There is always something fun as the end of year creeps up to think about the technologies that will disrupt or transform the world over the next few decades and Adrien Book’s selection below covers a number of general and specific purpose technologies.
The meatless meat one is definitely catching people’s attention currently given the post-flotation performance of Beyond Meat among others, as identified in March’s special report on agtech. The wider focus, however, is “how to replace the grocery store,” according to venture capitalists, such as Andrew Ive, founder at Big Idea Ventures with Tom Mastrobuoni, former partner at meat company Tyson’s corporate venturing unit.
Animal products are the second-largest contributor to carbon dioxide emissions and climate change behind transport. Using plant or cell-based technologies to replace meat, seafood and dairy is creating attention, with Benson Hill raising $150m late last week to combine artificial intelligence and big data technology with biology to determine the best plant breeding methods, in theory facilitating the development of better plant-based foods and ingredients.
Wheatsheaf Group, the agtech-focused family office of real estate owners Grosvenor Group, co-led Benson Hill’s A round with GV, a corporate venturing unit formerly known as Google Ventures of internet group Alphabet, and a syndicate including a supermarket chain, Emart, and crop trading company Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC).
Wheatsheaf hired Katrin Burt as managing director a year ago from Syngenta Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Syngenta, one of the world’s leading agribusiness and seed companies, about the same time LDC asked Max Clegg to head its corporate venturing unit, LDC Innovations.
Taking plant-based tubes out of the vegetarian aisle or store and across the rest of the grocery store without consumers having to compromise or change their taste or texture preference profile builds demand and if proteins or other nutrients can be delivered at lower cost or land and water usage increases supply. An additional benefit is to human health if there are fewer factory-farmed animals requiring antibiotics or unintended crossover vectors for disease and virus mutations and species leaps.
As Ive said on a call: “Plant-based foods is a historic event versus incremental additions to food groups, such as an extra soda or candy bar.”
Allied to reductions in plastic packaging possible with plants and sustainability targets this decade become more feasible. But to do so requires scaling up.
Ynsect raised X to scale up its insect-protein factories, while Kees Aarts, founder at peer protein developer Protix, noted the uneven levels of state aid between countries that could affect the entrepreneurial outcomes. Governments have been shocked by the relatively fragile state and global interdependence of food supply chains through the covid-19 disease and provenance and food safety are high among people’s concerns around the world, whether in the UK over potential imports of chlorinated chicken to Chinese parents’ worries over baby milk poisoning. Singapore state-backed Temasek is one of the sovereign wealth funds focused on food given the island’s lack of space or natural resources, while Africa’s demographics and market is drawing attention. This is leading to cross-over opportunities, such as Polish stock exchange GPW setting up an agriculture fund with Poland’s National Centre for Agricultural Support in July.
Corporations are also joining the mix even among rapid consolidation with Thai Union Group setting up a $30m corporate venturing fund as well as commitments to external VCs, such as VisVires New Protein.
Gerard Chia, general partner and founder at VisVires New Protein first two funds, said only six years ago foodtech was just a concept when it backed Ynsect at its pre-seed round. Now there might be 50 companies offering insect-related products.
However, Chia’s broader focus is on how technology can meet industry’s needs, such as identifying a chicken’s gender, waste mitigation and food safety or the vector between food and health.
This makes sense and capital will continue to flow given a total available market of potentially nine billion people in the future. After all, physiological needs are at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy.
