b'were in motion pre-pandemic, weve seen several VCs later invest in companies at pre-Covid valuations. Some categories are feeling the bruntFarm Management Software, Sensing & IoT funding is weak although arguably investors were already waiting for more success stories before making further bets in that category. Funding for Midstream Tech and Innovative Food, especially alt meat & dairy startups, has accelerated significantly, bolstered by Covid-19s threat to food supply chains and negative impact on the meat industry. 12Its a nice shout out to local food, but it ignores the fact that the incen-tives that steer billions of dollars to technological solutions are the same incentives that have caused so many cultural problems. How do we get from an economy that is over-weighted in technology and under-weighted in farmers to an economy that is more balanced and healthier? How do we get from an economy that values the land within shouting distance of urban and suburban markets in the tens of thou-sands or hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre, to an economy that supports a new generation of organic farms in proximity to population centers, producing a meaningful percentage of regional food supplies? These questions are almost imponderable, but not quite. Gene Logsdon, who Wendell Berry called the most experienced and best observer of agriculture we have, pondered good bits of this from his perch as a garden farmer. He meant by this term farmers who are happy to operate at a small scale, driven not by monetary gain but by cultural and ecological considerations. 12 www.agfunder.com 2255'