Future Food

Investing in agrifoodtech since 2017: Astanor's Eric Archambeau reflects

From the heady days of the dot com boom -- and subsequent bust -- Eric Archambeau cofounded Astanor Ventures with George Coelho in 2017 as an impact venture capital fund for food and agriculture."We founded it with a vision that the agrifood market was going to go through a deep disruption that was needed to move from a system that was delivering cheap calories, to a system that would be able to deliver affordable nutrients," Archambeau tells AgFunderNews on a new episode of the Future Food podcast.Fast forward to today and the European firm has made around 40 investments across the suppy chain and recently announced the closing of its second fund on €360 million.Hear Eric talk about when and where exits will come to the industry -- something so many of us are wondering! How agrifoodtech fits into the impact investing world, and much more!

From What’s Your Problem?: The Quest for the Perfect Avocado

In this preview, Jacob talks with Katherine Sizov, founder of Strella Biotechnology. Her problem: Tons of food is wasted before it ever gets to the consumer. Katherine started working on this problem in 2018, when she was a junior in college. Her idea: imitate the natural world and build a device that detects when fruit is ripening. It worked. Now some of the biggest apple and pear packers in America use her device. You can hear more from What’s Your Problem? at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/wypfuture.

Soylent's CEO on shift towards middle America and the future of plant-based

A somewhat controversial category, during my hot or not rounds on this podcast, most guests have responded negatively to the concept of replacing meals with a drink - and perhaps Soylent took this on board as  in more recent years it's started calling itself a nutrition company with a small but growing number of product lines not just focused on meal replacement but all made from plants. Demir has been the CEO for nearly two years now and it's been a bit of a turnaround story as the company turned profitable in mid-2020. With a background in food and media, and having worked at one of the first almond milk companies out there, I jumped at the chance to chat to Demir about the future of plant-based foods as well. Enjoy!

How 'cool' fertilizers can sequester carbon and more, with Amy Yoder

Amy Yoder is CEO of Anuvia Plant Nutrients, a company that's converting waste to help crops uptake fertilizers more efficiently, and even help them to sequester carbon in the soil. She is a trailblazer being one of the best-funded women in agtech on record, raising $103 million in Series D earlier this year.For those of you who aren't knowledgeable about the fertilizer industry, Amy gives a great description. Enjoy this episode with a powerhouse of agtech, Amy Yoder.

Diving deep with Sandhya Sriram on the future of cell-cultured seafood

Since Sriram co-founded Shiok Meats three years ago, the startup has gone from strength to strength. According to AgFunder's most recent ASEAN Agrifoodtech Investment Report, it was Southeast Asia’s highest-funded startup in the ‘Innovative Food’ category in 2019.It raised $4.6 million for its April 2019 seed round, which saw Y Combinator make its first-ever investment in a ‘clean meat’ company.Last year, Shiok Meats netted $3 million in bridge funding from investors including UK firms Agronomics and Impact Venture, US trust VegInvest, and UAE-based Mindshift Capital, before closing a $12.6 million Series A round led by Dutch aquaculture-focused fund Aqua-Spark.