Here’s a well-intentioned question that kills momentum in early-stage agtech pitch meetings: "Ok, but how many jobs will you create in our state in the next two years?"

You can watch founders' faces fall, and the tone shift. Here they are, explaining breakthrough technology that could transform farming systems, and suddenly they're fumbling through answers about R&D hubs and regional employment targets. The air leaves the room. A technology with genuine scale potential gets reduced to a jobs-per-dollar calculation.

Like most agtech investors and founders we know, we care deeply about impact. We spend our days thinking about big problems and technology-enabled changes to the system, excitedly mapping out what’s possible for food and fiber production when the current crop of agri-food tech startups reach scale. 

But there's a fundamental tension brewing: in the rush to measure impact, are we accidentally limiting the very scale that could deliver transformational change?

The metrics mirage

We've written before about Goodhart’s law, or how the wrong metrics can create perverse outcomes, such as startups optimizing for vanity numbers instead of real progress. But the impact measurement challenge for agtech startups runs deeper. It's not just about choosing bad metrics; it's about applying the right metrics at the wrong time, or demanding the wrong type of evidence entirely.

Here's the thing: governments and place- or industry-based funding organizations aren't wrong to want tangible, immediate benefits for their stakeholders. The pressure is real, and the accountability matters. But when we force early-stage companies into narrow impact boxes, we often miss the forest for the trees.

When place-based thinking gets trapped in place

We’ve seen the story from the intro play out across states in Australia: a company that is initially based in one place, with potential customers and expansion plans in many locations. A strict focus on near-term, location-specific jobs would mean missing out on a company that could eventually employ high tech talent while serving global markets from their regional Australian hub.

Or consider a startup we saw the other day that efficiently manufactures methane-reducing feed additives. A small team can produce tens of thousands of doses per day, delivering massive climate and productivity benefits to dairy regions worldwide. Should we penalize them because their manufacturing footprint is lean?

The irony is obvious: by demanding immediate local job creation, we may be passing on the companies most likely to create sustainable, high-value employment over the long term.

The emissions reduction blind spot

Another challenge in agri-food is limiting focus only to direct, quantifiable emissions reduction. While this approach might work for energy sector investments, in complex agri-food systems, the biggest opportunities often involve systemic changes that resist simple measurement.

We’ve seen this play out with RapidAIM, a portfolio company of ours that provides growers and their advisors with real-time and forecast analytics about insect pest risks. The easy metric? Emissions reduction from fewer scouting trips around the farm. But the real impact– providing digitally-enabled confidence to underpin behavior changes such as reduced chemical usage, leading to improved biodiversity—is harder to quantify and takes years to materialize.

Would a narrow focus on measurable emissions make this company less attractive to impact investors? The answer should be obvious. But if the answer is yes, we're optimizing for accounting convenience over actual impact.

The timing trap

Even the right metrics at the wrong time can derail growth. We've seen investors push companies for measurable impact so early that it distracted resources from building the scale that underpins real impact.

A common example is a company working on alternative proteins or vertical farming who have life cycle analyses showing that their products will have a dramatically better emissions footprint when their facility is powered by renewable energy. Some investors want to see those renewable energy investments in place immediately, believing it’s key to the integrity of the impact.

But here's the catch: making those investments too early unnecessarily increases cash burn and may actually limit long-term scale and impact. Is it more impactful to install solar panels on your pilot facility, or to invest in proving out a world-changing product, before making capital-intensive efficiency improvements?

The companies that wait aren't less impactful—they're being strategically thoughtful about sequencing their impact investments.

When impact measurement actually works

So what does good impact measurement look like for early-stage agri-food tech startups? Let's look at Goterra, a company in our portfolio that diverts food waste from landfill with their automated, decentralized processing technology. Emissions reduction can be calculated based on each tonne of waste diverted. Simple, direct, quantifiable. 

Despite this clear impact case, perhaps counterintuitively, the company’s actual impact figures sat at zero while the technology was still being developed. Now that Goterra has customers who pay for waste management services, the emissions reduction metric becomes meaningful because it's directly linked to revenue and company growth. The measurement serves the mission instead of distracting from it.

Reporting becomes straightforward because the company is already tracking the volumes they process for operational reasons. The impact metric isn't an additional burden—it's a natural byproduct of business success.

The courage to wait

We believe that considering impact is an advantage for agri-food investments. But impact measurement needs to be meaningful, stage-appropriate, and aligned with commercial success, or we risk undermining the very outcomes we want to achieve.

The most impactful agri-food tech companies and investors might be those bold enough to say: 'We won't measure impact until we have something worth measuring.' They understand that sometimes the most responsible thing you can do is focus relentlessly on building something that works, before you start counting its benefits.

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This article was originally published on evokeAG.