New Food Finance Podcast

It was a great privilege to connect with  Travis Bayer, founder of the recently launched biotech crop development company, Decibel Bio, and previously, founder of the hugely successful microbial biostimulants company, Sound Agriculture. Some highlights Biggest driver for startup success: identify the unique business approach, the value proposition, including how to reach consumers, and then fit th...

Ministers and leaders from around 200 countries gather at global climate talks, this week and next, in Baku, Azerbaijan. These UN-sponsored talks have been going for 29 years. As emissions continue to rise, and CO2 continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, heating the planet, you may rightly wonder about their role or usefulness.  But there is no other event on Earth yet to replace them with.  An...

I interviewed Jerry Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. His research career has spanned climate change and food security, as well as agriculture policy, trade and development. He is one of the world’s greatest experts on the economics of food security in an era of climate change. What he has to say on this really matters. My three top takeaways from this week’s podcast were: ...

Here are my main learning notes from this podcast, an interview with Anna Rath, CEO of Vestaron, the peptide-based pesticide company: Vestaron’s product focus is peptides, or short-chain proteins. Anna says that they have the same reliability and efficacy as chemical pesticides, but more precision targeting, and therefore safer use. Vestaron’s products are based off naturally occurring toxins such...

Here are some of my main learning points from this podcast, with Guy Elitzur, CEO of EcoPhage, a company which is enlisting viruses to fight bacteria that cause diseases in crops: Bacteriophages are bacteria-eating viruses. These viruses were discovered in the nineteenth century, but have only really been studied more intensively in the past couple of decades. Guy’s company has licensed the same t...

Here’s some of my main learning points from this podcast, with Charles Miller, director of strategic alliances and development at Solynta: Solynta is the first company able to hybridise potatoes. Hybrid breeding is used extensively in many crops, such as maize/ corn, tomatoes, sunflowers. The idea is to cross two in-bred, so-called elite lines each with highly desirable traits, to achieve what is...

Here are some of my learning points from this podcast, with Ponsi Trivisvavet, CEO of Inari, the seed design company. The goal of the company is to design seeds for crop varieties that consume fewer resources, such as land, water and chemical inputs. The focus crops are corn, soybeans and wheat. Inari’s three specific target products at present are, first, to increase yields significantly, without...

Here are some of my learning points from this podcast, with Nadav Bocher, CEO and co-founder of Greeneye, the precision spraying company: Greeneye’s mission is to transform the present, broadcast approach to spraying herbicides –where farmers spray an entire field, regardless of weed incidence. Greeneye wants to spray only actual weeds, using AI-enabled cameras first to detect weeds, and then turn...

Here are some of my learning points from this podcast: Agmatix is trying to consolidate agronomic field trial data, through digitalisation, to make this data more available, to agricultural researchers, agronomists and farmers. Agmatix has two main activities. First, the digitalisation of agricultural R&D, focusing on agronomic insights and especially field trial data, and second, interpreting...

Here are some key points from this podcast interview with James Lloyd-Jones, CEO of the Jones Food Company (JFC): The main differences between a vertical farm and a high-tech greenhouse are – no glass; multiple layers; and a more controlled environment, which allows a higher output per sqm of growing area. James is about to launch his new “JFC2” farm, which will add to an existing farm at Scunthor...

This week, we heard from a senior European Union policymaker involved in one of the biggest drivers of change in the agriculture sector today, namely pesticide regulation. I spoke with Klaus Berend, head of the EU’s pesticide unit, in the EU’s health and food safety directorate. What I wanted to understand was just how big the pressure is on chemical pesticides; over what time frame the portfolio...

One of the most talked about technologies to reduce the environmental impact of conventional agriculture is so-called precision agriculture or precision-ag. Precision-ag means using GPS-enabled sensors, including drone-mounted cameras, to generate spatial data, which can help tell farmers what is happening across a farm or field in real space and time. In theory, these insights can then be used to...

So far, on this podcast, we’ve discussed issues including digitalisation, soil carbon and alternative proteins. This week, I wanted to broaden out, and discuss the whole range of technologies connected with a low-environmental-impact transition in global agriculture. I interviewed two global research strategists at Rabobank’s food and agribusiness division, Cyrille Filott and Cindy van Rijswick, w...

In this episode, I talked with Fotis Fotiadis, founder and CEO of the insect protein manufacturer, Better Origin. The company produces feed for poultry from the larvae of black soldier flies, in its AI-automated shipping containers. Like the alternative protein space more generally, the insect protein sector has exploded over the last two years, as witnessed by the hundreds of millions of dollars...

In this fifth episode of my podcast, Agriculture Reinvented, I talk with Ben Goldsmith, investor, environmentalist, enthusiastic re-wilder, and farmer, about his investments, in and outside agriculture, the future of farming, and one of his favourite themes, re-wilding. Regarding innovation, Ben expects "precision fermentation" to replace a whole bunch of animal protein commodities, such as protei...

In this podcast, I discuss the alternative protein space with Geoff Bryant, Chief Technology Officer at microbe fermentation company, Calysta. Alternative proteins are all about sourcing protein with less impact on livestock, people and the planet. These alternatives include insect-based protein, plant-based protein, cellular protein made in a lab from animal cells, and microbe-based protein, Caly...

This week’s episode is about the U.S. organic agriculture market and industry. In this episode, I talked to Ryan Koory, Vice President of Economics at the U.S. organic agriculture analytics firm, Mercaris. Organic agriculture is a long-established but minority segment of the global food industry. In this episode I wanted to understand recent market trends, focusing on the U.S. grains and oilseeds...

In this episode, I talked to Prof Pete Smith, one of the world’s renowned academics on soil carbon sequestration. In this podcast, Pete gets into the details around soil carbon – what it is, how to measure it, and whether it’s all it’s cracked up to be, as a solution to climate change. Pete tells us that the science is settled on the agricultural practices that increase soil carbon. But he explain...

In this first episode of my new podcast, Agriculture Reinvented, we explore what digitalisation and big data have to offer agriculture, in conversation with Richard Tiffin, Chief Scientific Officer at the UK agri-food data company, Agrimetrics. Richard first described in big picture terms what it is that data can bring to farming. So he describes how we can access a whole lot more data than ever b...