AgTech entrepreneurship

ELIZABETH CREAK CHARITABLE TRUST (A CLYDE HIGGS SCHOLARSHIP)

HANNAH SENIOR 2020 NUFFIELD SCHOLAR

The potential for entrepreneurs to bring new products and services to Agriculture (“AgTech”) has recently created a focus for start-up activity ($19Bn invested in “onfarm” innovations in 2021). Most AgTech innovations promise to tackle some or all of agriculture’s most pressing issues: environmental impact, labour issues and farmer profitability. The goal is typically to make farming more sustainable, productive and/ or profitable.

This study set out to explore what other parts of the world teach us about creating a vibrant AgTech entrepreneurial community. It rapidly expanded to ask more fundamental questions – such as whether it’s likely that AgTech entrepreneurship can really influence farming, the environment and the food industry in the way founders and investors hope.

It became clear that AgTech sits within an incredibly complex set of interactions and feedback loops – the food system, biological ecosystems, and economic systems – which makes the impact of a new technology hard to predict.

What starts as a good idea can have unexpectedly negative consequences as, for example, the environmental impact of Green Revolution showed.

One reason for this is the “Chain of Extraction” between the environment, farmer, entrepreneur and investors. The essence in this chain is that benefits accrue more in one direction than the other, although the currency of the extraction varies and could include biodiversity, time, risk, opportunity costs, financial returns. This chain isn’t the result of some malign genius – most people are trying to do the right thing most of the time - it’s an emergent property arising from “human organisation” characteristics such as how we solve problems, invest our capital and measure success. Creating a vibrant environment for AgTech to tackle the huge challenges agriculture faces requires awareness of this dynamic and creative approaches to actively seek ways to align interests. In effect, to “regenerate” rather than “extract”. Examples include: • Involving farmers earlier and more substantially in new technology development – such as the way AgLaunch works with farmers to select and trial entrepreneurs’ new innovations while ensuring the risks farmers take and the expertise they share is reflected when financial returns are distributed. • Diversifying and innovating around how investments are made, to suit the characteristics of the agricultural sector. There are innovative models to structure start-up investment (such as convertible revenue based finance or redeemably equity). Using these more frequently may enable investors to get strong financial returns and allow a wider range of businesses to attract appropriate investment despite the long adoption timeframes and market dynamics of the AgriFood sector. • Shifting mindsets to accommodate more “systems thinking” and an openness to generating “collaborative advantage” to supplement traditional frameworks for commercial success. New Zealand’s Te Hono movement aims to build a more holistic mindset among leaders of their Primary Industries to move from “volume to values”. This research questions the appropriateness of modelling AgTech entrepreneurship ecosystems too closely on the “Silicon Valley model” that is embedded in our collective mindset: Farming is a very different ‘problem space’ to computing or software. A greater diversity of approaches – affecting which entrepreneurial ideas are backed, how they are financed, who invests and what resources are recognised as investment – would have beneficial implications for investors, entrepreneurs, farmers, and the environment alike.

Elizabeth Creak was born in Slough in 1926. She attended McGill University in Canada before working for Allen Lane at Penguin Books in both the UK and latterly America, where she helped to establish their new venture. She returned to the UK to eventually work with her uncle, Clyde Higgs, who by then had built up a thriving two thousand acre dairy farm in Warwickshire. Prior to this, Clyde had also developed a four thousand acre farm in the foothills of Mount Kilamanjaro and held a number of other positions including: Managing Director of English Farms in Wiltshire; Agricultural correspondent of the BBC and Council Member of the Royal Agricultural Society. Clyde was a highly innovative and enterprising farmer who was well known for challenging the status quo and cross-fertilizing best practices among farmers in the UK and around the world. His practical approach and constant quest for efficiency, gained at the family’s electric motor business, helped him to significantly increase output across his farms. He clearly recognized a similar passion and ability in Elizabeth and mentored her to become his successor.

In 1963 Elizabeth inherited Clyde’s farm in Warwickshire and ran it with great success for a number of years. She was a highly capable and well respected farmer and brought many creative ideas to the world of farming. She eventually sold the bulk of the business, but maintained a substantial acreage around Stratford. Elizabeth’s business acumen, determination and integrity were the reasons she was invited on to the boards of many local charitable organizations including the Royal Agricultural Society, the Stoneleigh Abbey Trust and the Stratford Society. She was the first female chairman of the Warwickshire branch of the NFU and in 1998 she became the first woman to hold the office of High Sheriff of Warwickshire. She was also a keen supporter of local craftsmen, artists and the theatre.

Elizabeth passed away in October 2013 and left the bulk of her estate to the Elizabeth Creak Charitable Trust. Elizabeth created the Trust to provide ‘Clyde Higgs Scholarships’ in agriculture; support and encourage new blood in farming and finance projects to help farmers survive and ultimately thrive in their challenging modern environment.