The Green Skills Gap in Agriculture
In an article we published last year (“Why we need EdTech for climate to pick up”), we shared our views on the urgent need for environmental learning from a very young age and explained the different approaches that have been taken by entrepreneurs in that space — mostly in terms of format and pedagogies.
Another thing that is important in the environmental learning space is to acknowledge that the context and the challenges strongly differ from one sector to another — and many players are vertical. The most relevant sectors facing a “green skills gap” are obviously the most polluting ones (see carbon emissions by sector below) : energy, transportation, agriculture, industry, construction,…
At Educapital, we have decided to launch a series of articles about Green Skills focusing each time on a specific sector. This time, the topic is agriculture.
First, let’s understand the context.
Mainstream agriculture is failing both environmentally and socially
From a social point of view, a sustainable agriculture allows farmers to be under a sustainable living contract in terms of pay, social recognition and living conditions — so that they are willing to maintain our food safety. But we all know we are far from this situation. In France, for instance, 25% of farmers earn less than 30 000 euros per year (1), and suicide is twice more widespread as in any other job category (2).
This causes a unique skills shortage in terms of scale and seriousness in Europe. Half of French farmers will be retired in 10 years, putting at risk our whole food system within a 10-years period (Plan de Transformation de l’Economie Française). And the remaining ones — facing increasing climate disorders — will have to adapt their farming into more resilient and more profitable farming practices if they want to survive.
Alternative practices have a lot to offer but they are still difficult to learn and implement. One interesting example here is carbon capture. Apart from the huge environmental impact potential (see Initiative 4 pour 1000), carbon offsetting also offers a unique opportunity for farmers to complement their revenue and make their lands more resilient to climate change. But today, there are hurdles for a farmer to face when wanting to go into soil carbon sequestration:
- The time gap between the building of the carbon sink and the recognition of the carbon capture (at least one year) that generates additional revenue ;
- The knowledge and methods to optimize this process ;
- The lack of visibility on the price of carbon credits.
This overall leads to a situation where, even when farmers are aware of the potential, the current revenue downside (i.e. dedicated land and effort) is not compensated by an insured additional revenue.
In an effort to understand how the sustainable agriculture skills gaps are addressed — and what is missing — we have mapped some of the relevant players below. Below are a few facts that are interesting to notice.
When it comes to awareness and education, most of the players adopt a global climate perspective
In the initial training space, there are three main types of actors:
- Pre-K12 & K12 learning “tools” are mostly games to play at home or at school. earth cubs, Climate Science or EduGems are quite generalist in the sense that they make awareness on a lot of different environmental topics : oceans, biodiversity, lands, etc. Conversely, tiny farms is a game where pupils launch and run their own farms, and get to understand the climate and biodiversity challenges of agriculture.
- In the higher education field, Impact-native Universities are emerging — to give students the tools that are not provided by traditional players. Indeed, the primary goal of our portfolio company Tomorrow University is to educate the change makers of tomorrow for a more sustainable society. Beyond environmental learning, they are paving the way for higher education disruption through effective, flexible and affordable 100% remote learning — when traditional players have to focus on the salary of graduates for the traditional rankings.
Other institutions such as brick-and-mortar player ETRE in France offer free training — from one week to one year — to the 16 to 25 years old youth that are out of the higher education system.
- Finally, some actors are specialized in raising awareness for students. For instance, Astrid’s product ranges from VR role playing to AR textbooks, card games, immersive videos, and other interactive educational content. Other actors Lumi and Lyfta are also interesting to have in mind.
In Lifelong Learning, generalist environmental players are either B2C apps or platforms to engage employees
- On one hand, B2C LifeLong Learning apps help individuals learn, take individual responsibility and then act on their own environmental footprint. They help people develop an effective personal strategy and take climate actions: changing one’s lifestyle in terms of food or transportation or purchases, offset part of your emissions and influence others to do the same. To name but a few, Terra.do, Klima, oneclimate are great examples.
- On the other hand, platforms helping companies engage their employees in the transition. Just as ESG practices are quite widespread in corporates, and the ESG backlash in newspapers (see Financial Times’ articles), business leaders start to realize that the environmental perspective could be much more than just reporting and carbon offsetting, but a real opportunity to strengthen their differentiation and improve employee engagement and retention (especially for gen Z workers). Pure players in that space are plentiful (Pawprint, SeedCulture, Glacier, CO2 Hero, AimhiEarth, Join Next, etc).
- Some vertical players exist, but scaling as a standalone training provider is quite difficult (Hectar in that space is mostly an incubator).
So how to address the sustainable transition need of farmers?
Selling EdTech in agriculture is a bottleneck. As a low margin business, the willingness to pay of independent farmers for upskilling and training is low.
To all kinds of structures, changing practices is very difficult, so paying to learn new practices is definitely not a top priority ! Indeed, when wanting to change the way they work, farmers or farming managers face :
- A strong dependency to given chemicals without which their lands would perform less on a short-term perspective ;
- The highly-binding contracts they often have with their chemicals providers ;
- The difficulty to make their bank finance a transition to different methods — especially when they are not particularly widespread ;
- The uncertainty on the outcome of such change both from a production/financial impact as well as from a climate-resilience perspective.
So to perform in the space players must give a solution to most of those hurdles. An interesting company to spot in that space is Klim. The German company started as a pure learning app for regenerative agriculture (learn more) — then extended their value proposition. Now the product has two sides i/ a farmer-central digital companion bringing know-how and finance ii/ a vertically integrated carbon credit market. The business model here is relevant because you don’t sell standalone training but carbon credits — to which the training is a necessary means. They give farmers the support and financial visibility they need to engage in such transition.
So what are the perspectives now?
Given the difficulties of day-to-day farming, there is a great market opportunity for players that will be able to :
i/provide EdTech as a means to improve one’s living conditions (such as carbon capture providing a complementary revenue)
ii/ integrate a great deal of “social learning” to give farmers the courage to engage in new practices.
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Special thanks to our readers, see you soon for chronicle #2! You are a founder addressing the agriculture skills gap and you would like to reach out ? Contact me at gf@educapitalvc.com or on Linkedin. 📥
