This is a follow-up to @Sarah Nolet’s excellent Lindedin article Is AgTech Broken for Venture Capital—or Are We Asking the Wrong Question? She used the analogy that blaming AgTech for not fitting venture capital (and vice versa) is like blaming a tractor for not being a race car—different tools, different jobs.
I’d take it a step further. If Uber had focused on building better cars or even a network of high-tech repair shops, it wouldn’t have solved urban mobility or attracted much VC attention. So is urban mobility a bad fit for VC? No. The issue is when startups and investors focus on unscalable problems rather than transformative solutions.
Instead of asking whether the traditional VC playbook falls short in AgTech, the real question should be: Are we looking at the right problems? And not just those on the farm, but across the entire food supply chain?
Understanding the VC Model
Venture Capital is built around finding big, scalable solutions to critical problems. VCs look for exponential growth, network effects, asset-light models, and massive market opportunities. This is why traditional VC has thrived in sectors like urban mobility—not by investing in better cars or mechanics but by backing technology-driven platforms that redefined mobility (Uber, Lyft, etc.). The same principle applies to AgTech: solving small, incremental problems won’t attract VC funding, but addressing major inefficiencies at scale will.
Why AgTech Often Fails the VC Playbook
In developed markets, agriculture and the food supply chain are relatively efficient. They have existed for centuries, are not expanding significantly in terms of area, and often benefit from government subsidies, minimum price mechanisms, insurance, and well-developed logistics and financial systems. On-farm efficiency can always improve, but these challenges are incremental, not transformational. Applying the VC model to small, localized farming issues is like tweaking car mechanics to solve the transportation problem—it misses the bigger opportunity.
Where the Big Problems (and Big Opportunities) Are
The true VC-sized opportunities in AgTech are in developing economies like Brazil, Africa, and India. In these regions, the supply chain is fundamentally flawed, creating massive inefficiencies that technology can solve at scale. Challenges like limited access to credit, poor logistics, inadequate storage, exchange rate volatility, lack of insurance, and high pest and disease pressure in tropical countries, represent massive obstacles—but also massive opportunities for scalable solutions.
AgriFintech: The Untapped Unicorn Opportunity
Brazil’s massive and expanding agriculture sector is one of the most underserved in terms of finance, yet fintech has been one of the most successful VC models, especially in Latin America. AgriFintech presents an obvious billion-dollar opportunity. Companies from The Yield Lab Latam portfolio, like TerraMagna, Agroforte, and Courageous Land, as well as others, are proving that fintech models can be successfully applied to sustainable agriculture to build extremely scalable businesses.
Logistics: Fixing the Supply Chain Bottleneck
Brazil is the world’s largest grain producer and exporter, yet much of its grain and input logistics still rely on trucks, leading to high costs and inefficiencies. Our portfolio company goFlux is addressing this by creating an "Uber for agriculture," using technology to optimize freight and reduce inefficiencies. Beyond logistics, goFlux also offers credit and carbon offsets, adding extra layers of value.
Marketplace Disruption: The Future of Ag Trade
Unlike traditional commodity markets in developed countries, many emerging markets lack efficient trading mechanisms for physical grain or derivatives. Companies like Grão Direto, AgroBoard and BAB are digitizing and streamlining agricultural trade and hedging, bringing much-needed efficiency to outdated systems. The Paranaguá Paper Market, the second-largest soybean market in the world after the CBOT, still operates largely via telephone and physical paper contracts—highlighting a prime opportunity for digital disruption.
Final Thoughts: AgTech and VC Are Compatible
The real issue isn’t that AgTech doesn’t fit VC—it’s that too many startups focus on incremental improvements rather than fundamental, scalable problems. The VC model thrives where technology enables massive transformation. That’s exactly what’s happening in developing markets, where inefficiencies in finance, logistics, and marketplaces are ripe for disruption. In developed regions, these opportunities are harder to find, but sectors like biotechnology, weather prediction, and even AgriFintech still hold strong potential for scalable growth. Instead of asking whether AgTech is broken for VC, we should be asking: Are we looking at the right opportunities in the right places?
Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years of experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups. All views, opinions, and commentary expressed are strictly his own.
Love the point about Brazil's supply chain, feels like the perfect setup for a fintech and logistics boom. Always wondered though, do the local regulations make it harder for these platforms to scale quickly or is the demand so high that it outweighs the red tape?