FoodTech Weekly #22 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #22

Hi there,

Every Monday, I feel like there will never be enough interesting FoodTech news in the coming days, to be able to put together a newsletter that week.

Every Thursday, I feel like there's no way to keep the newsletter short enough, and I have to decide what stories to omit.

I guess I should've learnt by now that the interesting FoodTech news never end. That there's a lot to be excited about. I hope you feel the same.

Highlights

• Conversations: Vinh Hoang (Leafymade) and Dr. Robert Gerlach (Carbon Farmed)

• Noteworthy: Bright Farms raises $100M for hydroponic greenhouse expansion; Argentina approves GMO wheat; Impossible Foods develops a plant-based milk; Eat JUST builds big Singapore production plant

• The Profile: Arman Anatürk (FoodHack)

• Random Stuff: Cows enjoying a good massage; the foosball pizza box; a photo booth for dogs. And more.

Conversations

• I had a chance to get to know Vinh Hoang and Leafymade a bit better this week. Leafymade launched about two years ago, with a simple goal: Making single-use plates and bowls sustainable, by producing them from biodegradable leaves. The products are made by women in tribal village communities in Odisha, India. The plates and bowls by Leafymade are sturdy and can handle steaming hot liquids without leaking; in nature, the products will biodegrade in a couple of months. Leafymade started selling through retail, grocery stores, food festivals, conference centers, and even amusement parks. Many businesses were shifting from plastics to sustainable options. Leafymade got accepted into an accelerator. Then COVID-19 happened. The phone stopped ringing. The startup had to refocus on the DTC (direct-to-consumer) market. The business is picking up again. Single-use plastic items are getting banned in jurisdictions from Canada to the EU, which strengthens Leafymade's case. Recently, Leafymade launched a crowdfunding campaign, and the company hopes to expand internationally in the coming years. Vinh is looking for investors, as well as collaboration partners interested in changing the status quo (which is disposable plates made of paper and plastic). If you'd like to get in touch with him, you can email him here.
  

  

  Leafymade

• Someone introduced me to Robert Gerlach, PhD, and we had a great conversation about his new startup. Robert has worked in impact his entire career -- whether in R&D, management consulting, the social enterprise he founded, etc. The journey with Carbon Farmed started in 2019, when Robert decided to focus his work on emission reductions. He did research on Project Drawdown and other ways to actively reduce and reverse carbon emissions, and eventually determined that carbon farming could be a scalable business case. So what's carbon farming? It's similar to regenerative agriculture (here's a good primer on that, if you need to brush up your regen ag knowhow) -- practices like cover crops, intercropping, agroforestry, silvopasture, and catch crops. Robert spoke with 100+ farmers to become wiser. He found out many things. First, that many farmers in Germany feel marginalized, disenfranchised, and that they're being portrayed as carbon sinners and bad guys. And second, that there are clear reasons why farmers haven't adopted carbon farming. Farmers feared consumers wouldn't value this method of farming; ag universities do not really teach this topic in a big way; and transitioning to carbon farming is risky (there's even a dip in yield if you transition cold turkey). So Robert built Carbon Farmed -- sort of like a Farmers Business Network but for regen ag. It helps with documenting farming practices, to provide data-driven insights and recommendations, soil courses, brokered services with agronomists, and facilitates the sales of carbon farming specific inputs. It's a one-stop shop. Today, the company has raised $200K in pre-seed, has a number of team members (including Robert's co-founder, Nina), and is looking to raise a bigger round to accelerate growth. If you're a VC looking to get in touch, or just want to amplify Carbon Farmed's story, you can get reach Robert via email or LinkedIn.

Noteworthy​

• Bright Farms has raised $100M to expand its network of hydroponic greenhouse farms across the U.S. This follows recent big raises by other greenhouse and vertical farming operators in the nation. For a great write up of the opportunities and challenges with vertical farming, check out this recent Sifted piece.

• Flippy the burger flipping robot from Miso Robotics is now availablefor $30,000. Robots like Flippy can help free up time for humans in e.g. fast food restaurants to focus on other tasks. KLM/Air France has installed a robot that can prepare up to 30,000 inflight meals (on the ground). Canadian YPC Technologies has raised $1.3M for a robotic cooking kiosk. And foodservice multinational Sodexo has partnered with U.S. based Kiwi Robotics to enable robot delivery of food orders to students and faculty at the University of Denver. While mishaps still occur, it's clear that automation and robotics are increasingly used all across the food value chain.

• Argentina, as a world's first, has approved drought-resistant genetically modified wheat. As no other countries have yet approved the importation of GMO wheat, Argentine farmers have little incentive to plant it.

• Scientists at Tufts University have succeeded in producing cell-cultured meat, that include plant nutrients (beta carotene, a provitamin usually found in carrots and tomatoes) not natively found in beef cells. This is yet more indication that cell-cultured meat may be able to deliver a different nutritional profile than conventionally farmed meat. Consumption of conventional red and processed meat have been linked to increased risk of developing colorectal cancer; the scientists believe their findings may help produce cell-based meat with a reduced risk for that type of cancer.

• Impossible Foods is developing a plant-based alternative to cow's milk, and will double the size of its R&D team over the next year; down under, Australian plant-based meat company V2food -- established just last year -- announceda $55M raise, with investors such as Goldman Sachs and Temasek. And Eat JUST is spending $20M in a $120M project to build a production facility in Singapore for its plant-based protein products. In the EU meanwhile, the European Parliament discusses whether to ban terms like 'veggie burger' and 'vegan sausage'. This comes as the EU's Horizon 2020 platform for the first time has given a grant ($2.7M) to a cell-based meat research project.

• In September, I wrote how Israeli cell-based meat startup MeaTech was about to acquire an unnamed international company in the same space, for $17.5M. Turns out the acquisition target was Belgium's Peace of Meat.

• Ron Shigeta, PhD (co-founder of IndieBio) just wrote an interesting post on why lab-grown meat will be at the table sooner than you think, due to rapidly decreasing production costs. I suggest we call it Shigeta's Law.

   

  

  Visual by Ron Shigeta

The Profile
If you're interested in FoodTech, sooner or later you will come across Arman Anatürk. Based in Switzerland, he's the CEO and Co-Founder of FoodHack, a global community for food entrepreneurs and innovators. Arman, and his team, runs Meetups in different cities; they produce the fantastic newsletter This Week in Food, publish FoodTech news online, lets the community discover and vote for exciting new food products, runs The Secret Sauce podcast, connects VCs looking to invest with startups looking to raise funding in a curated newsletter, catalyzes interesting conversations on LinkedIn, and much more. If you're into FoodTech, make sure to plug into FoodHack.

Random Stuff

• Austrian researchers gave cows massage and addressed the heifers with encouraging, soothing words. The cows appeared to enjoy this (as measured by heart rate etc). The findings may impact animal handling and animal welfare regulations.

• Pizza Hut Hong Kong has launched a foosball pizza box.

  

  Image: Pizza Hut

• Live in NYC and not sure what you're having for dinner? Eleven Madison Park has developed a $275 dine-at-home meal kit. The meal serves two to four diners.

• Simone Giertz, 'the Queen of Shitty Robots', has built a photo booth out of LEGO that lets her dog takes selfies using her paw (and get paid in treats).

  

  Screenshot: YouTube

​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, Hooked, GRIM, 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.