If your AgTech startup is trying to change behavior, here’s a better idea - work with it.
Nature Always Wins
There’s a golden rule in the startup world: don’t fight human nature. If you do, you’ll probably lose.
In agriculture, that truth is even more pronounced. You’re not just up against market friction or technical hurdles, you’re dealing with a culture shaped by risk, weather, and decades of learned behavior. Farmers aren’t Luddites. They’re pragmatic, pattern-seeking, over-the-fence observers. They’ve learned that the only thing worse than missing out on a new opportunity is betting the farm on the wrong one.
That’s why the most successful AgTech models don’t try to reshape the farmer. They work with their nature, not against it.
👀 Over-the-Fence Farming
One of the most underrated forces in agriculture is something I call over-the-fence farming. It’s the instinct to look next door, see what your neighbor’s doing, and compare notes.
It’s not gossip, it’s strategy. Because in ag, you get one shot per season. There’s no room for unproven promises. High stakes. Long cycles. Too many startups underestimate just how emotionally expensive a failed adoption can be.
This leads to a natural skepticism and a behavior pattern of “wait and see.” Farmers look for proof, not pitches. And when they find it, they move fast.
Few tapped into this better than FBN (Farmers Business Network) in their early days. They gave farmers the power to anonymously benchmark their input prices, yields, and performance against others in their region. $600 a year — or $50 a month — to see if you were getting ripped off or outperforming your peers. It was data with a purpose.
And farmers loved it. It played to curiosity, competition, and self-defense , three deeply embedded instincts. It was like “catnip” for farmers.
Where FBN Went Wrong
But then FBN changed the game.
They saw how big the pricing gaps were and decided to step into the middle. The company moved from being a data platform to being a price equalizer, offering to sell inputs directly at fair, transparent prices. In theory, it was empowering. In practice, it was a shift from enabling the system to trying to disrupt it.
And that triggered resistance. Suddenly, they were competing with the very incumbents they had once helped farmers navigate. The same players who controlled distribution, financing, and field-level influence.
Despite major VC backing, it was a costly battle. The lesson: even if your product has traction, don’t mistake validation for immunity. The supply chain fights back.
The Pain Is the Path
This lesson applies far beyond FBN.
In ag, the supply chain isn’t just a set of steps, it’s a network of relationships. From the co-op to the reseller, the agronomist to the distributor, everyone plays a role. Trust is currency.
Startups that try to bulldoze through that structure often stall. Smart startups look for hidden pain, and then help insiders solve it.
That’s exactly what TerraMagna did - one of Brazil’s first AgFinTechs, and The Yield Lab’s first investment in Brazil back in 2019.
They began with a deceptively simple insight: the biggest driver of credit defaults isn’t intention - it’s yield. When a crop fails, debt repayment usually fails too.
But when TerraMagna asked distributors how they managed credit risk, the answer was always the same: “We’ve known these farmers for years. We trust them.”
Then they reframed the question: “How do you manage production risk?”
The tone changed. “We don’t sleep when there’s drought. We dread disease outbreaks. We always imagine the worst.”
That’s where TerraMagna found its wedge - not by selling to farmers, but by solving the sleepless-night problem for input distributors.
They built tools to help distributors track crop development in real time, predict yields versus historical averages, and assess volatility across regions. They even added intelligence on local harvest timing, so if trouble emerged, their clients could act fast and get paid first.
It wasn’t flashy. But it was focused. And it worked. TerraMagna didn’t try to break the system. They gave it visibility, and in doing so, they became indispensable.
One Season at a Time
Here’s the most important piece of farmer nature: farming is a business.
But it’s not a business like SaaS or manufacturing. Margins are tight. Inputs are volatile. And the variables - weather, disease, soil health, commodity prices, FX, even end-customer demand - shift constantly.
In this world of constant flux, most farmers are focused on one thing: whether the numbers work this season.
If you’re pitching a multi-season ROI or a climate tool that pays off in five years, it might sound good to an investor. But to a farmer, it’s a risk they can’t afford. Especially if your solution includes upfront infrastructure or hardware costs - because that cost is treated as a line item against this crop’s revenue. And if it tips the season into the red, the answer is no.
The truth is, many farmers don’t plan multiple seasons ahead - not because they’re short-sighted, but because they can’t. When there’s this much variability, the best strategy is survival. One crop at a time.
So if your product can’t clearly show how it helps close the gap this season - by saving money, increasing efficiency, or reducing risk - you’re asking for a leap of faith in a business that doesn’t allow leaps. Only steps.
Behavior Is the Blueprint
AgTech doesn’t fail because it lacks intelligence. It fails when it ignores behavior.
If you want to scale in agriculture, forget trying to change farmers. Start by understanding them. Their instincts. Their incentives. Their sleepless nights.
Design for their nature - not your vision. Because in ag, momentum doesn’t start with marketing. It starts with what’s working next door.
Thanks for reading.
KFG 🚀
Kieran Finbar Gartlan is an Irish native with over 30 years experience living and working in Brazil. He is Managing Partner at The Yield Lab Latam, a leading venture capital firm investing in Agrifood and Climate Tech startups in Latin America.