Pivot Bio Shares Four Trends Driving Agriculture Forward
BERKELEY, California (March 18, 2024) – Pivot Bio, a leading sustainable agriculture company, will send the company’s CEO, CFO, Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Business Development Officer to San Francisco this week to meet with partners at the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit, where leaders from across the industry will come together to explore new areas of collaboration.
Ahead of the Summit, Pivot Bio’s CEO Chris Abbott the shared following four trends that the company will be watching closely at the conference.
“Cross-sector collaborations with farmers are emerging
Transforming the food system in a way that benefits growers, society and the planet will take partnerships and collaboration across sectors and industries. New partnership models are emerging that will help to accelerate this transition. No single product will sufficiently “reinvent” or “disrupt” the industry. We must tackle the problems together and realize it is not a zero-sum game. Everyone is finally talking about capital efficiency again (thankfully), and the quickest way to grow efficiently is through partnerships.
Pivot Bio’s role is to partner with our farmer customers who are driving solutions for an evolving food system using the latest technology and insights. A great example is our new N-OVATOR program, which helps farmers create a new revenue stream from avoided nitrogen waste by connecting them to companies across the value chain. By making these connections, we can help growers improve their margins while providing a critical tool for companies to meet their decarbonization goals. Ecosystem services like these will continue to be an important way for companies to incentivize direct action in their supply chains.
“Delivering on ag tech’s promise to supercharge productivity and manage risk in the face of tightening margins
We’ve already seen the power of precision ag tech, such as drones, sensors and GPS, in helping farmers better manage their farms with real-time data, allowing them to continue to drive operational efficiency. The rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning will enhance farmers’ ability to increase agricultural efficiencies and reduce production costs. We also believe these technologies will help ag tech companies manage their own businesses with better efficiency and faster speed – both of which are good for our industry. We need to share best practices and experiences on how to leverage these technologies in our industry.
Crop nutrition – and the technologies that support it – are key components of any farm operation. Scaling the use of the next generation of solutions is critical to unlocking new levels of productivity and sustainability. For example, Pivot Bio’s nitrogen-fixing microbes are helping growers gain consistency and control and improve their ROI while helping to improve the quality of our air and water.
“Greater focus on sustainable agriculture
As farm ownership shifts to the next generation of growers, we continue to see more farmers embrace new farming practices. Interest in sustainable agriculture technologies continues to rise as farmers work to ensure their farms are productive and profitable, improving resiliency in the face of an increasingly volatile market and unpredictable weather patterns.
This represents an immense opportunity. According to the American Farmland Trust, farmers and ranchers manage nearly 1 billion acres, or approximately 60% of U.S. land, which can act as a natural carbon sink by absorbing vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and storing it in plants and soil. At Pivot, we also know that reduction of nitrogen waste will be paramount to ensuring healthy soils that can keep up with a rising global demand for food. As we better understand the value that is being created, growers will accelerate the adoption of sustainable agriculture to capture more of it for their operation.
“Ag tech to usher in a new wave of investments
A renewed global focus on the transformation of the food system highlights the critical need to advance ag tech innovations to accelerate climate action. Although ag tech startups have experienced a tightening of financing in recent years, we can expect renewed interest as investors seek out more opportunities to broaden their portfolios and deepen their climate impact. Companies that have responded to the changing capital and commodity markets should benefit from this shift.
For ag tech leaders, it is important to remember there will never be a more important time than now —during a low point in a cycle — to champion innovation and develop new technologies.”
About Pivot Bio:
Pivot Bio is a leading sustainable agriculture company delivering farmers patented crop nutrition technologies that harness the power of nature to reliably and productively grow the food the world needs in the face of increasing volatility. Currently available in North America and soon in Brazil, the company’s products are a breakthrough innovation. They are among the industry’s most promising climate solutions because they deliver nitrogen to plants without the negative impacts of synthetic fertilizer. The company’s nitrogen is weatherproof, safer to handle, and does not leach or contribute to nitrous oxide pollution. By making this possible for the first time at scale, Pivot Bio is upending the 190 billion USD nitrogen market. Pivot Bio has been recognized twice by Time magazine on its annual list of best inventions, by Fast Company on its World Changing Ideas and World’s Most Innovative Companies lists, by CNBC on its Disruptor 50 list of private companies and by Fortune on its Impact 20 list of startups driving social good. The company recently announced its fourth consecutive year of growth. For more information, visit Pivotbio.com.
