Megan Woodward

In this episode we caught up with Mark Allison, the CEO of one of Australia’s largest agribusinesses, Elders. Mark spoke at evoke^AG. in Melbourne, back in 2020 – a time before Australia and the world were plunged into lockdown due to COVID-19. At the time, Australia had suffered one of its worst droughts on record and bushfires had ravaged large parts of the community.

Silicon Valley engineer Naeem Zafar is single-handedly disrupting the post-harvest ag industry using machine learning and IoT to predict the quality of crops in storage and transit – and it’s all thanks to a sliding doors moment involving a group of Australian executives searching for storage solutions for the grain industry. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already creating exponential impact globally, and locally for our food and fibre supply chain, by alleviating workforce and labour shortages – a problem for Australian and global agriculture. 
In this episode we hear from the Queensland AI Hub about the endless opportunities that Artificial Intelligence offers the Australian tech industry and how we can make the most of it. 

The ability of Artificial Intelligence to be developed and used at scale is changing the way problems are solved – from global food shortages to weed identification. The Queensland AI Hub is encouraging a national focus to push AI’s potential by supporting local AI developers – to reduce risk across the supply chain and take control of Australia’s assets, from natural resources to power.

It was billed as the ‘had to have’ ticket for investment-ready startups at evoke^AG. 2020, and now interest in the evoke^AG. 2022 Investor Dinner has stepped up a notch, with investors equally excited to secure their own seat at the table.

With more than 40 years in the venture capital game, Andy Ziolkowski – the Managing Director of US-based food and agriculture-focused venture capital firm, Cultivian Sandbox and Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Cultivian Ventures – knows a good investment when he sees one.