Can Sustainable Ag Attract Venture Capital?

McWilliams writes: "Too much jabbering about feed conversion rations or 'terrestrial-based flow-through configurations' will make eyes glaze over and wallets close, and you'll be back to depending on the generosity of friends and family to run your start-up."

Of course, eyes glazed over during the tech boom of the '90s, too, with all the jabbering about "middleware solutions." But at the time, Silicon Valley was crawling with consultants who did for information technology startups what NewSeed is doing for agriculture startups—and middleware solutions providers, whatever the hell they did, attracted lots of capital.

Might venture capital start flowing toward sustainable ag in a similar way? Probably not, as McWilliams admits. Just for starters, most "firms" in the sector are organic farmers, not tech-oriented companies. They are users, not producers, of technology. But there are plenty of opportunities. The companies that succeed, he says, will be the ones "that have a technological element, are not afraid to enter the heady world of sophisticated finance, and are eager to grow."