Political tidal waves, and AI is coming…
Recruitment searches in agrifood sustainability, plant sciences, and agri software / AI
The month in general has been dominated by seismic polital shifts on both sides of the pond, leaving the world of AgriFood / AgTech holding its breath to see which impacts trickle down.
The soon to be sworn in Trump’s policies regarding agriculture – and the start-up ecosystem in general, filtering into agritech and biotech – are likely be bullish, revolving around de-regulation & tax cuts. Don’t expect conservation and climate change regulations to be front and centre…
In the UK, with the announcement of the new Government’s budget, agriculture headlines became mainstream headlines due to the controversial rescinding of certain inheritance tax benefits for rural land owners. Opinion on this has been split, with some lauding the attempt to prevent the wealthy from exploiting tax loop-holes by buying up masses of agricultural land, and others concerned that those hit the hardest will actually be grassroots farmers already operating on small profit margins, who may now find it harder to pass their farming businesses on to the next family generation.
On to our activities, this month saw Agri-TechE‘s fantastic REAP event take place, which we were delighted to exhibit at alongside Pondus Visionary Poultry. While not the biggest event in the calendar in terms of physical size, REAP is always a highlight of the year, consistently hits the markers by being super relevant to anybody in and around agritech, and punches above it’s weight when it comes to attracting top speakers.
Honing in on topics such as the rise of AI in agriculture, a talk by Elliott Grant – a top commentator in the world of AI globally – was particularly enlightening. Based on the rise of other technological game-changers (who could have foreseen how the internet would change the world in the early 90s?), it’s hard to argue that AI is coming in a big way. A key theme in this talk was that this will likely happen in ways that our human minds aren’t even capable of predicting or comprehending at the moment. Forget simply replacing menial or repetitive tasks.; AI may well transform how the whole sector operates and functions in the years to come.
How can we truly harness the power of AI in what we do in recruitment? I’m damned if I know – and we currently have no plans to embrace AI in a way that subdues the human interaction element – but AI will no doubt change how we do certain things, we just haven’t worked out quite how yet…
Top of our agenda at the moment in terms of search campaigns are posts in AgriFood Sustainability, Plant Sciences (from Plant Transformation to Herbicides & Weed Resistance) and Software Engineer related posts in – you guessed it – an agritech AI start-up!
