Future Food

Climate scientist, inventor and founder of two sustainable businesses, Adam Lowry is currently CEO of Ripple Foods, a dairy-free milk products company. His first company was Method, the sustainable cleaning products brand that's now a household name. We talk about the contrast between launching a cleaning products business and a food business, why food was the next step for him, the key mistakes a...

 In a world of African Swine Fever, increasing scrutiny of the meat industry and consumer demand for transparency, the pork industry needs to modernize. But according to Chris Bomgaars, founder of EveryPig, a software platform for pork producers to track pig health, moving away from the pen + paper records that still dominate, many in the industry are reticent to do so. Find out why -- and what th...

Why work in the foodtech and agtech investment space? Which category of this emerging venture capital industry are most exciting? These are some of the questions I asked two of my teammates Yanniv and Quinten who joined AgFunder in 2019. Also find out who their favorite team member is - hint - it's me!

This episode is perhaps a tad awkward as I interview my boss Rob Leclerc, founding partner of AgFunder, but Rob was as insightful as ever, sharing his thoughts on working in and around the agriculture sector for the past decade. Rob first started working with our other founding partner Michael Dean when they set up an agriculture business in West Africa at the start of the decade before founding A...

In this episode, I speak to Bruce Friedrich, the executive director and co-founder of the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that promotes plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs, as well as those using cellular agriculture to produce replicas of these animal-based products at the cellular level, without any animal involvement. GFI engages scientists, policymakers, and entrepreneurs...

In this episode I speak to Jack Bobo, founder of Futurity, a consultancy firm for startups and established food brands to consider the future of food and what it means to them.  "I'm very optimistic and excited about what the world will look like in 2050 but I think it is helpful though to think about where we've come from in order to think about where we're going." Tune in to hear why Jack think...

In this episode of Future Food , I speak to Klaus Kunz , head of Sustainability and Business Stewardship at German agro-pharma giant Bayer  on the sidelines of the Seed & Chips Innovation Summit in Milan. We talk on many topics including smallholder farmers, concerning data regarding biodiversity but one can’t get through a conversation with Bayer without addressing its pesticides. The company has...

Sofia Elizondo started her career as a management consultant in New York and after attending Stanford business school, discovered the world of food tech. She cofounded Brightseed in Silicon Valley to unlock the potential for plants to positively impact our health. In this episode, we discuss the vast untapped potential of the natural world for our nutrition; just 15 of the 50,000 edible plants on...

In this episode of Future Food , I speak to Jennifer Betka , the chief marketing officer of Indigo Agriculture , the Boston-based agtech startup that's one of the highest valued in the industry today. Jennifer is an expert marketer with a career spanning many different industries outside of agriculture, most recently at StubHub the event ticketing business, so it's really interesting to hear about...

The UK is the most active ecosystem for foodtech and agtech startups in Europe and Nadia El Hadery has played a role in it from London since 2013. Nadia is founder and CEO of YFood, an event and media company focused on the industry. London FoodTech Week is next week - find out more about the event, Nadia's vision for the future of food -- including drones and personalized food delivery -- her lov...

There's perhaps no deal more representative of the changes taking place in the food system, and the meeting of technology and food, than Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017.  Walter Robb, the former co-CEO of Whole Foods, was a key player through the transaction and for many years at Whole Foods before it. A proponent of whole and natural foods, Walter is increasingly exposed to new food t...

For entrepreneurs and investors in the agtech startup space, David Friedberg is a major celebrity. When he sold his weather data startup The Climate Corporation to Monsanto for $1 billion in 2013 - achieving that elusive "unicorn" status - he put the category on the map. Ever since, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have flocked to apply the latest in technology to the food and agriculture ind...

In this podcast, Louisa talks to Nick Fereday, a consumer foods analyst at Rabobank, about how the large food and agriculture companies are reacting to new innovation and working with startups. They also talk about the acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon, and consumer trends around natural, simple food as well as alternative meat products.

Women still make the majority of food decisions in the home -- around 65% according to some estimates. While this has fallen from over 95% 20 years ago, women are still underrepresented in leading roles at food companies globally. I this week’s podcast, Louisa discusses the impact of this underrepresentation and how tech innovation is adapting to consumer demands with Beth Robertson-Martin, sourci...

Blue River Technology is a Silicon Valley startup bringing robotics to the farm. In August 2017, Blue River was acquired by John Deere, the world’s largest tractor company, for $305 million. This was extremely exciting news for the agtech industry as exits for the venture capital firms backing the sector have been relatively few and far between. In this episode, Louisa speaks to Jorge Heraud, foun...

In this episode, Louisa speaks to Sam Kass, venture partner at Acre Venture Partners, the food system venture capital firm. Kass has had a varied career working as a chef in the White House, as well as a nutritional policy advisor, and launched the Let's Move campaign with Michelle Obama. Here he speaks about investing in food technology and the importance of access to nutritional food.

After a few years in stealth mode, vertical farming group Plenty hit the public domain with a bang, raising a record-breaking $200m from Japanese banking group SoftBank over the summer. Louisa talks to CEO Matt Barnard to hear more about the company's growth and future plans.