Edible Planet Ventures’ Post

🚀🌿 Exciting updates in the world of #FoodTech, #AgTech and #ClimateTech! Stay ahead of the curve with our weekly newsletter, packed with groundbreaking news and industry insights. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s inside this week: 🌱 TurtleTree Announces Strategic Partnership with Strive to Innovate Functional Beverages 💶 eAgronom Secures €10 Million to Boost Sustainable Farming Practices 🥚 revyve's Innovative Ingredient Mimics Egg Functionality without Additives 🥗 FoodSmarto: Combating Food Insecurity with Innovative Solutions and $200M in Fresh Funding 🇩🇪 Rohlik Group Raises $170 Million to Fuel Expansion in DACH and CEE Regions ♻️ Samsara Eco Raises $100 Million to Expand Revolutionary Plastic Recycling Technology 🤖 Ai Palette Secures Additional Funding to Expand AI Capabilities in CPG Sector 🌾 Indigo Partners with Microsoft to Drive Soil Carbon Credits and Advance Sustainability 💸 AgFunder Assumes Management of Blue Horizon's $100m Growth Fund 🌍 Forey Bioscience Raises $3M to Protect and Restore Natural Ecosystems with Biomanufacturing 🍞 How Hero Bread Raises $21 Million In Less Than 90 Days To Accelerate Its Low-Carb Artisanal Bakery Business 💧 Beanstalk AgTech is building a $10 million venture studio to back nearly 100 startups focused on drought resilience 🌿 Crowd Investors Angry at Post-Series C Valuation of Plant-Based Meat Brand 🌾 AgTech Company HEMPALTA Launches Biochar Derived from Industrial Hemp 🔧 Seso Inc. is building software to fix farm workforces and solve agriculture's HR woes 🍅 Vertical Farming Company Bowery Farming Is Reimagining the Fresh Food Supply Chain 🎙️ And for more exciting news 🌱 Tune in to the latest episode of the #FoodTechJunkies #Podcast featuring Nicole Atchison, CEO of PURIS, as she dives into "Climate, Health, and Innovation: The Puris Plant-Based Revolution." 🌍💚 Discover how Puris is revolutionizing the plant-based industry, driving sustainability, and promoting healthier living. Nicole shares her insights on the future of food, policy and the impact of innovation on our planet. Tune into this inspiring conversation that’s set to change the way we think about food! 🎧 Listen now and join the plant-based revolution. 🌱✨ 🔗 Don’t miss out on these stories and more. t.ly/_9yU0 #Subscribe to our #newsletter and follow our podcast to stay informed about the latest innovations and investments driving the future of food and agriculture!

We’re thrilled to announce that we have selected 14 innovative startups for our EIT Food RisingFoodStars programme, and 10 of those are from within our region! 🚀 Ready to meet them?! 👀 SeedForward GmbH - A Germany-based startup that substitutes synthetic agrochemicals with bio-based alternatives, emphasising bio-based seed treatments, biostimulants, and bio-based plant protection. Notpla - A UK-based sustainable #packaging firm that provides solutions for everyday applications, including food containers, pipettes for oils, seaweed-paper, dissolving pods and films, made by using seaweed and plants that naturally biodegrades in weeks. Carbone Farmers - A France-based startup that makes the decarbonisation of #agriculture economically viable through the development of a platform that enables stakeholders to valorise their contribution to farmers’ transition to low carbon agriculture practices. MyEasyFarm - A France-based startup that provides a platform managing agricultural data from many sources to reduce product usage and enhance crop cycles. The company's solution aims to measure and reduce CO2 emission/storage in agriculture by changing crop cycle practices. Neggst - A German company that develops #plantbased whole egg alternatives that consists of a white, yolk, and a biodegradable shell. The products the company develops are made using a legume-based recipe free of soy and gluten. Those Vegan Cowboys - A Belgium-based dairy product producer that makes cow-less milk and cheese products. AgroLeague - A French startup that builds a social platform connecting #farmers, providing real-time diagnosis of farming issues, and offering direct-to-farmer services. NoPalm Ingredients - A Netherlands-based company that creates environmentally friendly microbial oils to substitute palm and other tropical oils in food, cosmetics, and detergents. The oil is produced in a sustainable, cyclical, and environmentally beneficial manner by fermenting sidestreams. Bon Vivant - A pioneering French biotech firm specialising in precision #fermentation methods to produce dairy proteins without animals, reducing environmental footprint and empowering clients to create environmentally conscious, nutritionally rich dairy products. Cultivated Biosciences - A Switzerland-based startup that improves the mouthfeel of animal-free cheese, yoghurt and more by developing a unique creamy fat ingredient for the food industry, using fermentation. Congratulations and welcome to the programme! 😍

Check out these great examples from Maine of how to create future ready food!

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #214 (https://lnkd.in/dA645NFQ) sent Friday morning: 🇺🇸 Pairwise , which gene edits crops to create e.g. seedless blackberries and less bitter mustard greens, has harvested $40M in Series C funding led by Deerfield Management and joined by e.g. Aliment Capital, Leaps by Bayer, and seed giant Corteva Agriscience 🇩🇰 Matr Foods, which uses fungi fermentation of local crops like lupin and peas to produce meat alternatives, has secured €20M (appr. $22M) in debt funding from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The company plans to produce 3K tons of products per year 🇳🇿 The government of New Zealand has set up a five-year NZ$9.6M (appr. $6M) scheme to develop cultivated seafood products 🇫🇴 Ocean Rainforest, which grows and processes sustainable seaweed on the Faroe Islands, has hauled in €2.5M (appr. $2.8M) in Series A funding, led by Triodos Investment Management and joined by e.g. The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Builders Vision, Katapult Ocean, Twynam and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) 🇫🇷 Standing Ovation, which produces e.g. casein for dairy products such as cheese through precision fermentation, has closed a €3.75M (appr. $4.2M) Series A extension round from investors including Astanor 🇮🇱 MNDL Bio has nabbed $2M in funding for its AI-powered gene optimization platform that helps companies across biotech, pharma, and food to streamline their R&D processes. The company claims it can increase protein production by up to 200x, cut development timelines by 1/3, and reduce costs by 90% compared to conventional methods. Funders in the round include Earth & Beyond Ventures, Israel Innovation Authority רשות החדשנות, and CPT Capital. 🇬🇧Plant-Ex Ingredients Ltd, which produces natural plant-derived flavors, colors, and extracts, has bagged £9M (appr. $12M) in funding from BGF 🛑 A U.K. ban on junk food TV ads before 9pm comes into effect in October next year. 💡 Conversation with Maya Sapir-Mir and Ido Eliashar Ⓥ of PoLoPo 🤩 New jobs at Cultivated Biosciences (Sweden) ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #foodtechweekly #FoodTech #agtech #startups #funding #tech

Some highlights from FoodTech Weekly #197 (https://lnkd.in/dSrJGx53) this morning: 🥩 U.S. company GOOD Meat (subsidiary of Eat Just, Inc.) has announced that for the first time ever, cultivated meat will be sold in food retail (in the freezer section of Huber's Butchery in Singapore) for consumers to purchase and bring home and cook. The meat has a new, lower cost formulation with just 3% cultivated chicken (the rest is plant-based). A 120g (4.2 oz) package will be priced at SDG 7.20, or about US $5.3 💰 Singapore-based AgTech startup Rize, which was launched as a JV last year by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Wavemaker Impact, Temasek, and GenZero, has secured $14M in Series A funding. Rice demand is projected to double by 2050 but traditional rice cultivation practices — like flooding fields — release huge amounts of methane gases. The backers hope the solution can help cut 100M tons of carbon emissions 💰 Swedish biotech company Volta Greentech has scored SEK 32M (appr. $3M) in fresh funding in a round led by Novax (Axel Johnson Group), bringing its total funding to about SEK 100M (appr. $9.4m). Volta, which previously produced an algae-based feed additive to cut livestock methane emissions, has developed a second-generation low-cost additive called Lome which it aims to deliver to customers at scale by 2026, pending EU regulatory approval 💶 hexafarms, which leverages AI to optimize greenhouses and vertical indoor farms in real time, has raised €1.3M in a round led by Speedinvest and joined by Mudcake and Techstars. The company’s SaaS solution enables commercial indoor farmers to become 30% more efficient by predicting yields four weeks ahead with up to 95% accuracy 💶  Israeli startup ProFuse Technology has bagged €2.4M (appr. $2.6M) in grants from the EU’s Horizon EIC Transition program to develop a supplement used in culture medium for cellular agriculture, speeding up the growth of cultivated meat. In related news, U.K. startup Meatly which develops a culture medium that ‘dramatically’ cuts the cost of cultivated meat is on the brink of receivingregulatory approval 🏃 U.K. startup Hexis, which uses advanced analytics from wearables to optimize athletes’ nutrition plans, has scooped up £1.6M (appr. $2M) in pre-seed from APEX, Sport Republic, and Dopamine Sports Ventures (h/t DigitalFoodLab)   💰PeakBridge has just had its final close of its Growth Fund II with $187M committed. In related news, Luxembourg-based Ocean 14 Capital has raised its first fund of €201M (appr. $218M) to invest in the ‘blue economy’ incl. food security and marine ecosystems. Finally, Norrsken VC has closed a second fund at €320M (appr. $348M) 🤩 New jobs at Nosh.bio (Germany) is looking for a Business Development Manager ...and much more! Subscribe now at: https://lnkd.in/d8mUXXH5 #FoodTech #foodtechweekly #agtech #startups #funding #tech #innovation #farming #technology #food #agriculture #science

🚀🥗 Hello Future-Food Enthusiasts and Tech Trailblazers! This week, we're "spicing up" your feed with the latest buzz, from groundbreaking alternative proteins to innovative robotic solutions in agriculture. 📰 TOP STORIES 🍔 Israel Greenlights Aleph Farms' Cultivated Beef: A Landmark in Food Technology 🌿 The The Mediterranean Food Lab (MFL)'s Innovative Stride in Plant-Based Foods 🥤 Better Juice and Ingredion Incorporated: Pioneering the Future of Sugar Reduction in Juices 🍫 Unleashing the Future of Chocolate: Fazer Launches Air Protein #Solein Limited-Edition Bar 💰 INVESTMENTS 🔬 Marama Labs Secures €1.75 million: For Innovative CloudSpec Spectrometer 💸 EIB Supports Protix with €37 Million Loan: For Sustainable Protein Production Expansion 🌱 SeeTree's Series C Funding: A Leap Forward in #agtech Innovation 🥦 #uganda 's FiberFoods & PrimeJack: Pioneering a Plant-Based Future with Recent Funding 🚚 Uber eats partners with Planet Ark Environmental Foundation in AUS$13M initiative for improved food delivery packaging 🌊 Revo Foods Launches Crowdinvesting Campaign, Announces Scaling Plans for 3D Printed Seafood Alternatives 🤖 farm-ng raises Series A funding to scale Amiga robot and AI for small to midsize farms 🚜 Bluewhite rakes in $39M for robots-as-a-service that can be retrofitted to drive any tractor 💰 ArcTern Ventures Closes Fund III Oversubscribed at $335M for Global Decarbonization 🌍 NEWS & TRENDS 🌊 Forsea Foods: Charting a Sustainable Future in #seafood Production 🐄 Talking cows? Acoustic data and #ai could revolutionize animal welfare 🥛 NotCo Triumphs in Legal Battle: A Win for Plant-Based Beverages 🔬 Edete Precision Technologies for Agriculture precision pollination: Drives double-digit increases in pistachio yields in California trial 🐟 Largest Sustainable Animal Feed Mill 🍹 My #Drynuary: 'We're working to bring about a future where we don't default to ethanol unthinkingly; but ask what we're putting into our glass, and who's made it' 🌱 Carbon pricing for agriculture key to cutting emissions, say #eu climate advisers ✈️ #Vegan Vault: Demand for Plant-Based Meals Grows by 40% for Emirates Airlines 🥛 US: Whole and lactose-free milk sales grow as plant-based alternatives dip 🍫 Chocolate Cordillera achieves early wins for its female cocoa farmers 🔬 Cellular Agriculture May Bring Hope in Reducing Food Waste and Environmental Impact 🌾 #CRISPR-editing rice crops: Mitigating the impacts of rice disease in sub-Saharan Africa 🎧 PODCAST EPISODES 🍬🌿 FoodTech Junkies: Sweet Revolution: Ali Wing's Protein-Powered Sugar Substitute. Dive into Ali M. Wing's innovative journey at Oobli, transforming the world of sugar with fruit proteins. 🔗 Stay connected and nourished with our weekly newsletter for more on FoodTech and Sustainability! Let's keep exploring and growing together in this ever-evolving field. https://lnkd.in/e9zy52Ak

I was honored to join Mark Stinson 4 years ago on his Podcast series, Entelechy Leadership Stories to discuss regenerative food systems and a new grain economy. I am thrilled to learn that Mark is taking these years of content and creating a collection of stories in a book! Hooray Mark, keep up the incredible work. Here is a link to the session with BE Alink, Brandi DeCarli and myself discussing the future of food, farming, community, and culture. https://lnkd.in/gmeZ8inM

Pioneering the Plant-Based Revolution: Dutch going Danish? --> Bridging Sustainable Futures Last week marked a significant stride in the journey towards a more sustainable future, as we embarked on the Protein Transition Mission to Denmark. We shared visions, where enhancing sustainable and smart farming practices, including the rise of plant-based foods, was the collective goal. --> Denmark's Green Strategy Denmark is on a mission to become a global leader in plant-based and green proteins, with a keen emphasis on organic production. The Danish government's unified strategy, backed by a multi-year development fund, is a testament to their commitment to education, research, export. The Danes are progressively embracing plant-based alternatives, signaling a shift in dietary trends. The synergy between cooperatives, companies, startups, and educational institutions is creating a fertile ground for green jobs and innovation, attracting talent & investment to scale new developments. --> KeyGene's Ambitious Value Chain in Denmark KeyGene is at the forefront of the plant-based protein transition. We've crafted a bean2consumer value chain (KeyGene-Agrifirm-EbroFoods-MEAT-Upfield) in The Netherlands, which is set to yield its first prototype products by 2025. The challenge has always been to breed bean proteins that cater to modern human consumption needs, and we've risen to the occasion by developing food-grade faba bean proteins that require minimal processing and offer superior taste and food qualities. Such value chains are not just growth engines but also beacons of inspiration that can be replicated across Europe. --> Networking: A Wealth of Connections The mission's itinerary was rich of encounters and experiences, meticulously woven together by Amsterdam Trade & Innovate, OostNL, Province of Noord-Holland, Embassy of the Netherlands in Denmark and Food & Bio Cluster. Visiting FoodExpo, Agrofoodpark Arhus, Food & Bio Cluster, Arla Foods, Meelunie GPI, Bio Innovation Institute. Each visit provided invaluable insights into the Danish perspective. The journey was punctuated with food and discussions that allowed us to align our views and ambitions, strengthening the Dutch-Danish partnership. Rinske van den Barg Miranda Ebbekink Bart Grobben Sharon de Miranda  Tom van Duijn Nienke Trooster Maureen de Haan Arjan van Dijk Benjamin Maclean Jaëla Arian Jan Sikkema Jeroen Willemsen Huiberdien Sweeris Lieske van der Waals Floor Severens Rieks Smook Andres Jara Watze van der Zee Ellen Poolman Roland de Bes Arielle de Jong Ir. Ingrid Mans Emma Teuling Maartje Nelissen Kees Pieters Janny van der Heijden Daniëlle Lieuwen Joanne de Mooij Gerrit de Boer Dennis Favier Michael Luesink Rogier Scherpbier Nicky Buizer Bart Klaassen Belqis Askaryar Jans Hoekman Tessa de Boer Harold Zoet Kirsten Peeters Susanne Baden Jørgensen

🌍🌱💰 EUROPEAN FOOD TECH STARTUPS OVERTOOK THE U.S. TO ATTRACT $2B IN INVESTMENTS IN 2023 European food tech startups focused on climate change solutions attracted $2B in investments last year, overtaking the US for the first time. Despite a global downturn in VC funding, funding in this sector matched the levels of 2022, when European companies raised $2.1B. This is according to the annual Food for Climate report by early-stage VC firm FoodLabs and investment database DealRoom, which assessed over 1,200 climate-centric food startups across 40 segments to explore the state of the sustainable food & agtech ecosystem in Europe. The analysis suggests that European food tech companies made up 58% of global funding in the industry, much higher than the US (around 36%). The agtech sector made up $1B of this sum, thanks in large part to increased interest in sustainable fertilisers – Atlas Agro alone raised $325M for its renewable fertilisers. Regenerative agriculture startups secured $581M overall, focusing on climate-resilient crops and microbial solutions. “To address some of Europe’s most pressing challenges, we urgently need to finance and support innovative food solutions that help us adapt to a changing climate and mitigate its effects, while securing our food supply,” said Christophe Maire, founding partner at FoodLabs. But in spite of the positives of 2023, projections for 2024 suggest a return to pre-pandemic levels ($1.1B), with the US expected to overtake Europe again. This is primarily due to the absence of mega-rounds like Atlas Agro’s. “The global venture [capital] industry is still in transition after the outlier years of 2020-21, a shift in monetary policy and higher interest rates,” said Maire. “We don’t expect global investment to increase in 2024, but we do expect a return to baseline.” Startups will also have to contend with a reshuffled EU parliament, with the far-right’s rise raising fears about the bloc’s climate ambitions. “The EU already does a tremendous job of funding innovation through many direct and indirect programmes,” explained Maire. “However, it could simplify and standardise some of the regulatory hurdles – for example, for alternative protein companies.” The EU’s current novel foods framework has left it lagging behind other governments – the US, Singapore and Israel have already approved cultivated meat for sale, while the UK is on the verge of doing so after announcing it’s breaking away from pre-Brexit regulations. In contrast, Italy has banned the production and sale of cultivated meat, and France and Romania are considering doing so too. #GreenQueen #altprotein #foodtech #funding #futurefood #foodsystems #sustainability

Talking about regenerative food systems without talking about the middle is like forgetting the filing in a sandwich. 🥪 And guess what? Those middle actors - distributors, suppliers, processors, and wholesalers - are absolutely vital to making regenerative agriculture work. These businesses – particularly in the fruit and veg sector - balance the needs of farmers and retailers, juggling procurement standards and seasonal supply shifts. Margins are tight, costs are up, and many feel stuck. They want to lead but fear yet fear creating competitive disadvantages for themselves when doing so. With Forum for the Future, I nerded out on this topic and designed a series of workshops for these UK fruit and vegetable middle actors, giving them the space to explore their possible role in the regenerative transition and consider how this could look in practice. ✨ Check out the blog post for more on the insights from these workshops. ✨ Need something practical? Download the full PDF resource that includes: 🔹The collective vision of a regenerative fruit and vegetable future as determined by middle actors. 🔹Possible future roles they could play. 🔹The challenges they currently face. 🔹A business planning process template to integrate the above. 🔹Key questions to consider in order to identify what needs to change within their business practices. As our food system faces continual disruption and change, the role of middle actors will evolve, and those who are proactive will help lead the transformation. Adapting to the shifting context, stepping up to the challenge, and embracing collaboration are key. No single business can deliver regenerative agriculture alone. It's through co-creation, bold ambition, and shared responsibility that we'll deliver the lasting change needed to reshape our food system. I'm curious - have you seen any exciting examples of bold action in this middle space? Would love to hear what’s working, what's not, lessons learned. Links to the resources in the comments.