“We are looking at ways to disrupt the agricultural industry,” says backer of Memphis innovation conference

Sponsors of a farm technology conference say they are trying to create a new industry in the city by positioning Memphis as a hotbed for farm and food innovation.

Davos on the Delta, the title of next week’s three-day conference, is intended to link 200 entrepreneurs, farmers and financiers from throughout the world to new ideas and also showcase the city’s potential for new investment.

“When people think about agricultural innovation, we want them to think of Memphis,” said Memphis financial executive John Santi, a conference organizer.

Investors are casting for profitable ideas at a time when machine learning, artificial intelligence, blockchain transactions and robotics have joined seed genetics to attract $3 billion in agricultural venture capital each year.

One idea being discussed: Renovate empty Memphis buildings into indoor farms.

Vegetable hothouses tended by robots and watered automatically from the deep aquifer under the city could rival water-short California’s farm output while tapping the Memphis logistics hub for overnight shipments of tons of fresh produce worldwide, said St. Louis financier Carter Williams, a Davos on the Delta backer.

“What you need to do all this is have the expertise in retailing, logistics and farming. Memphis has all that. The next step is to bring in the capital. We’re bringing in folks who just aren’t familiar with Memphis or what farming is like in the region,” said Williams, a former Boeing research executive.

Williams now heads iSelect Fund, a venture capital firm in St. Louis. Santi repre-

sents iSelect in Memphis as well as the Nashville investment firm Avondale Partners.

In coming to Memphis, Williams located Davos in the largest city amid 13 million acres planted in crops including corn, cotton, rice and soybeans. Farms in this region — 95 counties from the Missouri bootheel to the Mississippi Delta — grow half the nation’s rice and almost 20 percent of its cotton and also produce barley, sorghum, sunflowers and a range of other small cash crops.

Memphis emerged decades ago as the region's shipping hub and financial center, giving rise to an extensive farm services network of lenders, brokers, insurers and transportation lines as well as chemical wholesalers, commodity traders, equipment and seed dealers, ocean freight forwarders and warehouses.

Farmers here already know scientists in distant cities such as Boston, St. Louis and Raleigh, North Carolina, made many of the recent advances in agriculture, such as reaching into the seed to insert genes able to ward off afflictions, particularly in major crops such as corn.

Williams said he wants to slip beneath major chemical companies such as Monsanto and show farmers unfamiliar science, indoor farming and profitable food crops such as hemp.

“We are looking at ways to disrupt the agricultural industry” in the same fashion laptop computers opened up the computing market long dominated by mainframes, the St. Louis financier said. "Memphis is an interesting place to have that conversation. That region has more agricultural diversity than up here. They’re ready to try new things down there.”

One science star expected to highlight the conference is tech entrepreneur David Perry, chief executive of Indigo Ag Inc., a small Boston seed developer adept at drought-tolerant cotton seeds. Indigo, which recently opened a Memphis marketing and operations office, this winter landed a $203 million investment from Dubai’s Sovereign Fund for Microbial Seed Technology.

Davos on the Delta, scheduled to begin Tuesday in The Peabody, is limited to 200 people invited to attend for their backgrounds. Fifty financiers, 50 farmers, 50 potential customers — such as a wholesale food broker, or Indigo's Perry — and 50 executives seasoned in innovation are expected, Williams said, noting the executives could mentor start-up firms.

The date was picked to coincide with the four-day Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. The annual event draws thousands of people to the riverfront. Williams said the crowd creates a pleasant and casual ambiance for visitors new to the city. Several will attend from overseas, he said.

Naming the conference Davos echoes the World Economic Summit in Davos, Switzerland, which draws 2,500 corporate leaders each year for highprofile speeches about global economic trends.

“Davos on the Delta is an attempt to

things down there.”

get the conversation started,” said Richard Hussey of Memphis, head of agricultural businesses at G.M. Lawrence Co., a 200,000-acre farming company based in Wilson, Arkansas.

Hussey spoke at last May’s Davos conference — the first Davos meeting, also in The Peabody. In a recent interview, he described an entrenched American agricultural industry able to deliver low-cost food in bulk but at odds with consumers who favor shorter supply chains and food that seems more wholesome. Davos, he said, is an attempt to break through tradition and find a way to meet consumer demand.

Innovators have heard the consumers, said Pete Nelson, president of AgLaunch, an entrepreneur initiative in Memphis.

“There’s a technology revolution going on in agriculture,” Nelson said. “We get the right companies to come here, we can create a new industry.”

At this point the emerging farm innovation industry already includes several initiatives. In addition to the arrival of Indigo Ag:

❚ AgLaunch, housed at 88 Union on Memphis’ old Cotton Row, was set up by Memphis Bioworks Foundation and Tennessee’s Department of Agriculture. Its mission: Draw in more than $100 million in capital, and create, attract and grow 100 agricultural companies by 2022.

❚ BioWorks’ Innova Ag Innovation Fund raised $31 million last year for investments in smaller firms.

❚ Agricenter International, the 1,000-acre research organization in Memphis, has adopted farm innovation as a goal under its new master plan.

❚ The Seam, which operates the online exchange in Memphis for trading cotton worldwide, has partnered with IBM on using blockchain to do business in the agricultural industry.

Mark Pryor, chief executive of The Seam, is scheduled to speak at the Davos conference.

St. Louis financier Carter Williams