Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and his wife Annie are backing a new $30 million venture fund to make agriculture more energy efficient and reduce carbon emissions.
The Tenacious Ventures fund will invest in early-stage startups focused on the agricultural supply chain.
The Cannon-Brookes family are backing the fund via their private investment vehicle, Grok Ventures, with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation also tipping in $8 million as cornerstone investment via its $200 million Clean Energy Innovation Fund.
Mike Cannon-Brookes said innovation in the agriculture sector was “desperately needed across the world” for sustainability.
“Kick-starting this industry in Australia will take guts and expertise, and the CEFC brings both,” he said.
“There’s no doubt that new ideas in agriculture will play a massive role in reducing carbon emissions, while also delivering return on investment. The economic upside for Australia’s economy is also huge.
Tenacious Ventures was co-founded by agrifood tech pioneers Sarah Nolet and Matthew Pryor.
CEFC CEO Ian Learmonth said there was a shortage of institutional capital in local agrifood tech, despite Australian being a major food exporter, with the per capita investment a fraction of the comparable investment in New Zealand, Israel and the US.
“The agricultural sector poses a demanding climate change challenge: how to produce more food, more efficiently, for a growing population amid a more extreme climate, while also reducing greenhouse gas intensity and emissions,” he said.
“Australian agriculture is a major exporter of food and fibre, feeding more than 60 million people per year. We are experts at efficient, climate adaptive food production – Australian farmers reduced the greenhouse gas emissions intensity of agriculture by 63% between 1996 and 2016.
“But more needs to be done to develop and export agricultural technology that improves the efficiency of production on a global scale.”
The initial Tenacious Ventures fund plans to invest in up to 20 early-stage agrifood tech companies, looking to lift farm efficiency and food and fibre yields, while cutting inputs and emissions.
Experts predict that if the global population reaches a predicted 10 billion by 2050, agriculture output will need to jump by at least 60% compared to 2005–2007 output.
Meanwhile, the the broader food system, including growing, harvesting, processing, packaging, transport and consumption, is responsible for an estimated 30% of global emissions.
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