Sowing Smarter Seeds: How a Top-Down Strategy Can Ignite AgTech Adoption
#12 BAR Raiser
Breaking Ground
Cracking the code on slow farmer adoption has always been one of the toughest challenges for startups in the AgTech space. Often mislabeled as overly conservative, farmers actually grapple daily with immense pressures—from unpredictable weather and market volatility to relentless pests and rising input costs. Against this backdrop, investing scarce resources and trust into unproven technologies can feel like a big gamble—especially when tried-and-true options like increased fertilizer or premium inputs can deliver more predictable results.
Today's macroeconomic climate deepens this dilemma for startup founders. Tightened venture capital funding, reduced liquidity, and scarce exits are straining startups across industries, but AgTech faces these issues more acutely due to fragmented markets, seasonal sales windows, and slower ROI timelines.
Yet within this tough terrain lies substantial opportunity for agile entrepreneurs. By strategically targeting influential early adopters, startups can harness farming’s powerful peer-driven network effects. Coupled with breakthroughs in AI that slash adoption friction and rapidly accelerate innovation cycles, this targeted, top-down approach might finally realize the long-promised potential of AgTech at scale.
Start at the Top
Not all farmers are equally positioned when it comes to technology adoption. Like any population, the agricultural community includes early adopters, late adopters, and those resistant to change. Many startups instinctively aim to support the most underserved farmers first, thinking this is the low-hanging fruit where technology can have the greatest impact. But in practice, this can be a strategic misstep.
It might feel counterintuitive—especially for mission-driven founders—but helping the least resourced farmers by handing them untested technology is like putting the oxygen mask on the child first during a plane emergency—an act of goodwill that may backfire. The smarter move is to secure the strongest first. When we equip the most sophisticated, forward-thinking farmers with innovative tools, they become catalysts for broader change. These are the farmers who think beyond the next harvest, who can afford to experiment, and who command attention and influence among their peers.
AgTech adoption is largely peer-driven. Farmers trust what they see working in the field next door far more than any marketing claim. By starting with high-agency, tech-savvy farmers—not necessarily the biggest, but the most progressive—startups can validate their solutions, refine their models, and build credibility. These reference farmers serve as living proof, accelerating adoption among neighboring farms and eventually cascading down to the wider market.
I saw this dynamic firsthand during my time at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Efforts to replace traditional pit trading with electronic platforms initially met with fierce resistance. The breakthrough came by empowering a new wave of traders—those hungry for speed and efficiency—with early tools like the eRunner, an electronic order book that replaced paper trades—eliminating manual errors and streamlining order input. These tools gave progressive traders a clear edge over older, more traditional ones. As the competitive gap widened, the rest of the market was forced to adapt or risk being left behind. This focused adoption strategy broke inertia, creating momentum that even the skeptics couldn’t ignore.
AgTech faces a similar moment. By choosing the right entry point—not just any farmer, but the right kind of farmer—startups can dramatically improve their odds of success.
AI as the Friction Reducer
While a top-down approach helps solve the who and what of AgTech adoption—identifying the right early adopters and the critical problems worth solving—AI can help address the how by easing the everyday friction that slows down tech uptake on the farm. Many promising technologies have stumbled not because they don’t deliver results, but because they’re too hard to use in the field. Harsh environmental conditions, low connectivity, and device limitations make many digital tools impractical for everyday farm use.
AI has the potential to change that. Voice-enabled interfaces powered by AI can make digital tools far more accessible for farmworkers—allowing them to interact hands-free, even while operating machinery. These tools can understand natural language, interpret commands, and respond in real time, removing many of the physical and cognitive barriers that have slowed digital adoption.
Beyond the interface layer, AI is also transforming product development. In sectors like biological inputs, where Brazil is already the fastest-growing market in the world, AI can dramatically speed up R&D timelines and reduce costs. This makes it more viable for startups to compete with larger players and bring effective solutions to market faster.
Brazil doesn’t need to develop foundational AI models to lead in this space—just as it didn’t invent mobile phones but now ranks among the countries with the highest rates of cell phone usage. Its strength lies in rapid adoption and practical application. With applied AI, Brazil has the chance to leapfrog infrastructure barriers and emerge as a global leader in AgTech innovation.
For startups, this means shorter feedback loops, faster iteration, and more scalable impact. Combined with a top-down adoption strategy, AI could be the missing ingredient that finally brings speed and scale to AgTech’s transformation.
Shifting the Curve
Brazil—and other emerging markets—don’t need to follow Silicon Valley’s script to succeed in AgTech. In fact, they may be better off writing their own. By combining focused, top-down adoption with the friction-reducing force of AI, startups can break the cycle of slow adoption and turn compounding insight into accelerating impact.
This transformation doesn’t require massive capital outlays or moonshot valuations to succeed. What it needs is a handful of startups with the right entry point, strong product focus, and an obsession with usability. It needs founders who think surgically—and investors who recognize that the next wave of growth may not look like a rocket ship, but a well-tuned flywheel.
With the right strategy and the right timing, AgTech’s long, flat adoption curve can finally start to bend. And when it does, the impact won’t stop with early adopters—it will ripple outward, lifting the entire sector.
Thanks for reading.
KFG 🚀
Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years 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 in Latin America. All views, opinions, and commentary expressed are strictly his own.