Seedling Sessions: Agriculture Innovation

LATAM AgTech: Understanding Regional Nuances for Growth

• Agri-EPI • Season 1 • Episode 36

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In this episode of the podcast, Thomas Slattery interviews Mark Jarman, founder of AgriTIERRA, a consultancy that bridges the gap between Latin American (LATAM) and UK markets, particularly in the agritech and digital agri-food sectors. Mark shares his journey from working with a UK innovation center to starting his own consultancy in Bogota, Colombia. We discuss the opportunities and challenges for UK agritech companies in the LATAM region and the importance of understanding the diverse agricultural landscape.

Mark's background includes leading the agriculture and food work at a UK Catapult. He has been working with Agri-EPI, to identify potential international smart farm partners and ecosystems in the LATAM region. The goal is to create a two-way collaboration between UK and LATAM companies, leveraging the strong UK brand perception in the region. The LATAM market offers unique opportunities for UK agritech companies due to its enormous size, diverse agricultural landscape, and the perception of quality associated with the UK brand. However, it is crucial for UK businesses to understand the differences across the region, tailoring their products and services to the specific needs of each area. Building partnerships and ecosystems is key to success in the region, as well as fostering relationships and understanding the local culture.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of Seeding Sessions brought to you by the AgriEpic Centre. I'm your host, thomas Slattery. Today we'll be exploring strategies for UK AgTech companies interested in entering the diverse Latin American market. To help us navigate this complex terrain, we're joined by Mark Jarman, founder of Agri Tierra. Mark is an invaluable guide with boots of the Grand Experience in Colombia, where he's based, but working across Latin America advising UK firms. He previously worked for UK Catapult, leading agriculture and food initiatives, which open his eyes to the potential across this region. Now, with Agri Tierra, Mark provides insights on partnerships and market entry for UK AgTech companies looking to expand into Latin America With.

Speaker 1:

The Latin American landscape offers new opportunities for ambitious UK firms, the vast country's growing populations and untapped markets. Latin provide scale, but capitalizing on this requires deep cultural awareness and local market knowledge. Each country and sub-region has distinct histories, politics, infrastructure and farm systems. Relationships and language are key. Mark shares first hand insights about the intricacies of cross-border collaboration left in Latin America. We'll hear about the importance of on-site commitment, as well as the exciting potential for mutually beneficial exchange between UK and Latin. Let's jump in, hi Mark.

Speaker 2:

Thanks very much for joining me today for a chat. Probably the best thing to do kicking off, would be who are you, what is Agri Tierra and what do you guys do?

Speaker 3:

Pleasure to meet you, Tom. I'm Mark. I'm the founder of Agri Tierra. It's a consultancy. I live in Bogota, Colombia, moved here two years ago. My consultancy helps UK companies in particular understand the Latin American market, what are the opportunities, particularly around technology and innovation, and hopefully create a new market for them to enter and be successful in.

Speaker 2:

Before we get into the business side of things how did you end up in Colombia? Do you have a lot of background in South America? How? Why Colombia particularly?

Speaker 3:

I first started working in this region in 2015 in a previous role. I fell in love with the country and particularly the region, for the culture, the history, but also from a business perspective, some wonderful opportunities. When you think about it from a UK angle, it's not necessarily a part of the world that we look at and try and focus on, I think because of language and other factors. During that time, I met a lovely Colombian lady. They're very dangerous over here. I decided to move my life, set up a company, and it's been a successful form field journey ever since.

Speaker 2:

Because, to remind me, you were with a fairly prominent UK agricultural firm before you went over. Am I right?

Speaker 3:

I was with an Catapult and Innovation Centre. I was leading there agriculture and food work, which was excellent. It took me to the region, helped me understand the structure, the types of businesses, the opportunities because, similar to Agriepia, catapult is a government backed institution. You can go and talk to lots of different people From that. It was a bit of a no brainer when setting up a company. The UK brand is very strong here. The perception is of quality. If you can find the right UK businesses with an appetite for a bit of an adventure at the same time, then they will be successful and I can be successful.

Speaker 2:

Obviously a lot of experience already in this strange technology innovation space that we all work in. I think for me this has been quite an exciting episode to prep for, because it's the first time we've done anything internationally. Normally we focus on a lot of the UK innovators and stuff that we work with. A lot of people who either follow the organisation through this podcast or through other means, probably I don't think that they're aware of the amount of work that we do internationally, and particularly with a big project we did around international smart farms. I think there's probably quite a good segue into you maybe just telling us a little bit about the work you've done with Agri Efi, which, of course, by no means all of the work you're doing in the region.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, for me it's quite interesting and also fantastic to see Agri Efi look at the world properly and understand markets and where can the UK have an interest and an impact. I've been doing some consultancy for Agri Efi over the last six to seven months, going into detail across the Latin American and Caribbean region. Where might Agri Efi and a smart farm platform be successful? Who are the key organisations and ecosystems that exist and where are they? What are the market opportunities that the UK might have and how does that vary across the region? Because it's very diverse. You've got everything from tropical agriculture in the north to mainstream cereals and combinables in the south. Understanding the differences is going to be critical for Agri Efi to be a success and select the right parts of this part of the world to focus.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and just I think it's probably worth us putting a little bit of me around the bones about what we mean by a smart farm. My interpretation of that was that we went out to a number of different regions internationally looking for existing examples of best-in-class digitally enabled farm enterprises and, importantly, existing commercial enterprises, not just research facilities. Was that roughly the brief that you were looking at when you were looking at the Latin region?

Speaker 3:

Totally. I mean, for Agri Efi to be a success here, they've got to find the right partners and those organisations are going to have to be a mixture from commercial right the way through to research. Because if you take Brazil, where Agri Efi are looking at the moment with in Bratla, which is the kind of big Brazilian Agri Research Institute, they themselves have just invested in an innovation facility called Agnest and in partnership with big Agri businesses. So for me, if Agri Efi can form the right partnerships, you're not just partnering with a world-renowned institution to get that kind of seal of approval for landing and demonstrating capability, but at the same time you're quickly accessing the market, which is what UK companies want. They don't want somewhere nice to just showcase their capability, they want the support at the same time to help them understand the market and rapidly scale from those partnerships. That's going to be critical for the success.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it really has been about building up a kind of ecosystem and infrastructure. To a certain extent, it's been kind of a two-way thing as well, right, so it's been about what are the opportunities for UK agri-tech, but also what are the learnings from agri-tech companies and digitally enabled farms within the region that we can potentially take back to the UK and learn from right.

Speaker 3:

Totally it has to be a two-way thing, because if you've got UK going to the region and there's lots of interest in that, they've got to think about how are they going to interact, how are they going to be successful to build those partnerships. And part of that is what's in it for the other organizations and for them. They're super interested in what the UK has, but also how they can enter the UK market, what partnerships can form the other way. I mean that's probably the most exciting thing about this is that kind of active collaboration or approach that's going on and has potential for when you ask a lot of international companies what they think of the UK. It's world-renowned science, it's great capability, but also it's that kind of innovation and funding environment that exists to help transition science through into commercial products and services. And I think if we can do it properly with the right business models linked to the smart farms, then actually the UK can be very successful looking outwards into the world but also attract some fantastic talent and capability coming the other way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah yeah, no, you're right, and I think that's really a good point to highlight, which is, I think sometimes maybe we don't realize how advanced and how good our innovation and tech development capabilities are at UK PLC, as they call it, and we're really lucky to have that and it's good that we're able to attract some international talent. So segue against slightly. I guess the question to ask you as the expert in the region is like why LATAM and what do you see as the kind of unique opportunities there?

Speaker 3:

LATAM as a market is enormous, just from a sheer scale perspective, but also size of exports that are going into the global food production system. From a technology, data perspective, you could say in certain parts of the region it is behind, and that creates opportunity for the UK to go in and influence. The UK brand is very strong here, from my experience over the last six, seven, eight years. When you talk to people and you say you're from the UK, you're seen as bringing a level of quality, a level of assurance as a country that people actually want to talk to and do business with. For me, though, it's critical for UK businesses and organisations to just try and understand the differences across the region.

Speaker 3:

If you think about the northern parts of the main continent Colombia, peru, ecuador you're seeing a big small holder structure of agriculture which is very different from kind of the southern cone of Argentina, brazil, uruguay, etc.

Speaker 3:

Where you've got farmers farming tens of thousands of hectares much more autonomised, mechanised. From a product service perspective, you have opportunities across various different value chains, but you're trying to tell where your product is going to be most suited. I think that's probably a top tip for me with businesses looking at this region is to really think about what they have, which may be created for a much more temperate system, and to think where is it likely to be most relevant? What are those surrounding factors that are important that that company needs to have at the same time, which comes into things like language, relationships, culture. Having the ability to have a conversation with people is critical. From what I'm seeing with good, successful UK companies here, they're the ones that have really looked at that product, market fit and all the surrounding aspects as well, and then they can grow leveraging that kind of brand version.

Speaker 2:

I think there's something really important to kind of dig in a bit on there as well. We often joke, even on a tiny island like the UK, within a sector like farming and agriculture, the differences between different regions even here are massive. We talk about product market fit for tech and innovators just within the UK. If we extrapolate that out to LATAM, as you've rightly said, you're going completely different within regions. I guess one of the reasons why obviously it's so important to have partnered with you as a consultant within this area is to try to help navigate that. You've also talked about having consultants that you work within the region. Could you give me a bit of a theoretical example of, let's say, we come to you with a fairly well-developed piece of agtech. How should they approach that or how would you help them approach that when trying to look at opportunities in LATAM? Could you just sort of I know it's a bit of a difficult hypothetical, but could you sort of understand how you approach such a thorny issue of navigating so many different countries and subregions within the continent?

Speaker 3:

I mean, if I give you an example of a UK SME called Trading Space, based up in Scotland. They provide supply chain traceability solutions into the market, primarily with a focus on coffee and cacao. They have been working in other geographies of the world wanting to explore the Latin-American market and to hopefully, when we started the contract, to kind of look at creating a new product and service book for that market. I'm based, obviously, in Colombia, which is a big coffee-cacao producing region, but it has a lot of potential because of post-conflict it's coming out of civil war of 50 years. As a market it is looking to take on the world and expand.

Speaker 3:

For me, looking at Trading Space is offer.

Speaker 3:

Actually, the market is not well served in terms of technology and capability.

Speaker 3:

There are good companies here who are looking at products and services and have a clear need, and actually putting the two together and using the trust that I've developed here with businesses has been a good way to help that UK company understand the market when it doesn't have any presence here. Develop, therefore, a new product and service that actually fills a gap within the supply chain, not just here but globally, in terms of capturing key first mile data that can feed into then things like devorastation and various other environmental social governance checks. Help them deploy it by being on the ground, because it's great having a great tech team in the UK, but fundamentally you need to be here Leveraging local people who bring that sectorial knowledge, and for me that's quite critical. Go with British blue eyes, blonde hair as such, as they like to say. I've got here, have local people with great knowledge and capability and together we can help UK companies go far, and we've developed a product that's now being procured by that business, which is fantastic.

Speaker 2:

That's a really nice example. I think something you mentioned there, which is what I'm talking about, is on the ground and through the miracle of Teams and Zoom, we're obviously able to do this virtually, but it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on stressing a bit more about the importance of getting over physically. I presume part of that is one really understanding the market. But also, to go back to an early point you made around the cultural differences Where's your advice in terms of how early and at what point people should be trying to get over and physically start visiting some of these?

Speaker 3:

For me, I think it's quite critical to know quite early whether you are really interested in this market, because if you are, then being seen early is really a game changer because you look committed. If you're there and also if you have a local representative here or contacts who can support you, you become very credible very quickly. Doing business for me in this region is all about relationships. Do I like you, do I want to do business with you? Are we going to have an hour meeting and spend the first 35 minutes talking about everything but business? It's the same in the world over, but I'd say particularly important here be seen, have an interest, but also have a willingness to understand them and to understand their culture.

Speaker 3:

I think, having moved here and now living here, when I see a lot of Brits come to the region, it can be very easy to spot this kind of elitist mannerisms of we've come from the UK, we know what we're talking about and actually those businesses that are successful are the ones that actually probably take a step back a bit and listen, learn from the locals, make them much more empowered and from that, build that real kind of foundational level of a relationship and go forward with that. Then you don't necessarily need to be back into the region, but you will need to make a commitment every year to come maybe two, three times just to show your face, take people out for dinner and build that reputation.

Speaker 2:

I think that's really interesting. Are there any other top tips you've got for how to be successful in breaking into these markets? I think what you said already about coming with some reasonably humble, open-minded, being prepared to get boots on the ground and appreciate the cultural differences, understand that getting local people involved is going to get you to understand the markets locally. Are there any other things which you think are really useful for anyone considering these things to think about before and or during the initial phase of breaking into these new markets?

Speaker 3:

I think the biggest thing is language. I mean, english is not well-spoken. I think that's been one of my biggest challenges. I moved here as a complete non-Spanish speaker. It's been.

Speaker 3:

One of the best things about moving is learning a language. But you realise how debilitating it is very quickly without being able to talk, and particularly if you want to go and talk to a farmer. If you talk to a farmer, they will not speak English generically. So you do need to think how am I going to overcome that communication challenge, whether that's having native speakers in your team, leveraging translators here as part of those initial visits, or building out quite quickly that kind of local either consultant network to support your initial exploration, or trying to find the right distributors or partners that you trust to represent you and your interests.

Speaker 3:

For me, I've kind of built out a team of consultants across the region. Just because of that being local and language challenge space. If I've got people who can go and have a coffee with somebody in Buenos Aires, it's much better than me trying to have a virtual call between Colombia and Argentina because it's still a long way. I mean, we think Brazil is 35 times bigger than the UK. That's kind of a scary sense of scale for where you're looking to work and I think if you've got people on the ground, you've got to be successful, quickly get your brand out there, build that reputation and probably retain the interest in doing business here, because that is a tricky thing, because it's totally different. It's a big market. It's a cost to businesses to think about entering here, but if you are going to be thinking about it, be committed and you'll find a lot of opportunity.

Speaker 2:

So again, to zoom out a bit in a way and you touched on this earlier but I think the scale of the region is humongous and just when we talk about Latin and going into Latin, I'm presuming you're not suggesting that a company should be looking to hit the whole region. My assumption is from what you said earlier, is work with someone like yourself to get a better understanding of the differences within the region and then focus on a particular country or region within a country that's most suitable for the solution that you're developing.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely it is enormous. You do need to think about where doing business might be easiest. I certainly would recommend engaging the UK government's kind of agri-tech team across the region. They're super helpful. The lead of that's based down in Buenos Aires and super knowledgeable about where the UK might have good product market fit, so there's always a good kind of government support mechanism here across from Argentina all the way through up into the Caribbean.

Speaker 3:

I would encourage to maybe look at some of the smaller markets, particularly, for example, if you're looking at anything on the livestock side or on the arable side. A country like Uruguay is much smaller than Argentina and Brazil and, you could argue, a great proving ground and maybe not necessarily has the same level of competition. You suddenly want to go and enter Brazil. Well, yes, it's a huge market, yes, there's a lot of opportunity there, but you've then got the question of where in Brazil and you've got states that are massively bigger than the UK, so you can almost go. We're not even going to try and tackle Brazil. We're going to try and tackle the state of Minasurize.

Speaker 3:

It's a really interesting question to be looking at. Where is that product market fit? Because it may be very, very niche and very focused, but the scale of agriculture is so big that you actually don't need to be thinking the entire continent, you're just taking a small part of it and build out your credentials from there. The other, obviously, route is to look at partnerships and finding good distributors or organisations who are already operating in the region that you have a complementary offer for and that will give you route to scale quite quickly. When I was in Argentina a few weeks ago, we met with an organisation that had been to the UK about two months ago, actually part of a delegation run by the AgriTech team from the region and hosted by AgriEpi in various facilities. They had a huge list of UK companies that they were interested in representing to help them enter the Argentinian market. So you do see interest and a thirst to use and work with the UK. It just sometimes needs the UK to be a little bit more pushy on itself to the region.

Speaker 2:

So, building on that, obviously the limits time we have, and I don't think it'd be possible. Anyway, I can't explain to you this kind of a flip book of every country and or subregion. But previous to this we talked about phrases like Southern Cone and Northern Central America. Could you, before we dig into kind of maybe just a few of these bigger subregions, could you give us just a quick overview of what we mean when we talk about Latam and then maybe we could just dive into a couple of those and talk about some of the particularly interesting opportunities in those?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I mean you could say there's kind of three or four different regions within within Latin America and the Caribbean. So you've got the Caribbean region, you've got kind of Central America, which would be Mexico, down through Costa Rica, panama. You then kind of got the Andean region, which would be Colombia, venezuela, chile, peru, ecuador, and then you've got more into kind of Southern Cone, which would be Argentina, uruguay, paraguay and Brazil. So each of those regions there's various subregions within them. The production systems vary dramatically but actually products and market fits when you actually look at the different value chains. If you take bananas, for example, which is not a traditional crop that the UK would be producing or working in but you do not yet, not yet.

Speaker 3:

Who knows where we'll be in 15, 20 years suddenly. But you do have opportunities stretching right the way down through Central America, into the Andean region, into Brazil. Becoming much more mechanized, a bigger thirst for data and actually it may not be a market that the UK has expertise directly in, but from where it's going big export crop going around the world, actually opportunity and learning quickly and transitioning products and services I think for me those types of value chains could be really interesting and profitable for the UK.

Speaker 2:

And you're talking more specifically then about technology, and particularly data as well. What have you seen as the adoption of tech and data driven practices? How's that kind of evolved? Has it been an equal involvement across the region, or are there particular areas and countries that seem to have jumped on the ag tech revolution that we've seen over the last decade?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, huge variants If you are in Brazil, Argentina, on these huge soy wheat combinable farms. Their adoption of tech is world leading. They are producing tens of thousands of hectares every growing season. When you think, one farm is the size of Norfolk. It needs to have much more automation. It needs to think about how it can monitor remotely, how it can therefore evidence traceability into supply chains. They are thinking digitally. They're thinking as a mainstream farmer in the UK would.

Speaker 3:

If you go up into the Andean region, Central America, where you might be more into coffee, cacao, actually their use of data is very different and the challenge and opportunity is therefore different.

Speaker 3:

For example, a coffee farmer is probably farming only 3 or 4 hectares, probably quite illiterate, so their need for fancy applications just isn't there. You've got a company turns up with a Rolls-Royce and actually you just need a bicycle. That's kind of the analogy I like to use here. We need to think there, for how are you going to finance those products, those services that are desperately needed by end users? This is where actually agribusinesses come in to support that, but also the whole movement around credit and credit and insurance working to provide capital to procure capability, but ensuring, therefore, that farmers actually use it and provide and capture data. So I think if you're looking at where might I have opportunity? Yes, if you have a high-end precision farming solution, probably looking down in the southern parts of the continent is more advisable. If you are on the phone applications, thinking about data, well, actually, if you're tailoring it, you can be successful in a lot of different markets here. So it's purely a case of size and maturity and scale.

Speaker 2:

I think yeah no, I mean it's fascinating, isn't it? So a topic which just seems to be gaining more and more momentum. Obviously, sustainability, net zero across every sector, but then, within agriculture, we have the hot topics of agroecology and regeneration, etc. Are you seeing a similar trend, or is it again very much dependent on the region, the type of farming? Yeah, it'll be fascinating to hear about that.

Speaker 3:

It's got a funny question because I was at the World AgriTech Summit in Sao Paulo a month ago and there was a lot of discussion around regenerative agriculture and the argument was we've been farming in that manner throughout history. No-till farming is mainstream direct drilling. That's what we do already. So we're hearing all this terminology about being careful with the land, minimising the amount of soil that's exposed, and actually we're already doing that. Yes, it's a huge topic because by diversity looking at how the carbon markets are coming in and fitting here, ecosystem services it's all part of the system here. It's just looking at it slightly in a different way.

Speaker 3:

If you think about the production systems maybe Argentina, for example you've got vast areas under cultivation and therefore a different challenge based around biodiversity and ecology.

Speaker 3:

Compared to the UK, which is a much smaller fabric of fields, you're treating it and looking at it differently.

Speaker 3:

And when you think you've got the lungs of the world here in the Amazon and all of that richness in biodiversity, well, I'm really excited about the bioeconomy opportunities here because if you think about things like non-timber forest produce, natural ingredients, actually we have a production system that, if managed properly, could be transformational in the global food system and that could create new products that benefit communities and provide extra health properties, for example.

Speaker 3:

So it's protecting what we have. It's better utilising what we have and then thinking about what we've done to the land over the last 30, 40 years. Brazil has such a huge percentage of its land mass that would be classed as degraded and therefore, rather than thinking about how do we maximise the land that's currently under production, how do we bring back land that was under production that is now necessarily deemed unsuitable? By using more modern techniques, new varieties. And that, I think, is where the UK has an opportunity to learn from the region, because it is a world-leading centre of tropical agricultural research, and benefit the reason by bringing some techniques and science that enhance that thinking. And that's why I look at the work that AgriEpi can be doing with the smartphone, the non-commercial but helping the science linkage at the same time, that can lead to new products and service development.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's really interesting, and you're not the first person that I've spoken to that has essentially suggested that there's a huge amount of both Indigenous and essentially just modern farming techniques that, as you've already said, have been happening there, which have gotten decades more history and experience to them, that we're now slightly starting to try and apply to certain areas of UK farming that are moving away from conventional farming and towards different styles of farming. And you've got this whole region where lots of places there have essentially been farming. We could really show some lessons and maybe there's some interesting knowledge exchanged there, particularly around like what could ecosystems look like given some time?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think everybody is always learning and I think that that attitude of sharing knowledge, exchange, best practice benefits us all. I think if it's a very kind of dominant viewpoint that this way is better, well it's not going to necessarily lead to success. And I think for if you take Brazil, it as a country was a net importer of food, you know less than probably 40 to 50 years ago, and now is a mass exporter of food. Why? Because it looked at its food production system. And when we've got so much potential here, if we understand how to maximize that, we can be successful and take that ideology and thought process to the world and partner with with organizations to do that and they have a real interest in how can we leverage the science from the UK to help our understanding. And if we can do that, we can go together with the UK into other geographies and benefit. You know, food production.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that's really nice area to kind of move into. So we've obviously talked a lot about specifically how certain technologies can potentially move into Latin or vice versa. But I really like the idea of maybe talking and you've obviously had quite a lot of experience in this like, where's the more general opportunities for kind of knowledge exchange and learning? And if you, if you were someone and it doesn't have to be a tech developer or a tech starter, you know, involved in UK Agri food in the wider, and you wanted to come over and spend some time and experience and get the most out of that time to learn and knowledge exchange and understand, what would be some recommendations for you from this is purely from a kind of knowledge exchange and learning point to be.

Speaker 3:

I think it's definitely have a have a conversation first through the UK government, because I think they will help you very quickly understand some of those questions. I think if you, if you wanted to get a very good view of, say, brazilian agriculture, just going to Sao Paulo and visiting the Sao Paulo kind of Agri Tech Corridor. You've got so many centers of research, of organizations. Commercially, you've got places like Agtech Garage helping businesses land and launch into the region. Just investing, you know, a week to go and engage and talk to people will give you a very good perception of what's going on.

Speaker 3:

Some of the events that happen in the region incredibly informative, you know, for me, going to the World Agri Tech Summit here in Sao Paulo, it was a very Brazil centric event but it gave me a great overview of the ecosystems that exist. So, looking at regionally, where are those hubs of activity that are going on from a product to service perspective? A lot of interest in the genetic side, biologicals, technology and robotics, anything to do with data around crop protection, around field monitoring, performance and, when you mentioned it earlier, about kind of the whole. You know the whole biodiversity, carbon ecosystem. You know nature side of things that definitely has a strong emphasis here in terms of how are you going to help us monitor that and verify activities are correct? You know what solutions can we bring.

Speaker 2:

That's a really interesting one and yeah, I mean it's funny because we've been doing a couple of different projects throughout the Agri-7 summit, which is starting to look at biodiversity monitoring and how that will fit in with the upcoming biodiversity net game, and all of that stuff could easily be applied and there's a huge space for that, I can imagine, in the lifetime region. I guess it's probably I try not to plug out Graeme too much on this podcast, but obviously we have done this smart farms project and so I guess anyone listening you know they can obviously approach us and we can give some advice around good places to visit and, obviously, putting them in touch with you. Speaking of putting them in touch with you as the consultants here and the consultants that you work with across the region, who are the kind of organisations you'd most kind of ideally like to work with, you know, and what's a good stage for people to reach out to you.

Speaker 3:

I mean for me, my background is more on the data side and the kind of agricultural technology piece. So definitely organisations with more of a focus in those areas will lead to quicker activities and quicker market entry. For me that's been my bread and bowl with clients I've been working for from the UK in support of this region, since I mean, for me it's all about a relationship as well. Are they really serious about looking at this market? Because if the answer is yes, we can help them make a success. If the answer is well, we're just looking to dabble a little bit.

Speaker 3:

I think personally I would recommend going to the UK government in the region initially just to get that initial sound base and use individuals like myself and my team around the region a lot more effectively because we can help very quickly. I think when I talk with my consultants in different places, one of the first things they ask me is do they practically have a product or service that can be successful here? And if the answer is no, it becomes much more difficult to position that capability into that market. If the answer is yes, doors can open very quickly because we're coming as a UK organisation effectively.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I'm probably going to sound like a dummy right now, but I've lost a passport when I was in Brazil and so contacts in the UK government sort that out was one contact to the government. When you say contact the UK government for help from advice, are you talking about the DIT or what do you mean by that exactly?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, well, they're now DBT, as they love changing their name every few years. Yeah, definitely, there's kind of the LATAP DBT hubs that can provide kind of four hours consulting advice to help companies understand markets and they have specialists based right away across the region. Or you can go to kind of the regional then agritech lead, who's a chap called Federico Super nice, very engaging. I definitely recommend a conversation.

Speaker 2:

And we'll put all of these links, included some content details for yourself, obviously in the show notes for anyone listening. I could happily whitter away to you about South America probably some more details all day, but I've got to be respectful of your time. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we wrap it up?

Speaker 3:

I'd say thank you ever so much, tom, for the chance to talk. Latin America is a fabulous region. Anybody who's come and worked here and visited has no regrets, and I think that's the message I would want to leave with the listeners is have a look at it, understand it, visit it and you'll see a great market opportunity for products and services.

Speaker 2:

And I actually have. Second, that is the most incredible region and, yeah, definitely worthwhile getting out there and seeing what the rich agricultural sector looks like as well. Thanks so much, mark. No, thank you, tom.