creators of AgriFoodTech market maps and puts out some really thought provoking pieces like her piece last week on the ag service provider market.
My one pro tip on Newsletters is to take advantage of flight time when you’re tired of podcasts and want to read something. Download the email messages so they are local and/or make sure the web pages with the content are downloaded for local reading. I’ve put Shane’s Newsletters for 3–5 issues into separate windows on an iPad and have a brilliant 90 minutes diving into them on a flight. Just like podcasts, you’ll thank yourself for having the content available locally.
Social Media
LinkedIn is my number one platform for social media. Here are a few pro tips for finding and consuming AgTech content on LinkedIn.
- Customize your news feed as much as you can by following people in ag and AgTech in segments you care about. LinkedIn will get better about recommending new users/new companies/new pages to follow as it learns what you like. LinkedIn’s content creator mode has allowed folks who regularly build content to more easily get identified, which helps act as a filter for the right folks to follow. At this point, on many days my LinkedIn news feed is almost an ag/AgTech news clipping service when I wake up and throughout the day. If you’re reading this, you should definitely follow and connect with me on LinkedIn.
- Connect with the right folks so you see their content and network connections as they interplay with your own. You can both follow and connect. I generally start with follow and then request a connection after seeing some consistent quality content from my follows. The benefit of connections is it ends up delivering connection recommendations based on your existing network. Both have their place.
- LinkedIn Groups — I am just getting started with Groups and will report back. The early read is it looks like the LinkedIn news feed adds Groups content right into your feed. I like this — however, I don’t like that it’s a lot harder to re-post with Groups posts and I’m not sure why.
- Like and re-post content that earns it. Yes, I’m writing this as a content creator with 4,500 followers, but it’s true. Liking and re-posting quality content helps increase it’s exposure. If creators earn the Like, give it to them. If they earn the re-post (which puts it on your feed for your network, it’s even better for the creator).
To be honest, LinkedIn has become so good I primarily use Twitter to ID new content and then bring it back to LinkedIn. Twitter is a great place to find additional content and additional voices. Two tips:
- Follow the right folks — you can search by hashtag (i.e. #agtech or #precisionag will bring up all search results for that hashtag. Once you find Twitter users whose content you like, go ahead and follow them and your feed will build out with your follows.
- Once you have enough Twitter users you follow, take the time to build Lists. This makes it a lot easier to find just the AgTech segment of your Twitter follows. Here’s a link I’ve been building called AgTech Innovators. It’s not perfect and there are lots more to be added — the goal is to have AgTech startups, equipment manufacturers, and investors in this list. But it’s a good start and will get better over time.
So those are my tips for maximizing your AgTech information consumption. Leverage these tools for podcasts, newsletters, and social media and you’ll be able to stay on top of most of the AgTech news and trends. Happy AgTech data consuming folks!
