The 2024 Agribusiness Matters Year in Review

2024 is coming to an end. I feel incredibly grateful to live a life where I can do good work that feels meaningful, replenish every fibre of my being and more importantly review my performance on my terms. You can read the previous editions:

2023 Year in Review | 2022 Year in Review | 2021 Year in Review | 2020 Year in Review

I am turning 40 in 2025. Carl Jung was perhaps right when he wrote “Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.”

My research has helped me gather the courage to live the aquatic life of a media entrepreneur, breathing the waters of uncertainty day in and day out, and embracing the open-source, bespoke career of an agritech analyst.

Ever since I got introduced to the open-source philosophy (Stallman, FOSS et al) in my college days, even though I haven't done much coding, my entrepreneurial career design has largely been a piece of open-source code: I kept documenting my learning as honestly as possible, staying true to where I was, and opportunities showed up wherever my career had to go.

Much like a few stunts and experiments are not recommended at home, this advice is not for everybody. It requires an insane amount of trust in the universe to show you the right set of opportunities to choose from. The best part of this design is this. It showcases your “shiny ignorance” and resistance to learning new things. It forces you to jump into the water to swim in uncharted waters.

Last year, I observed Digital Public Infrastructure as a commentator and this year, voila, I embraced a learning opportunity (special thanks to Sunil Khairnar ji) to delve deeper into the world of open networks and drive the next wave of evolution of the agritech ecosystem.

Unsurprisingly enough, this open-source career path beautifully embodies Buddha’s Middle Path.

between research (observability bias) and entrepreneurship (action bias);

Can the undistorted, pure perception of the changes happening in the world of food and agriculture transform the food and agriculture systems in the wake of runaway Climate change?

between agroecology and industrial agriculture;

Can agroecology learn the art of building markets from the predecessors of industrial agriculture while industrial agriculture discovers its folly of depleting capital in the name of maximizing income for farmers?

between agritech entrepreneurs and agritech investors;

It is almost impossible to align the interests of agritech founders and investors accurately; the more the founders’ interests are aligned; the less the investors’ interests are aligned and vice-versa. (explored in depth here)

and last but not least, between Impact and Power/Influence.

The last of these extremes is extremely important for an under-appreciated reason: The human mind tends to conflate Impact and Power/Influence. The more power and influence you discover in the domain of your work, the more Impact you tend to think you can create in the field of your work.

Or to put it differently, the naive view of Impact assumes that the more power and influence you wield in your line of work, the more impact you think you can create in your line of work. It is pretty much similar to the naive view of the Information Age where we believe throwing more data into any problem will solve them.

The naked truth you discover when you turn forty is this - Impact is orthogonal to the Power and Influence you wield over time. If creating impact is about truly decentralized empowerment, it will always be orthogonal to the power and influence you wield over those whose lives you wish to transform.

At a broader level, the challenge in navigating through these turbulent waters of extreme stances is this.

To remain in the middle is difficult. This fascinating human mind is an extremist who loves polarities: Either you are for something or against something. To stay at the midpoint and discover the golden mean in each of these polarities is the practice I follow in every word my electronic ink has spilt in these spaces.

How do you know if your practice is working or not? Well, life does weave its magic of randomness that reminds you that something is working.

Few days ago, I had the most jaw-dropping moment of my working life. I presented my ongoing project, Unified Krishi Interface at the ICAR Digital Agriculture Conference. I was in the company of a few sugarcane farmers from India’s most populous state(Meerut) who had come to discuss their incredible "Smart Ganna Kissan" (Smart Sugarcane Farmer) initiative.

After my presentation, one of the farmers shows one of my newsletter diagrams- The Agritech Smiling Curve. He had read it through Devinder Sharma and saved it on his phone. He practises natural farming and ships natural jaggery across India.

We exchanged numbers and promised to visit his farm when I travelled across Meerut. All along, I thought my newsletter was mostly useful only for agritech professionals, agripreneurs and agritech investors and it would take a while before it reaches farmers.

Now that my ABM bot is getting ready (thanks to ABM Community Members William Wylie Modro and Bharati Kulkarni), who knows? Farmers might be able to ask queries in their native tongue and get translated answers through the bot soon.

2024 felt like a tipping point in my life and my work at Agribusiness Matters.

A lot of things happened in my life and work- I bought my first house, changing my inner stance in response to Climate Change; I, along with my friends, organized three staycation Agripreneur retreats across North (Jaipur), West (Nashik)and South of India (Bangalore); I organized several Agripreneur Meets across the country. I taught a Global Agritech 101 course along with my friend Om and took up the responsibility of bringing together Indian agritech platforms to build India’s first community-driven, open network for farmers in agriculture through the Beckn Protocol. I did a whole new range of consulting experiments with veterans of agribusiness who were plunging into agritech waters.

And the journey wasn’t easy in any way.

Stripe blocked my payment processor for almost three months as their US-centric laws didn’t apply to my Indian legal documentation. My subscriber went down 50% when the Stripe ban brought way too much friction for new subscribers to join my ABM community. And every time the doors felt narrow and closing, new doors opened out of nowhere!

Recently, a friend reminded me of an ancient fact: The greatest treatise on sex was written by a celibate monk. Should I pursue farming to go deeper into agriculture and agribusiness? Or can I continue to look at my writing as a process and mirror and evolve my beta viewpoints based on the truth I seek in my work as an independent agritech analyst and agritech consultant?

There are not-so-sunny days when I don’t see a clear endpoint for the work I do. And there are sunny days when I see a clear vision ahead: Can I generate enough wealth to design an open-source school of agriculture for budding agripreneurs (more importantly sons and daughters of farmers in rural India) to learn agribusiness/agritech, make controlled fail-safe experiments and discover the art of agripreneurship without the pressures of making a livelihood?

I’m putting the vision out in the universe. Let’s see how the universe makes this happen. Thank you for reading Agribusiness Matters! Your attention and love means the world to me. Before you leave, here is a quick glimpse of the territory we’ve covered this year. Of course, do remember this while you peruse this list: The Map is not the territory!

Annual Rituals

2024 Indian Agritech Hype Cycle | 2023 Indian Agritech Hype Cycle | 2022 Indian Agritech Hype Cycle | 2024 Predictions for Indian Agriculture |

Agribusiness Matter Townhalls

1. State of Agritech in Pakistan

2. State of Agritech with Mark Kahn, Hemendra Mathur and Ritu Verma

3. State of Bioenergy [To be Published]

4. Organizing the Forest Economy with ISB Prof. Ashwini Chhatre

5. Making FPOs Investable Assets

6. State of Direct-to-Farm Commerce

7. State of Irrigation Tech

8. State of Digital Agriculture with Sachi Desai

9. Designing Games for Sustainability with Chhaya Bhanti

10. State of Aquaculture

11. State of Soil Testing

12. Food-Health Nexus with Carter Williams

Fundraise Coverage And Company Profiling

SeedLinked [Seed]- InnerPlant [Series-B] - Vegrow [Series-C] - Klim [Series-A]- Elicit Plant - Sarvagram [Series-D] - Jiva Ag - Sid’s Farm and Akshayakalpa - Rozana and SuperK - Inari and Orbit Farming - Shunya’s Fodder-as-a-Service

Mergers and Acquisitions

1. Plantix and Helm Ag

2. Marsh Harrier Acquires Ahmedabad-based AJA Vision Technologies

David and Goliath Battles

1. Bayer’s Middle Men Collectives (courtesy Syngenta Vs Bayer)

2. Making Sense of Cargill’s Structural Overhaul

3. Indian Agri-Input Industry’s Avengers Moment

4. Inside FMC’s Arc Farm Intelligence Platform

5. Bayer’s Forward Farming Initiative Enters India

Ministry of The Future

1. AI For Agrifood Leaders

2. The End of Agritech Software

3. Farmers Don’t Care About Productivity: Australian Agritech Edition

4. Verticalisation of Agritech SaaS Gameplays

5. Dark Value of AI in Agritech

6. Double-clicking Vinod Khosla’s Plausible Tomorrows 2035-2049 Prediction for Food and Fertilizers

7. Can Ecosystems Shape the Lilliputian Era of Indian Agriculture?

8. The Future of Rice

Regenerative Agriculture 2024

1. Regenerative Agriculture Goes Mainstream

2. Regenerative Agriculture Missing Middle Problem

3. Underplayed Risks and Chemophobia

ABM Podcasts

1. Living a Life of Idealism with Krishnan Subramanian

2. Systems Thinking and Systems Washing with Mihir Desai

3. The Business Of Plant Communication with Shely Aranov

4. Farmer Advocacy Matters with Ajay Vir Jakhar

5. Myth and Reality of Rural Consumer with Mithun Madhusudan

6. Farms, Farmers and Farmer Protests with Gunvant Patil

7. Twenty-Nine Years of Marketing International Foods with Sumit Saran

8. Meet the Incubator Gentlemen Midwifing Entrepreneurs from Rural India

Transforming Agrifood Systems

1. Three Leverage Points for Transforming Agrifood Systems

2. Two Ways of Organizing Agritech

3. Can Zoho Transform Indian Agritech

4. Economies of Scale/Economies of Scope

5. Bridging Food, Health and Agriculture

6. Tackling the Godzilla Monster Called Fertilizer Subsidy

7. Agricultural Smiling Curve Revisited

8. Finding Neverland in Agrifood Systems

9. The Future of Impact and Impact Middlemen

Agrifintech Files

1. Can Indian Agrifintech achieve product-market fit?

2. Seven Data-driven Insights from the recent NABARD All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey 2021-22

3. AgDx Index

4. Honey, I Insured the Biologicals

Impact Critical Analysis:

1. Ninjacart vs Farmart: 2023 Impact Report Analysis

2. Agritech Trilemma

3. Double-clicking on Gates Ag One

Mental Models to Challenge Perceptions

1. Playing Chess Without Chessboard

2. Ag Overton Window

3. Distinguishing Risk from Uncertainty

4. Fox Vs Hedgehog Revisited

I have plans to bring “State of Regenerative Ag” and a few other content experiments. I also want to design a new course around “Agritech Phoenix” and stretch the boundaries of what is possible to help change makers create a prosperous and beautiful agrarian future our children will be proud of.

I look forward to a fantastic 2025!! I dearly wish you a wonderful new year!!

So, what do you think?

How happy are you with today’s edition? I would love to get your candid feedback. Your feedback will be anonymous. Two questions. 1 Minute. Thanks.🙏

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