After 6 days, 15 events, and more than 50 speakers, NYC AgTech Week 2019 has come to a close. Agritecture has helped produce AgTech Week for the last several years. In total, All-Access attendees came from 13 countries — a number the Ag Collective aims to increase each year — with 60% coming from outside the NYC metro area.
At the AgTech x UrbanTech Mixer, co-organized with The Grid, Amanda Weeks announced a rebranding of Industrial/Organic, the upcycled food waste startup she co-founded in 2014. Look out for Ambrosia — coming soon. Tobias Peggs, CEO of Square Roots, previewed the launch of the startup’s second farming site, in Michigan.
Cait Shubick also spoke at the event, highlighting urban agriculture’s potential for positive social impact as a reason why New Lab — an innovation hub in Brooklyn supporting more than 130 startups — is starting to work in this sector. “New York City has shown strong support for urban agriculture work, and with its already thriving and innovative agtech community, we believe the City is poised to emerge as a leader in the agtech revolution and serve as a model for other cities,” said Shubick.
This point was exemplified at the Future of Farming Pitch Contest, co-organized with Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, via pitches from five impact-driven agtech startups. FoodFul, which has built an IoT solution for dairy farms, won a handful of prizes including $5,000 in cash. Other pitches came from NATIVE AgTech (supply chain software); WeRadiate (IoT for compost); FoodCycle (upcycled livestock feed from food waste); and GrowSquares (tech-enabled urban gardening solution).
Finally, attendees at a panel on Opportunities & Challenges Scaling AgTech around the World heard Agritecture founder Henry Gordon-Smith announce the pending launch of Agritecture Designer — the company’s first digital product. Corinna Baban also utilized the panel to announce the US launch of Agreeta to the world — an end-to-end integrated technology platform for the entire “farm to fork” value chain. You can watch the full recording of that panel here, which includes additional insights from speakers Dermot O’Regan of Grow Bristol and Louisa Burwood-Taylor of AgFunder.