- FoodTech Weekly
- Posts
- FoodTech Weekly #72 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #72 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
October 22, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #72
Hi there,
First things first, my email newsletter provider is having some technical difficulties, so I haven't been able to preview this email before sending it. Formatting may be totally off, so my apologies in advance for that. Well,
The Rockefeller Foundation just announced the Food Systems Fellowship, an intensive, one-year leadership development program for 20 food systems leaders who are creating more inclusive, nourishing and regenerative food systems. The program is offered through Acumen Academy, and will combine in-person and virtual learning over the course of the year. (I played a very modest role in helping to shape this before leaving my consultancy with the Rockefeller Foundation Food Team earlier this year, so I'm excited to see it finally launch). Apply by Dec 1, 2021.
- - -
If you're fluent in Swedish (and thus can read the IKEA catalog in the original language), I'd like to plug this new book I've been interviewed for, 'Nu fattar jag' ('Now I get it'). The authors interviewed 30 experts for 15 chapters on topics like fintech, mobility, blockchain, crypto, edtech, 3D printing, digital health, AI & machine learning, AR & VR, and much more -- it's a book that instills optimism. Needless to say, FoodTech is more important than anything, so that's chapter 1. Here's the book with early bird pricing until Nov 20, 2021.
Dystopian novels are so 1984
This week's rundown:
Breast case scenario: Lab-grown breastmilk startup BIOMILQ bags $21M in fresh funding
Say it, don't spray it: Israeli Greeneye launches AI-powered precision spraying tech, cutting herbicide use by 78%
Mung bean protein OK'd: Following regulatory approval, Eat Just can now bring mung bean-based egg substitute to Europe
Let's go!
Conversations
Met with Elén Faxö, CEO of OlsAro. She trained as a biotechnologist at SLU, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and worked e.g. at RISE(The Research Institutes of Sweden) and various food ventures. Since a few months, she's heading OlsAro, a company founded by two scientists spending almost almost 10 years of academic research trying to solve for salt contamination. Some 6% of total arable land in the world, and 20% of the irrigated arable land, is salt contaminated. This is due to climate change, flooding and also poor irrigation practices where brackish water has been used to replace fresh water. OlsAro has developed non-GMO wheat lines adapted to high salinity soils. This means that in Bangladesh, OlsAro's first target market, one more crop season can be added during the dry winter period. Preliminary data show that some of the wheat lines can even reduce salinity levels in the soil. So Elén is excited about the food security and soil health impacts their wheat could have at scale, in places like India, Kenya, Vietnam, and Argentina. OlsAro is currently raising 5-7 MSEK (€0.5M - €0.7M), with 3.5 MSEK (€0.5M) already committed. To get in touch with Elén, you can ping her on LinkedIn.
Images: OlsAro
Noteworthy
North Carolina-based startup BIOMILQ raised a $21M Series A round (full disclosure: I'm an advisor to BIOMILQ). Here's the company announcement. Investors included Bill Gates' VC firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures, as well as Novo Holdings, Blue Horizon, Spiro Ventures, Digitalis Venturs, Gaingels and Green Generation Fund. BIOMILQ believes its cell-cultured breastmilk will be environmentally and nutritionally superior to infant formula, and that it may 'enable full commercialization over the next four years.' If you want to dig deeper into this topic, I recently interviewed BIOMILQ's Co-Founder and CEO Michelle Egger on the Appetizer, the podcast I host together with with Sandra Malmberg of EQT Ventures.
Norwegian company N2 Applied has raised €15M ($17.3M) investment grants from the European Innovation Council, for its technology that converts animal manure into sustainable fertilizer, and locking in methane and ammonia to the liquid waste material, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In trials, the company claims to have seen average ammonia emission reductions of 90%.
Syngenta considers using an insect scanner developed by the startup Faunabit. The scanner helps farmers understand the balance between pests and beneficial insects in the field.
Israeli Agtech startup Greeneye Technologies has commercially launched an AI-powered precision spraying technology, which can cut herbicide use by 78% and reduce herbicide costs by more than 50% on average -- thus reducing soil and water contamination, and reducing the prevalence of herbicide-resistant weeds. The AI detects and spray weeds amongst crops with over 95% accuracy, according to the company, and can by used on existing commercial sprayers traveling at normal broadcast spraying speed, 20 km/h.
U.S. vertical farming company Aerofarms, which was set to go public in a SPAC deal, has called things off after funding dried up.
ScaleUpNation has released their 2021 Food&Agri ecosystem map of the Netherlands:
Image: ScaleUpNation
Danish startup Agreena, which launched just a few months ago, has raised a $4.7M Seed round. The company verifies and sells carbon credits generated by farmers who transition to more regenerative ways of farming. Farmers register their fields and get advice on how to transition to regenerative farming practices. Agreena then monitors the changes via satellite imagery; the farmers can then sell the generated CO2e-certificates, and buyers can track their CO2 reductions at a field level via Agreena's platform.
U.K. vegan meal delivery startup Allplants has bagged $52M in Series B funding, in a round led by Draper Esprit. It's allegedly the largest ever Series B round for a European plant-based startup. The new funding will be used to increase the production by 6x, and potentially also going international. The company currently employed 140 chefs.
Brooklyn, New York-based startup Smallhold has secured $25M in new Series A funding, to grow organic mushrooms in local warehouses. The company sells to nearby restaurants and grocery stores. Investors included e.g. Astanor Ventures, Energy Impact Partners, Almanac Insights, Wheatsheaf Group, and AlleyCorp. Smallhold currently grows mushrooms in Brooklyn and Texas, and will launch in Los Angeles next year.
Rabobank's Venture Fund, together with Seventure Partners and Aqua-Spark, have backed Atlanta-company Ecto in their Series A round, to the tune of $7M. Ecto uses machine learning algorithms to enable aquaculture producers to become more efficient and sustainable.
Image: Ecto
U.K. vegan meal delivery startup Allplants has bagged $52M in Series B funding, in a round led by Draper Esprit. It's allegedly the largest ever Series B round for a European plant-based startup. The new funding will be used to increase the production by 6x, and potentially also going international. The company currently employed 140 chefs.
Mung bean protein was just approved for consumption in the EU, by the European Food Safety Authority's expert panel of nutrition. The approval comes after U.S. company Eat Just had put in an application; Eat Just has developed a plant-based egg substitute called Just Egg which is based on mung bean protein.
A scientific team at Tuft's University, lead by Dean Dariush Mozaffarian, has developed and launched a new tool called Food Compass to help consumers, food companies, restaurants, and cafes choose and produce healthier foods, and officials to make better public nutrition policy. Each food, beverage, or mixed fish receives a final Food Compass score ranging from 1 (least healthy) to 100 (most healthy); the lowest scoring category was snacks and sweet desserts (avg. score 16.4), and the highest scoring categories were vegetables (avg. score 69.1), fruits (avg. score 73.9), and legumes, nuts, and seeds (avg. score 78.6).
Source: Food Compass
A ban on fertilizer and pesticide imports by the government of Sri Lanka, as part of an organic farming mandate, has resulted in a sharp drop in productivity for crops like rice and tea.
The FDA has issued guidance for voluntary sodium reduction targets, aiming for a 12% reduction in foods over the next 2.5 years.
The Seaweed for Europe coalition has launched a new report, "The Case for Seaweed Investment in Europe". Some interesting takeaways: The number of seaweed startups and SMEs in the space has almost tripled in 10 years, from 74 in 2010 to 220+ companies in 2021, and 85% of those companies have already left the lab or pilot scale. While 50% of the surveyed companies focus on food products, an increasing number of companies explores markets like pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, or biopackaging. The overall investment in European seaweed companies has grown 24x in the last decade, from less than €900k in 2010to more than €21M in 2020.
News from the FoodTech Weekly community
Jellatech (US) is hiring a Senior Scientist... Hooked (Sweden) is recruiting for a bunch of positions including Food Scientist, Head of Finance, and Head of Product Development... Gelatex (Estonia) is looking for a Senior Scientist... Stockeld Dreamery (Sweden) has an opening for a Senior Brand Manager... Norrsken Impact Accelerator (Sweden) is hiring an Investment and Operations Associate... Change Foods (US) is recruiting a Research Scientist - Microbial Fermentation and Bioprocess Specialist.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Random Stuff
If you're a startup founder building a pitch deck, you might find this thread useful -- especially these few pics. What do startup valuations look like these days? Aviel Ginzburg of Founders' Co-op offers his 5 cents.
This guy uses a green screen and joins Zoom calls from weird locations.
How are food ads actually made? Fascinating behind-the-scenes footage from a NYC-based director.
Cool little video (30 sec) of an autonomous robot specialized in broccoli harvesting (no human driver needed), from AGROINTELLI and RoboVeg Ltd.
Starbucks turns 50 this year. Today it accounts for 15k of about 37k coffeehouses in the U.S. (back in 1991, Starbucks had 165 out of 1,650 U.S. coffeehouses). Meanwhile in Sweden, the company quietly closed down most of their shops in 2020 due to poor performance during the pandemic. Starbucks previously entered and exited Sweden in the 90s. Third time's a charm?
Mr Kusic in Bosnia built his wife a rotating house after he "had enough of her complaints and frequent refurbishments of [their] family house".
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
This issue was produced while listening to Reckoning Song by Asaf Avidan and The Mojos. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. And here's The Appetizer podcast which I co-host. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.