At the Digital Agriculture Week organized by the el Instituto Interamericano de Cooperación para la Agricultura (IICA), both virtually and in person at its headquarters in Costa Rica, representatives of these financial organizations operating in the hemisphere also said that investments in agtechs must go hand in hand with market requirements, as a necessary factor for receiving financing.

In addition to IICA, the meeting was supported by CAF-Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina, the Fondo Internacional de Desarrollo Agrícola (FIDA), IDB Lab, Bayer, Microsoft, The Yield Lab and Veolia.

The executives of these funds and multilateral financing agencies agreed that investment in digital agriculture is essential to improve productivity and efficiency in the sector, as well as to address global challenges in terms of food security, climate change and resource scarcity.

In addition, they explained that in the last three years there was more than USD 25 billion of private investment for the development of technologies, especially from venture capital funds, a total of which agtechs still have a very small portion, but with great potential to grow.

According to Tomás Peña, director of The Yield Lab for Latin America, innovation used to be centralized in a few players and today it is distributed in several, both public and private, which creates a challenge and causes the need to work collaboratively and ecosystemically to bring financial resources to agtechs that are really committed to generating innovative solutions.

Lina María Cuervo, co-founder and managing partner of Cube Ventures, said that this business accelerator builds a venture capital fund that prioritizes gender equality to support new agtechs, with the aim of promoting innovation, welfare and obtaining higher quality and healthier products.

Juan Diego Mejía, Agcenter's Investment Director, stated that the resources of this acceleration and investment hub are aimed at agricultural producers and agtechs that wish to impact the market and diversify and innovate at a faster rate in the Andean region, as its focus is aimed at strengthening the sector and creating value connections.

"After visualizing the opportunity, studying and obtaining knowledge, we bet on agtechs for the development of new technologies that integrate solutions and optimize resources. These are the first steps in investment in digital technologies aimed at the agricultural sector", said Christian Quiñones, co-founder of the venture capital fund Innogen Capital.

Representatives of financial organizations with government contributions such as IDB Lab, FIDA and CAF-Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina, said that these institutions seek to promote digital transformation in agriculture by promoting efficiency, sustainability and the development of smarter and more profitable agricultural practices.

"For the Inter-American Development Bank and its IDB Lab project, it is essential that those seeking access to financing for the development of digital technologies are companies with proven experience, whose ideas have systemic impact and are technological innovations", explained William Ernest, senior specialist at IDB Lab.

Enrique Hennings, Senior Technical Specialist in Rural Markets and Enterprises of FIDA, shared the experience of the Innovatech project, whose objectives are to reduce the rural digital divide, support profitable and social business models, and promote financial inclusion for agtechs.

"Innovatech is aimed at companies that focus on the development of new technologies for the agricultural sector, with the challenge of meeting high market demand and that usually cannot access financing in other ways", said Hennings.

Eduardo Chomali, senior executive of Information and Communication Technologies at CAF-Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina, said that the digitization of agriculture will improve the productivity and competitiveness of this key sector for the region.

"Currently, there are digital solutions for each link in the agri-food chain, such as blockchain, big data, use of drones, artificial intelligence, internet of things and others; we want to support companies that work with these resources to maximize the potential of the digital ecosystem as an engine of development for Latin America and the Caribbean", Chomali noted.

Translated by: A.M