The move-fast-and-break-things ethos of the tech industry and the often sclerotic pace of the federal government have often been at odds, but for the agtech sector, the problem is particularly acute.
Agriculture tech needs federal support to become more competitive, boost agricultural resilience, and secure the country’s “agricultural future,” according to a new report from agriculture institute Triple Helix.
For example: Weeds and insects are becoming more and more resistant to traditional herbicide and pesticide products. Therefore, bioscientists have gotten to work on novel crop protection products to which pests aren’t resistant. But the report said the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates crop protection products, isn’t moving as quickly, even though it received more than five times as many registration applications for nontraditional crop protection products last year as it did in 2019.
It took the EPA four years to evaluate and approve Calantha, an RNA-based product that farmers have told Tech Brew is a “critical” part of their crop protection practices. And that’s just one of the novel crop protection products that has actually made it through the EPA’s registration process, which Triple Helix said can “stall or even kill breakthrough innovations before they ever reach scale, no matter how much capital is available.”
“It can be years between submitting a dossier for consideration and receiving regulatory approval,” the report said. “For novel products, a functional regulatory pathway may not yet exist or conflicting pathways among agencies may be in place.”
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Speeding up EPA registration timelines is just one of many recommendations Triple Helix relayed in its recent report on how the federal government can help the agtech sector. Notably, the report also said that investment from the private sector “does not and will not pick up the slack for the crucial role public sector funding serves” and that governmental support for the agtech industry has been steadily decreasing since 2002.
The report, which was based on roundtable discussions Triple Helix conducted between farmers, agribusiness leaders, and other stakeholders, also recommended that the federal government support agriculture research, make existing and future agricultural data widely available, and standardize how farm data is collected. As for funding, the report said the federal government should act “as an early customer” to new agtech innovations to attract further investment and create agtech-specific federal government loan guarantees for early-stage companies.
And above all, the report recommended that the federal government also take a more proactive approach to agtech innovation by incentivizing long-term solutions to future problems, rather than only pushing to solve current issues.
“Directing federal government support to proactive high-impact efforts that can pursue transformative technologies unconstrained by current market or policy paradigms,” the report said, “would be an important step toward overcoming present and future agricultural challenges.”