b"Is South American Agtech Facing aFunding Winteror a Phase of Big Opportunity?An investor panel at the World Agri-Tech South America Summit tackled a big question: whats the outlook for agtech investment in South America? Maya Simone, Seed World ContributorONE OF THE HIGHLIGHTsessions at the World Agri- Specifically in our market, I think it's fairly common to Tech South America Summit, held June 2425, 2024, in Saoassume that when you have a specific hype going to a specific Paulo, Brazil, was an investor panel that discussed challengesmarket like climate and ag, probably they will be the first ones and opportunities in agtech funding. Though the panel focusedto drop and drop more vertically, [but] then they should shoot across agriculture, investment funding is a critical priority inup again. So, I think we're going through a specific phaseone new plant breeding and seed-related agtech, so this panel wasmore cycleand I hope people understand and buy into the particularly relevant to the seed value chain.idea that this is the right time to invest, and we shouldn't wait Broad market uncertainty and a decreasing tolerance for riskwhen interest rates are low and prices are high, he said. mean there has been a sharp decline in venture capital fundingFrancisco Jardim, managing director at Sao Paulo-based SP over the past few years, especially in agtech. Earlier this year, AgVentures, was even more positive. He said there has been huge Funder, a venture capital firm based in Californias Silicon Valley,growth in venture capital interest in agtech in Latin America in reported a 35% drop in investments across all venture markets, butthe past three years. a 50% drop in the agtech sector. In March, strategy and manage-ment firm McKinsey and Company estimated that approximately USD $6 billion that had been invested in 30 top agtech start-up companies had been lost in 2023 due to turn around or distress situations. The McKinsey report said more loss is likely comingin its analyses of nearly 250 well-funded start-ups, at least 30% of them were running behind on their fundraising targets. Panel moderator Gonzalo Prez-Taiman said this environment has prompted the use of words like agtech capital drought and agtech funding winter. His first question to the five pan-elists: how accurate are those terms for South Americas agtech investing environment today? He added, if we really are in an ag tech funding winter, how are you as investors and your portfolio companies keeping warm? Flavio Zaclis, founder of Sao Paulo-based Barn Investments, said the current slowing in investment is very much in line with the cyclical nature of the market. More importantly, a slowing market provides opportunity.Normally, returns are smaller when [the opportunity is] too obvious the counterpart is that when you take risks when the market is really stressed out, your competition is much lower, your prices are much lower, and then you're probably coming into the cycle when you can exit in the hype and not the other way around, Zaclis said. He said the one thing that hes absolutely positive about from past experience is that the next two years of investing will be incredible. 20/ SEEDWORLD.COMLATAM"