There are plenty of labels these days for the state of controlled environment agriculture (CEA): depression; correction; the increasingly popular “trough of disillusionment,” that thrive-or-die low point on the Gartner Hype Cycle startups must navigate.
But for EY food & agribusiness leader Rob Dongoski, CEA’s current situation is more S-curve than trough. “I don’t think this is a trough of disillusionment in a pure kind of tech hype cycle,” he recently told AgFunderNews. “I think it’s more complex than that.”
CEA’s troubles are well documented, and its story is a tale as old as the tech industry itself: investors pumped hundreds of millions into startups promising fresh, local produce grown at scale in tech-enabled indoor environments.
When promises failed to deliver, interest waned, and funding dried up. Bankruptcies and closures proliferated, and most industry experts agree we haven’t seen the last of them. The plot line reads much like a journey into the trough until one considers the external forces at work.
Read more at agfundernews.com
