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FoodTech Weekly #41 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
March 19, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 16 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #41
Hi there,
My life these days, in 4 words:
One of you dear readers (Analisa Winther) recently asked me something:
“How do you decide what goes into your newsletter? Is there a criteria you look for? A technology? A kind of solution? Maybe it's conscious, maybe it's not, but I feel like you have some kind of thesis on how you decide what goes into the newsletter."
Great question! Well, as the little tagline above the FoodTech Weekly logo says, I cover news on FoodTech, food...and society (which is pretty comprehensive). In terms of thesis, I think I'm generally just intrigued by tech/innovation things that can make the food system more sustainable and nourishing. Sustainable as in that we’re able to meet our needs, without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Nourishing as in that the food we eat promotes health and longevity.
We’ve optimized the food system for cheap calories and high productivity, at all costs. And that focus has been successful in driving down hunger and undernourishment from perhaps 50% by the end of WWII, to around 10% today.
But our food system is driving our health system bankrupt, through diet-related diseases such as high BMI, high blood pressure, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. The food system is responsible for a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, about 70% of freshwater use, a big chunk of terrestrial acidification, eutrophication, deforestation, and biodiversity loss.
So if someone, say Burger King, launches a solution that will enable people stuck in traffic to order Whoppers and have them delivered to the car, I might share that video (because it's sort of amusing) but what does get me excited are solutions that could advance a food system which is sustainable and nourishing. So that's my bias. And that means I don't cover everything and everyone in my newsletter. So if a startup builds a service that can deliver groceries to you in 15 minutes, VCs will love that, but if I fail to see how it promotes a more nourishing and sustainable food system, I'll likely not cover those news.
Food is of course much more than just fuel for our bodies. It's a source of pleasure, a cause for convening with family and community, it's something that can bring us together. Food is happy childhood memories. It helps us remember our past, connect us to where we live, and tell a story about where we want to go. Food connects us to nature, and to each other, every day. Not being able to break bread with friends, family and strangers has been one of the many tough impacts of this pandemic.
I feel I probably have to write a longer piece on this. Anyways - on to this week’s news!
(Ps. If you speak Swedish, I'm joining a Clubhouse on March 25, 3:30pm CET, on the seafood industry, and plant-based fish. Should be timely given the Seaspiracy launch onNetflix, March 24).
Highlights
Conversations: Niklas Wallsargård (Skira)
Noteworthy: U.S. controlled environment farming startup Babylon MicroFarms closes $3M seed round; Monarch raises $20M for electric self-driving tractors; Deep Branch secures $8M for turning industrial CO2 emissions into animal feed via microbes; RapidAIM bags funding for insect-counting tech; cultured meat company MeaTech lists on NASDAQ; seafood fraud is happening on a massive scale
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Random Stuff: Czech monkeys are now on Zoom; beautiful boat time-lapse in the Netherlands; apocalyptic fungus; why people in Taiwan are rushing to change their names to 'Salmon'. And more.
Conversations
Spoke with Niklas Wallsargård of Skira this week. Skira is a one-stop-shop SaaS marketplace connecting grain growers with buyers, promoting more efficiency, traceability, and sustainability, in the market. Skira helps secure the grain quality, secure payments, and transports. The company is busy developing various modules around analytics, soil carbon storage, precision farming, transportation data, etc. Through Skira, it's now possible for growers to see every grain deal in Sweden, and understand how they benchmark in terms of quality, price, etc. In the past, growers would only compete on price and even quality -- now parameters such as sustainability can be included in the deals, and that means growers can be incentivized to shift to sustainable production practices. 'The system has really favored large-scale farming, pushing small-scale farmers to join forces and increase their production volumes. But in this process, they've lost other values such as traceability, sustainability, etc. It hasn't been good to promote environmental outcomes', explains Niklas. Some key sustainability metrics that Skira track include fertilizer use, whether growers practice no tilling or low tilling, on-farm biodiversity, etc. Skira currently has 10+ employees and 1,800+ registered farmers (customers) who are extremely loyal. The company has raised about 20 MSEK (appr. €2M) including non-dilutive funding so far. Skira is interested in connecting with retailers to develop the next generation level of traceability and transparency, from grower to consumer, which can enable truly sustainable large-scale production. The company is also open to build relations with potential investors with strong AgTech/FoodTech credentials, even though Skira isn't actively raising. To get in touch with Niklas, you can ping him via LinkedIn or email.
Skira team and product
Noteworthy
Babylon MicroFarms has closed a $3M Seed round. The Virginia-based startup develops controlled environment growing units that are licensed out to foodservice businesses such as hospital cafeterias. Also in the vertical/controlled environment farming space, Copenhagen-based startup Nordetect has raised a €1.2M Seed round. The company helps farmers, agronomists, and indoor growers to optimize the use of nutrients, water quality, and light, to increase the yield per square foot/meter. Conventional soil and water collection and testing can take days or even weeks; Nordetect's device can test multiple nutrients in just minutes. The company describes its technology as lab-on-a-chip. Meanwhile in Abu Dhabi, Pure Harvest Smart Farms has secured a $50M sukuk (compliant with Islamic finance) for expanding its greenhouses into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The company launched in 2016 to increase the amount of locally-grown, sustainable food in the UAE, which imports 80% of its food. (If you're into vertical farming, don't miss the new 2021 Indoor AgTech landscaping).
Irish startup Evocco lets users photograph their grocery receipts, and their app then calculates the carbon footprint based on the grocery store's location, and by checking the type, weight, and origin of a food against a database. The app is currently available in the U.K. and Ireland.
Self-driving electric tractor startup Monarch has closed a $20M Series A, led by Musahi Seimitsu Industry Co, CNH Industrial, and VST Tillers Tractors. Monarch's tractors also collect a wealth of data, which farmers can use to optimize operations.
Image: Monarch
Australian AgTech startup RapidAIM has taken in an undisclosed seed round of funding. The company builds small, mobile insect traps equipped with sensors. Unlike competing systems that use expensive imaging technologies, RapidAIM's sensors instead can identify unique behaviors associated with certain insect species. The company believes it can help farmers reduce the need for chemical pesticides.
U.K / Netherlands company Deep Branch has announced an €8M Series A round. The company uses microbes that convert industrial CO2 emissions into protein, which can then be used as animal feed. Once Deep Branch has reached full-scale production (and Norway is the likely location for that plant), it hopes to produce 100,000 metric tons per year.
Feeding the seaweed Asparagopsis taxiformis to cows has been identified as a potential avenue to reduce ruminant methane emissions, promising a methane decrease of more than 80%. The seaweed contains high concentrations of bromoform, which counteracts the formation of methane. New research from WUR in the Netherlands however shows that the bromoform can end up in the cow milk. And bromoform in its pure form is harmful to human health. The researchers believe in seaweed as a solution but point to other algae strains that may have similar effects without the associated bromoform. Startups like FutureFeed and Volta Greentech are currently working with Asparagopsis taxiformis as a way of reducing cow methane emissions (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to Volta Greentech). Similar recent studies conducted at UC Davis showed that bromoform does not end up in the cow milk.
Israeli cultured meat company MeaTech has listed on NASDAQ, raising $22M during its IPO, becoming the first cultured meat company to trade on that stock exchange. Mirai Foods of Switzerland, which develops cultured beef, has added $2.2M in a second close to its seed round, bringing the total amount to $4.5M. The company believes it will have mass-market price points by 2025 (for a great overview, read this primer in The Spoon on what needs to happen for cultured meat to reach price parity with conventional meat in the next 5 years). In related news, GFI reports a record $3.1B was invested into alternative protein companies in 2020, 3x the 2019 figure.
Image: GFI
In the Philippines, alternative protein producer Monde Nissin is rumored to be preparing a billion-dollar IPO. And Float Foods of Singapore has received an undisclosed amount of grant funding from the Temasek Foundation, to help commercialize OnlyEg, the plant-based whole egg replacement from Float Foods.
Image: OnlyEg, from Float Foods
L.A. / Bangalore startup Pixxel has closed a massive $7.3M Seed round. The company will deploy a small constellation of satellites that will use hyperspectral imaging to e.g. detect pest insect migration in agriculture.
A new company, Plant-Ag, aims to build the first fully transparent field-to-plate supply chain, in which consumers will be able to track a vegetable from sprouting seed to the grocery store shelf. Plant-Ag will build high-tech greenhouses to deliver on its vision, then open-source to the whole thing. And they plan to raise $9B to make it all happen. Fascinating long-read in Fast Company.
Noquo Foods rebrands as Stockeld Dreamery and gets closer to launching its first plant-based cheese product this spring (full disclosure: I'm a Senior Advisor to Stockeld).
Seafood fraud is happening on a massive scale, according to a new Guardiananalysis of 44 recent studies. Some 40% of 9,000 products from restaurants, markets, and fishmongers were mislabeled.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Dror Tamir of Hargol FoodTech shared some pictures from their tasting event last week, of their 'New Meat' patties. Hargol uses grasshoppers as minced meat (instead of powder) and mixes it into animal and plant-based meat products. The company recently received a kosher (parve) permit, making Hargol the first and only kosher insect farm in the world; for the first time in 2,000 years, grasshoppers are kosher for all. The company is currently completing the Halal certification process.
Image: Hargol FoodTech
Daniel Vennard of the WRI Better Buying Lab is looking for a Senior Behavioral Scientist (to lead food-related research)... Eslam Sarah of Lupintais hiring a Project Manager... Sweden FoodTech is recruiting an Innovation Program Manager... The Rockefeller Foundation has an open position for a Program Officer in its Food Initiative (New York-based; person must be able to work in the U.S.)
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
This time-lapse video of a boat navigating the canals and waterways of the Netherlands is mesmerizing.
Image: YouTube
Could this fungus help produce food after an apocalypse? (h/t Flavio Corsin) Frankly, it doesn't look too delicious, so let's focus on positive visions for the future food system instead.
Tired of Zoom? Zoom Escaper will let you self-sabotage your audio stream (e.g. by adding sounds of construction or barking dogs), making your presence unbearable to others.
Meanwhile, in the Czech Republic, two zoos 150 km (93 mi) apart have set up giant screens with live Zoom video, so that monkeys can watch their compatriots in the other zoo. Says zookeeper Gabriela Linhartova, ape keeper at Safari Park Dvur Kralove, the monkeys are "into the mode of 'I am in the movies' or 'I am watching TV'. When they see some tense situations, it gets them up off the couch, like us when we watch a live sports event." The chimpanzees also grab goodies like nuts to chew on while watching the screen.
The economic shock of the pandemic and resulting lockdowns sent US female labor force participation back 33 years, to March 1987. Surely we can do better than this?
After Japanese sushi restaurant chain Akindo Sushiro (in Taiwan) promised free meals to anyone with the name salmon (guiyu, 鮭魚), household registration offices in Taiwan have been flooded with people applying to change their name. One college student, for example, changed her name to Kuo Salmon Rice Bowl (郭鮭魚丼飯). The Interior Ministry of Taiwan has reminded residents that they can only legally change their names three times, or they'll be stuck with their last change. Said one person who had taken advantage of the free meal promotion: 'I do not think we will want to eat salmon again for a while.'
I love you.
Daniel
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This issue was produced while listening to Safe And Sound by Capital Cities. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter (I'm @danielsruben on Clubhouse). Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.