Beanstalk

Beanstalk exists to support industry leaders, start-up innovators, investors, and government bodies across the Asia-Pacific to advance sustainable, ethical and responsible food systems. Our core competency is in helping our clients to navigate and adopt leading practices and technologies, with purpose and clarity. Our advantage lies at the intersection of our deep domain expertise, our open innovation mindset, and our regional network. Our team consists of agriculture, innovation, strategy and operation experts based out of Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Singapore.

Learn more at beanstalkagtech.com

Spotlight Interview with William Taing – Director, Beanstalk, AVPI Knowledge Partner

What motivated you to join the AVPI?

We believe the AVPI is a foundational platform heightening the need to bring people from across interest areas, sectors, and policy together to interact on meaningful endeavours within the Australia-Vietnam relationship that have the potential to shape the relationship between people in both nations and the region.

Beanstalk’s vision is to unleash the potential for agriculture to be the leading force for good. We design and implement multi-stakeholder partnerships that catalyse innovation culture and momentum in agriculture that help to drive lasting impact for producers and the agricultural value chain.

One of those areas that Beanstalk is passionate about and think about every day is the potential for AgriTech innovation and digital agriculture to shape our food systems towards one that is more inclusive, sustainable, ethical and responsible.

What is your connection to Vietnam?

Beanstalk has been supporting and helping to nurture the AgriTech innovation ecosystem since 2018 when the first program was launched, the Mekong AgriTech Challenge (MATCH). Since then, Beanstalk has partnered with local industry leaders to engage agribusinesses in the region to come together on shared challenges across the cropping, aquaculture and livestock sectors, and attract global AgriTech entrepreneurs into Vietnam to collaboratively solve for. We’re in the throes of embedding the successful GRAFT Vietnam Challenge as an ongoing fixture of Vietnam’s agrifood innovation ecosystem.

What excites you about the growing AU-VN relationship?

Vietnam’s innovation ecosystem is growing in strides – this is happening with the backdrop of Vietnam’s agriculture sector experiencing pressures from low productivity, poor agricultural practices, salinity intrusion, climate variability, lack of access to critical services, and land degradation just to name a few. This has adverse and unintended impacts across the agricultural value chain, and in particular, the smallholder farmer segment.

Progressive and leading Vietnamese agribusinesses are increasingly devising plans and strategies to address these challenges and these organisations stand to gain from adopting forms of corporate open innovation to leverage global technology solutions from Australia and beyond.

What opportunities and collaborations are you hoping to explore within the AUS-VN relationship?

Beanstalk is exploring extending its current work with the Vietnamese Ministries of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Science and Technology to continue the GRAFT Challenge Vietnam in the region to increase the velocity and upscaling of global AgriTech engagement and penetration in Vietnamese agriculture.

We are looking forward to partnering with agribusiness industry leaders to formulate strategies and approaches to solving their most pressing challenges in agriculture and building local industry capability to bring forward innovative solutions to the pressing challenges being faced today and into the future.