AGCO (NYSE: AGCO), a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural machinery and solutions, today held its first ever AGCO iVenture Summit in Berlin, Germany. The Summit is a joint initiative of AGCO, AGCO Finance, AGCO’s Fuse Technologies, and Anterra Capital, a venture capital investor focusing on companies in the food and agricultural sectors.
“Startups are disrupting traditional agriculture and address many of the world’s most significant challenges, including food security, farmer livelihood and resource efficiency,” said Martin Richenhagen, AGCO Chairman, President and CEO. “Today, we are bringing Silicon Valley to Berlin. Agri-tech startups will pitch ideas that make a real difference and stand for technological progress and innovation in agriculture.”
The AGCO iVenture Summit targets innovators and visionaries who actively shape the future of agriculture by creating disruptive solutions that have the potential to move global agriculture forward. The purpose of the event is to strengthen the innovation culture in the agricultural community. The AGCO iVenture Summit strives to help innovators gain access to industry thought leaders, partners, and funding to ultimately help them bring new technologies to the market. The objective is to bring the right people together and build successful partnerships for a bright future and contribute to global food security.
Adam Anders, Managing Partner and co-founder of Anterra Capital, explained, “Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are increasingly recognizing the long-term opportunity in the agricultural sector and are increasingly investing in agri-tech startups. At Anterra Capital, we invest across the food supply chain in technology driven companies and support them with capital, specialist knowledge and a network that extends beyond both the traditional agriculture community and the traditional venture capital community. For us the AGCO iVenture Summit is a unique platform to bring food and agriculture sector business leaders together with the best agri-tech startups and the strongest venture capital investors interested in this sector.”
Pioneering agri-tech entrepreneurs focus on innovative ideas along the agricultural value chain ranging from big data, cloud software, and robotics to new crops development, irrigation solutions, smart fertilizing, urban farming, and many others. Their disruptive technologies and novel solutions have the potential to make modern agriculture more productive, efficient, and sustainable. Today’s event provided a platform for revolutionary agri-tech startups to showcase their business models.
Participants at the AGCO iVenture Summit discussed the many ways in which agri-tech startups and venture capitalists could work together to develop novel technologies that increase agricultural productivity and create a better and more sustainable food security.
Guest speakers included Prof. Klaus Josef Lutz (CEO of BayWa AG), Bernard Krone (Managing Director and Owner, Bernard Krone Holding SE & Co. KG), Adrian Percy (Head of Research & Development, Crop Science – a division of Bayer), David Batcheller (Chairman of Appareo Systems, LLC), Berry Marttin (Member of the Managing Board, Rabobank), Michael Horsch (Founder, HORSCH Maschinen GmbH), and Prof. Dr. Thomas Herlitzius (Chair of Professorship for Agricultural Systems Technology, TU Dresden).
“The AGCO iVenture Summit provided a great platform for agri-tech startups like Agriconomie, Ecrorobotics, Farmobile, German Autolabs, TellusLabs, UseMyTec, and Wefarm and allowed them to connect with experts and build new relationships to grow their business ventures,” Richenhagen concluded. “At AGCO, we are always on the lookout for new ideas and the iVenture Summit introduced us to some amazing new technologies that are certainly interesting for us.”
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