Why the map? The story behind the AusAgritech Agri-Food Tech Ecosystem Map

The AusAgritech Ecosystem Map is fast becoming synonymous with our burgeoning organisation. Day in and day out, our Marketing & Membership Engagement Manager receives new submissions, amendments to the existing map and suggestions for its expansion. Every day we are building our knowledge and understanding of the incredible participants in the agri-food tech ecosystem, and we share this knowledge with you.

Prior to the launch of the April edition of the AusAgritech Ecosystem Map, we at AusAgritech have been asked many questions about this simple, but powerful graphic tool. ‘Is it a map? Is it a landscape? Are the categories expanding?’ are all frequently asked questions, however recently we were asked the simplest and most powerful question to date: why the map?

This simple question prompted our team to pull together an article explaining the ‘why’ behind the map. To summarise, the map shows members of the ecosystem and wider public: 

• How the agri-food tech and agri-food supply chain ecosystem is growing
• Acts as a visual guide for investment opportunities
• Acts as a visual guide for collaboration, partnership and connection opportunities
• Helps startups to identify gaps in the current landscape
• Gives a quick visual understanding of the scope of the agritech ecosystem in Australia
• Saves the ecosystem time and money by making essential information available. 

For AusAgritech, the map is a jumping off point to begin to understand the organisations that exist within the Australian agri-food tech sector, their proximity to each other and the sub-sectors that occupy the wider agritech ecosystem. A special mention here goes out to AusAgritech Members Mirragin, who can be credited for their Drone Ecosystem Directory which served as inspiration for the map. The map continues to evolve, most obviously in the number of organisations on the map but also the categories. This is all based on member feedback. It's less a question of what we think it can do for our members, and more of a matter of what we know it does. It helps our members to see where they fit in the wider ecosystem and where there are opportunities for collaboration and connection.

AusAgritech is a member-led organisation with a mission to create a prosperous Australia by enabling a world-class Agritech ecosystem. Part of achieving this includes understanding who exists within the agritech ecosystem and how many organisations agritech represents nationally. As mentioned earlier, the map is a jumping off point. We are currently well progressed on a much larger scale national project (the National Agritech Ecosystem Survey) that surveys the entire agritech landscape to identify all agritech organisations within Australia, what categories they fit into, how much agritech contributes to the national economy and how many people agritech employs in Australia and so on.

To date, the ecosystem map is by submission only (you can read all of the full submission criteria here). The Survey will allow us to gain a much more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the ecosystem and its contribution to the Australian economy and beyond.

Our main challenges have been ensuring the accuracy of the map, and the best way we've found to minimise any inaccuracy is by ensuring strict criteria for submission. In this way it is user-led, but monitored and implemented by AusAgritech.

We are also working on a Members Directory (more functional for finding members based on specific filters and criteria) and a Members-Only Opportunities Directory (a members-only classifieds section of our website where members can promote collaboration and partnership opportunities).

AusAgritech is solely funded by its members with much of the work undertaken by volunteers, including the above-mentioned essential projects.  

We feel that these added developments will further solidify what the map is and is not (which have been summarised in the dot points above), while giving AusAgritech members further opportunities to connect, partner and integrate with each other for the benefit of their organisations to build a collaborative and powerful agritech sector in Australia.

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For media enquiries regarding the map, please contact Kara-Glenn Worth (Marketing & Membership Engagement Manager, Australian Agritech Association) via marketing@ausagritech.org