FoodTech Weekly #14 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #14

Hi there,

Humanity just eradicated wild polio in Africa - a huge achievement.

In other important news, it's cotton candy grape season! These sweet little things were developed in the U.S. using natural-breeding practices, are only in season from mid-August to mid-September -- and are only available in certain countries, at a price premium. They have to be harvested after close visual inspection, to ensure that each cluster is perfectly ripe; if harvested at the wrong time, they don't taste like cotton candy (I know, I know, this all starts to sound like Ryan Reynolds' Aviation Gin ad).

I was lucky enough to find some cotton candy grapes again this year, at my local grocery store. They look like regular grapes, but take a bite and you'll get a taste explosion of carnival-like cotton candy. Very cool.

Highlights

• Conversations: Brian Frank (FTW Ventures) and Shameekh Ghosh (TrusTrace)

• Noteworthy: Plant Jammer bags $4M; Desert Control lets the desert bloom; a CRISPR cow is born; Wow lab-grows kangaroo meat

• The Profile: Tristram Stuart

• Random Stuff: Why scientists paint eyes on Botswanan cow butts; the world's 100 most nutritious foods; and more.

Conversations​

• Chatted with Brian Frank of FTW Ventures. Brian is a well-known angel investor in the foodtech space, and this week it was announced that he's raised a $4M fund. FTW will use the money to invest in 15-20 early-stage and pre-seed FoodTech startups, with check sizes ranging from $100K to $500K. The Fund has already made a couple of investments, including into Geltor and Spoiler Alert. True to his active angel roots, Brian's VC will not fund startups where he can't provide unique help or help accelerate.

• Caught up with Shameekh Ghosh of TrusTrace. Shameekh worked for 15 years in India, helping large companies like ABB and Ericsson on R&D to make their products more intelligent. After an Executive MBA (LSE / NYU Stern / HEC Paris), Shameekh got into traceability -- and how it could improve industries like food, fashion, pharma, and conflict minerals. Fast forward a few years, and he runs successful traceability startup TrusTrace, powered by AI, blockchain, and IoT; the company already has a bunch of cool customers in the fashion industry, a 25+ person team in Sweden and India, and $1.7M raised from VC's. To give you a sense of what the tracing can look like, check out this dress, where one can trace the production process backward in the supply chain (climate impact, water use, chemical use, microplastics, labor conditions in factories, even from what field the cotton was grown). TrusTrace has seen how fashion brands can improve their brand position, customer loyalty, and market engagement by using traceability, and now the startup is expanding into Germany, France, and the U.K. -- as well as into a new customer segment -- food. Many food brands don't know their entire supply chain. This can create issues when it comes to e.g. food safety, quality, and recall -- and when trying to convince customers that the supply chain doesn't have dirty parts. TrusTrace plans to do some fundraising by the summer of 2021 to further boost the growth. Right now, the startup needs help in getting access to companies that want to do large-scale pilots for its traceability solution, especially in the food ecosystem. So if you want to contribute to a food (and fashion) system with more traceability and accountability, you can get in touch with Shameekh here.  

Noteworthy​

• Copenhagen startup Plant Jammer, founded in 2016 by Michael Haase, just took in €4M in a Seed round, from investors including Dr. Oetker, Miele Venture Capital, and Danish Vækstfonden. The problem Plant Jammer want to solve? People want to eat more healthy and sustainable food, but lack the time, knowledge and inspiration in a busy daily life. The solution: A Digital Chef app, which turns the idea of a recipe on its head by creating quick and delicious recipes based on available ingredients. The user picks the e.g. vegetables available in the fridge (say carrots, corn, potatoes, and broccoli) - the app will then suggest different dishes such as soups, salads, stews etc, and give simple, step-by-step instructions on how to cook the dish. This helps consumers move towards more plant-centric diets, as well as reducing their food waste. More than 100,000 households across Germany, the U.K., U.S., Denmark, and beyond already use Plant Jammer; it can be downloaded for free on the App Store and Google Play. I personally love the app - below is a screenshot.

  

  Screenshot from the Plant Jammer app

• Indian seafood tech startup Captain Fresh has raised $2.3M in pre-Series A. The company does seafood supply-chain traceability tech, and the round was led by Mumbai-based Ankur Capital. The money will be used to improve the solution using computer vision, IoT, data analytics etc, as well as make key hires and expand to new cities. Another company to watch in the seafood traceability space is Icelandic Tracio.

• Norwegian startup Desert Control has developed an innovation called Liquid Nanoclay. It's made with just water and clay, and can be sprayed on sand or sandy soil. It boosts water retention (reducing water usage by more than half) and enriches the soil with plant-essential nutrients. More importantly, it can turn arid land into arable land in just 7 hours, according to the company. Desert Control, which has recently raised $5M, is conducting successful field trials in the United Arab Emirates, and is currently developing units with the ability to produce 40,000 liters (appr. 10,000 gallons) of Liquid Nanoclay every hour, enough to cover up to 2,000 sq. m (21,500 sq. ft). The company hopes it can develop cheaper units, affordable in LMICs (low- and middle-income countries), positively impacting food security.

• Apeel Sciences, which has developed a coating for fruits and vegetables that significantly extends shelf life, has run a large pilot with German food retailer Edeka in 2,900 Edeka and Netto stores during Q1 2020, using avocados treated with Apeel's solution. Edeka reported a 50% reduction in food waste for avocados, as well as a 20% increase in sales, and increased customer satisfaction. Edeka will now roll out Apeel-treated products to over 11,000 stores across the country.

• UC Davis scientists, led by animal geneticist Alison Van Eenennaam, have used CRISPR to produce a male cow - paving the way to produce single-sex animal species, reducing unnecessary cruelty in the industrial animal food production system.
  

  

  Cosmo the CRISPR cow. Image: UC Davis

• Future Fields, active in the nascent cultivated (lab-grown) meat industry, claims it has developed a cell growth medium 1,000x cheaper than existing solutions. The startup, which is about to graduate from Y Combinator, has raised $480,000 in pre-seed. In the same industry but across the ocean, Israeli startup MeaTech has managed to 3D print a layer of meat, using both fat and muscle cells. The next milestone is to print a 100-gram (quarter pound) steak. Across another ocean, China's Starfield Food & Science Technologybagged $10M in a Series A round; the company produces plant-based meat, deriving protein from seaweed to make meat substitutes for everything from burgers to mooncakes. And down under in Sydney, cell meat startup Wow has lab-grown kangaroo meat, and has eyed animals like tortoise, zebra, and yak, for future production. In the first 7 months of 2020, alternative protein companies raised $1.1B in funding, vs. $457M last year, according to new data from FAIRR.

• Plant-based burger company Lightlife Foods' President, Dan Curtin, has published an open letter in the New York Times and other major media outlets, attacking Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods for among other things having 18 and 20 ingredients respectively in their plant-based burgers (both companies have hit back). Lightlife has 11 ingredients in its plant-based burger. My reaction to Dan's letter:

  

• Australia's national research agency CSIRO has announced the launch of a new business, FutureFeed, with an initial $9.3M fundraise. The startup will grow the Asparagopsis seaweed and feed it to cows, to reduce cow methane emissions by 80%. Other startups active in the same space include e.g. Mootral and Volta Greentech.

• Danish researchers believe they could extract protein from grass, and thus reduce the country's reliance on soybean meal. Denmark currently imports 1.5M tons of soybean meal, which equates to about 700,000 tons of protein. To fully end soybean imports, Denmark would need to use about 1M of 2.6M hectares of the country's agricultural lands. 

• Current US Postal Service efficiency issues are having disastrous impacts for those animals that are shipped live in the mail: "The delays were particularly tragic for live animals, including baby chickens and crickets, that are transported through the U.S. Postal Service. Usually, mail handlers say, they can hear the birds peeping and rustling around in their boxes.  This month, one worker said, she found a box with air holes in a pile of packages. Instead of hearing the gentle sounds of baby chicks, she heard nothing. 

• Are you a startup? Yield Lab Europe 2020 Accelerator is open for applicationsthrough September 25. Yield Lab, which runs accelerators in the U.S., LATAM, and Asia-Pacific, looks to invest in and support scalable agrifood tech startups with a positive environmental and/or social impact -- and was recognized as AgFunder's 2018 Most Valuable Agrifoodtech Accelerator. Startups selected into the Accelerator will receive €75K-€100K equity investment, 1-on-1 mentorship, cohort-based programming, and access to the Yield Lab global network. Apply here. For any questions, contact Connie Bowen.

The Profile

• Global food waste data is shocking. 1/3 of all food grown is wasted. If this issue was solved, another 3 billion people could be fed -- and we'd significantly reduce various environmental impacts. Tristram Stuart is a British food waste campaigner trying to spread awareness and change the status quo. He's appeared in tons of documentaries (here's one I really like, 'Ten Stories About Food Waste', which is a beautiful 25 min video). He co-founded Feedback, a campaign group working to regenerate nature by transforming the food system. He founded Toast Ale, which turns surplus bread into beer. He's written books on food waste. He's run events all over the world ('Feeding the 5,000') where 5,000 members of the public are given a free lunch, using ingredients that otherwise would've been wasted. And he's received a ton of prizes and awards for his crusade against food waste. Tristram Stuart shows that one person can make a difference.

Random Stuff

• For four years, researchers in Botswana painted fake eyes on hundreds of cow's butts. Cattle in the region are prayed on by lions, hyenas, and cheetahs -- and once they attack the cows, the predators often get killed by the cattle owners. The scientists wanted to find a non-lethal way to protect the livestock, so they painted eyes on the cattle's butts with acrylic paint and foam stencils. Eye-spots are often seen on butterflies or birds to deceive predators and keep them away. The study found that not a single cow with eyes on its butt was preyed upon; the scientists say their method is a more humane and ecologically sound alternative to lethal control and fencing, used to separate cattle from carnivores. Now all that's missing is a Ze Frank video on Backward Cows.

  

  Image: Nature

  Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article245029065.html#storylink=cpy

• The world's 100 most nutritious foods, as calculated and ranked by scientists.

• Scientists have found a way to copy keys, using the sounds they make inside a lock.

• Fun fact: A farm with 2,500 cows produces as much waste as a city of 400,000 people (that's Tampa, FL).

​I love you.
Daniel
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Disclosures: I'm a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation Food Team. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Bloomer. I'm an advisor to Noquo Foods, BIOMILQ, Volta Greentech, Veat, IRRIOT, Rootically, Holistal, Vultus, and Ignitia; in some of these startups, I have equity. 

Boring disclaimer: The newsletter content is intended only to provide general and preliminary information to folks interested in FoodTech, and shall not be construed as the basis for any investment decision or strategy. I assume no liability as regards to any investment, divestment, or retention decision taken by readers of this newsletter content.