Agri-Tech East is helping to stimulate innovation in agri-tech and to build a cluster of organisations across the value chain.
In addition to promoting funding opportunities, organising the REAP conference with its start-up showcase and hosting regular networking events on different subjects, Agri-Tech East also offers members dedicated knowledge-sharing events.
Challenge Convention 9 May 2019 is designed to stimulate collaborative projects.
Agri-food is a complex sector and many of the challenges can benefit from a multidisciplinary approach, the aim of the Challenge Convention is to catalyse discussion around the types of issues that impact everyone in the network – whether it’s a farming challenge, research looking to make an impact or find partners for funding, or a technology looking for input from end users.
We are confident that coming to the Challenge Convention will provide the opportunity to meet other members with knowledge, technology solutions or services that can benefit them.
Initiatives to create a pipeline of early-stage businesses
One of the initiatives to stimulate very early-stage businesses is GROW, the UK’s first business plan competition for agri-tech. After three successful years it was decided to try a different format and Agri-Tech East hosted a hackathon in 2018 which was also very popular and is planning another for July 2019.
The idea of the hackathon is to present a number of intractable agri-food challenges to a group of people with skills gained from other industries. Together they work on the challenges over a weekend and present their ideas to a panel of judges on the last day. The first hackathon produced fresh ideas and approaches and a number are now being considered by industry partners.
