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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Ag Tech

Hazel Technologies Announces New California Hub To Expand Produce Conserving Technology

Starting in the mid-twentieth century, the advent of new fertilizer production technologies allowed the world to grow crops at a new scale. While that so-called Green Revolution helped producers to feed more people than ever, it also created a focus on crop production rather than systems efficiency. And that imbalanced focus has led to a worldwide agricultural system that wastes about a third of the food it produces, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

During a stint as a chemistry fellow at the Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University, Dr. Aidan Mouat wondered what could happen if we used chemistry to create a new revolution — one that targeted the food supply chain. That idea led to the 2015 launch of Hazel Technologies, a Chicago-based company that manufactures high-tech produce packaging and storage solutions to extend shelf life.

Mouat, Hazel’s co-founder and CEO, told The Spoon that the company’s technologies will save about 500 million pounds of food from going to waste this year. And with a funding arsenal that includes about $90 million in private equity as well as grants from the USDA, the company is working on expanding, starting with a new hub in Fresno, Calif.

A primer on how Hazel’s technology works: The company’s packaging products extend the shelf lives of perishable foods, but not by adding chemicals to the foods themselves. Instead, they release ingredients (in the form of vapor) that help to control the atmosphere around the foods. One product, a sachet the size of a sugar packet, releases ingredients that counteract ethylene — a molecule that accumulates in the atmosphere around packaged fruits and vegetables, and triggers metabolic responses that make them go bad.

Hazel’s Aidan Mouat

Hazel also offers technologies that slow down microbial growth and sprouting. The company’s products come in different forms, from pads and papers that can be inserted into packages, to larger-scale solutions for entire warehouses.

The new Fresno location will bring Hazel closer to California’s bounty of fruit and vegetable producers, facilitating closer cooperation. “In order to do the best analytical postharvest work we can do, we need to be able to simulate the supply chain as perfectly as possible,” Mouat told The Spoon. “And that requires us to be on site with our customers, performing commercial-scale studies in order to truly understand the full ROI and impact that our products can provide for them.”

For instance, Hazel will be able to perform more on-site trials for customers like the Specialty Crop Company, the world’s largest fig producer. It’s the difference between “sending some fruit back east, or getting it to them today, so they can throw in a sachet and pack it today, and get back that real-time data,” Erik Herman, a farming and sales officer at the Specialty Crop Company, told The Spoon.

Mouat said that Hazel has broken ground on the new hub, and that the team is hoping to open the office by the end of this year.

Along with a customer support office and research center, the Fresno facility will incorporate a microdistillery. “As part of our zero waste focus, and in keeping with one of my various hobby interests, we do a lot of distillation of fermented food,” Mouat said. “It’s a great way to make sure that we squeeze out every last calorie, even from our test fruit.”

In the future, Hazel plans to expand its presence in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, establishing a network of food science research centers. The company will also work on expanding its range of product offerings to protect meats and other foods outside of the produce category.

Hazel also has its eyes on another kind of growth. The company wants to apply its technology at all of the stops along the food supply chain, from the pre-farm stage all the way to retail. The team even hopes to launch a line of consumer products sometime in the next few years.

To Mouat, the key to Hazel’s expansion lies in the accessibility and adaptability of the company’s packaging solutions. Hazel’s products can be integrated into existing supply chains around the world without the need for investment in new infrastructure or heavy equipment.

“You’re not going to be able to protect every crop on the planet, every category of food, with the one-channel approach of reconfiguring supply chains to suit the benefits of some new technology you’re trying to offer,” Mouat said. “If you want to approach a truly democratic solution for world agriculture, you have to lower the use barrier as much as possible — and we’ve done that.”

Big Idea Ventures Unveils Start-ups in Newest Accelerator Cohort

Big Idea Ventures is an early-stage investor in food technologies, and this week the firm announced the list of start-ups that are a part of its bi-annual accelerator program.

For this cohort, 17 start-ups focused on food and climate challenges were selected to receive pre-seed investment through the firm’s offices in New York, Singapore, and Paris. This is the first cohort for the Paris program and the fourth cohort for the New York and Singapore programs. The accelerator program is part of Big Idea Venture’s New Protein Fund, which invests in alternative protein products and ingredients.

Here’s more info about the selected companies:

New York Program

Fybraworks Foods – grows real animal meat proteins with microbes and is the first company to develop recombinant muscle protein for food applications.

De Novo Dairy – the first African company to use precision fermentation technology, this start-up is replicating dairy to create animal-free cheese, yoghurt, and ice cream.

Prosel Biosciences – uses microalgae to produce bioidentical food proteins and selenoprotein-modified industrial enzymes.

BetterMilk – using mammary cells and a genetic engineering platform, the B2B company will sell their alternative milk and milk ingredients to companies in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industry.

Liven Proteins – produces animal-free protein ingredients through the fermentation of agriculture and food industry by-products (gelatin is the company’s first product).

Maya Milk – uses precision fermentation to produce animal-free dairy proteins and fats with the same sensory experience that animal-based dairy provides.

Singapore Program

Phyx44 – using precision fermentation, the start-up is producing animal-free dairy proteins & fats to recreate milk.

LILO Desserts – sourcing fruit waste and low-grade fruit not fit for grocery stores, LILO is creating snacks and desserts, such as plant-based cheesecake.

Fisheroo – the first to use cellular agriculture technology to create surimi, a minced fish paste commonly found in East Asian cuisine.

Mogale Meat – with its proprietary biobank of stem and satellite cell lines, Mogale is producing cultivated meat analogs, with a focus on African game meat.

Paris Program

Bright Biotech – with the goal of bringing cell-based meat to consumers quicker, this start-up has developed a plant-based technology that uses chloroplasts as chassis to manufacture large amounts of affordable growth factors.

Green-On – developing saturated fat and fatty acids to replace palm oil using only carbon dioxide, electricity, and, water. 

Little Bandits – developing non-dairy, soy-free products for children.

Luyef Biotechnologies – a cell-based meat company that has developed myoglobin protein to provide the flavor and aroma of real meat for plant-based meat alternatives.

The VERY Food co. – creating plant-based ingredients for cooking, including eggs, cream, and butter.

YOFI – creating organic plant-based milk alternatives with peas.

MOA foodtech – transforming food waste and agriculture byproducts into a “next-generation protein” through the use of artificial intelligence and biotechnology.

Maya Milk’s milk protein product

Amongst the selected start-ups, developing alternative dairy is one of the predominant focuses. The alternative dairy market is the most developed category in the plant-based space, and it is expected to reach a value of $54 billion by 2028. YOFI, The VERY Food Co., and Little Bandits are entering this crowded space using explicitly plant-based ingredients to develop their alternative products. On the other hand, Maya Milk, Phyx44, and De Novo Dairy are each using precision fermentation to create animal-free dairy products, while BetterMilk makes alternative milk using mammary cells and its’ genetic engineering platform.

In 2020, $366 million in funding flowed to companies developing alternative meat using cellular agriculture. Cultivated meat and seafood, a global market expected to be worth $25 billion by 2030, is another theme in this cohort. Fybraworks Foods, Luyef Biotechnologies, Bright Biotech, Mogale Meat, and Fisheroo fall into this category.

LILO Dessert’s packaged cheesecake made from fruit waste and damaged fruits

Global food waste is a major issue that has garnered attention in recent years, and one that companies in the food and agriculture tech space have attempted to provide solutions to. In this cohort, MOA Foodtech and LILO Desserts are each using some form of food waste to develop new products.

To date, Big Idea Ventures has invested in 65 alternative protein companies, including this current cohort. Currently, the firm is accepting applications for its next accelerator cohorts (beginning in early 2022) in New York, Paris, and Singapore.


Food & Ag-Tech Companies Make TIME’s Best 100 Inventions of 2021 List

Every year, TIME puts together a list of 100 inventions that change the way we live for the better. The publication judges contenders, who were nominated by TIME’s editors and correspondents, based on creativity, originality, efficacy, ambition, and impact.

The list spans multiple categories, such as accessibility, artificial intelligence, consumer electronics, fitness, medical care, transportation, and of course, food and drink. This year the list featured a whole bunch of food tech, including many companies The Spoon has previously covered like SAVRPak, MeliBio, InnerPlant, and Upside Foods.

Here are just a few that made the list:

Kuleana

This San-Francisco-based food tech start-up has developed a “sushi-grade” plant-based tuna made from ingredients like algae, koji, radish, bamboo, and potato. Kuleana‘s tuna deep red color mimics ahi tuna, and it also contains nutrients like B-12, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. Like regular tuna, alternative tuna filet can be eaten in poke bowls, sushi, and ceviche. The start-ups next planned product is plant-based salmon.

SAVRPak

The goal of SAVRPak is to eliminate food waste, and keep delivery food warm and not soggy. In October of this year, the company unveiled a prototype of its delivery packaging aimed at keeping food at 140o or above for more than 20 minutes. The start-up has also developed small packs that can be placed inside to-go food boxes that absorb moisture to keep food fresh and crisp.

Sfoglini Cascatelli

This invention is relatively low-tech, but as one of the three best inventions in the “food and drink” category, it’s worth a mention. Dan Pashman, foodie and the host of The Sporkful podcast, could not find a pasta shape that held the ideal amount of pasta sauce, stayed on the fork, and was satisfying to sink your teeth into. He, therefore, decided to invent, the Cascatelli pasta, which is a short, ruffled noodle that has a half tube shape. The pasta is manufactured by pasta company Sfoglini, and it costs $19.96 for 4 lbs.

MeliBio

Using synthetic biology and precision fermentation, MeliBio has developed plant-based honey that has the same taste, texture, and mouthfeel as honey made from bees. Earlier this year in March, the start-up raised a pre-seed round totaling $850,000. To hear more about the company, watch The Spoon’s interview with the founder Darko Mandich.

Upside Foods

Upside Foods announced in May of this year that its first product will be cultured chicken, which is still pending regulatory approval. Since then, the start-up unveiled its state-of-the-art facilities (totaling 53,000 square feet) in Emeryville, California where it will be capable of producing up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated chicken every year. Check out a glimpse inside the new facilities here.

InnerPlant Innersoy Living Sensor

InnerPlant edits the DNA of plants to enable them to glow a certain color when the plant is stressed from lack of water or under attack from pests or fungal infection. The start-up has so far worked with tomato and Arabidopsis plants, and InnerSoy is the plant it is currently working on commercializing. InnerPlant recently gave The Spoon an exclusive viewing of its glowing living sensor plants, and you can watch the video here.

Watch This Video of Innerplant’s Glowing Plants in Action

InnerPlant is an agtech company that engineers plant DNA to turn them into “living sensors”. When plants glow a certain color, this signals that it is stressed from lack of water, pests, or nutrient deficiencies. This helps farmers spot stressed plants much more quickly than they normally would be able to, and therefore have a better chance of mitigating crop loss.

Last week, The Spoon was given a virtual zoom tour of the InnerPlant facilities and shown the glowing plants under lasers. The company had examples of the two plant species it is currently working with, tomatoes and Arabidopsis. The colored light is not visible to the human eye, so Roderick Kumimoto, the Chief Science Officer of InnerPlant, used different laser pointers to demonstrate the glow. In the field, farmers use InnerPlant’s augmented reality system to photograph with an iPhone or iPad to detect glowing plants.

As you can see, the engineered plants look just like the regular non-engineered plants in normal lighting. Turn the lights off and point a laser at them, the engineered tomato and Arabidopsis plants have a yellow, red-orange, and green glow.

To create the living sensor plants, InnerPlant adds a fluorescent protein (which is safe for human consumption) into the plant’s DNA. Different colors signal different problems. If the farmer is using satellites or drones to view the plants from above, then up to three colors can be detected. From a ground-level view, upwards of seven to eight colors can be seen.

The companies first products are tomato and Arabidopsis plants that signal if they are under attack by fungus or pests. Currently, the company is working on commercializing InnerSoy plants. After that, they plan to develop cotton and corn versions of their glowing plants.

Soli Organic Announces $120 Million in New Financing to Expand Indoor Soil-Based Farms

Virginia-based indoor growing company Soli Organic announced last week that it has entered a $120 million financing arrangement with real estate firm Decennial Group. This new partnership will help the company in its plans to expand with eight new farms, each with the capacity to grow 5 million pounds of produce per year.

Soli was founded in 1989 as Shenandoah Growers, a conventional agriculture company based in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley region. The Decennial Group partnership and expansion is an important milestone in the company’s transition to all-indoor production.

While many controlled environment agriculture companies are using hydroponic and aeroponic technologies to facilitate indoor growth, Soli is using a soil-based system. This August, that proprietary technology won the Agtech Breakthrough award for Sunless Production System of the Year.

The company says that its soil-based, LED-powered approach has helped it to achieve lower unit costs for organic produce than either conventional farming or other indoor growing methods. One of the big selling points for controlled environment agriculture is that the developing body of technologies could make healthy food more accessible to all—and Soli’s success in bringing down costs suggests that the industry may be able to keep that promise.

Using its soil-based system, Soli is focusing on minimizing water and energy use. “Our organic soil, 95% of which is recycled back into our system after use, is an ideal growing medium for crops due to its slow release of water, with crops controlling uptake based on their need,” a company representative told The Spoon via email. “As a reflection of our ‘biology first’ philosophy, we are also controlling environmental factors, such as leaf temperature, relative humidity, CO2 and light, to optimize the plants’ efficiency in water uptake.”

The company is also working to optimize its LED lighting systems to conserve energy, and using wind and solar power at some locations.

Soli has already broken ground on its first new construction, which will be located in Anderson County, S.C. The company expects the facility to be operational by the second quarter of 2022, and to create 50 local jobs. The locations of the other facilities have yet to be announced.

The company has also been taking steps to boost the commercial reach of its products (which include herbs, leafy greens, and microgreens) by staffing its c-suite with executives from big-name food brands. In June, former Starbucks CMO Matthew Ryan stepped up as the company’s new CEO, while former Postmates SVP Mike Buckley became CFO.

“My career has been shaped and defined by innovative, market-leading companies. Here, the opportunity for growth could be even greater, as Shenandoah Growers is uniquely positioned to deliver against the converging demand for affordable, high-quality and organic produce, and the need to grow it sustainably and reliably,” said Ryan in a press release on the leadership changes.

It’ll be interesting to see how Soli’s combination of proprietary growing technology, legacy agriculture background, and big corporate leadership affects the company’s transition to all-indoor growing—and how soil-based indoor farming will stack up against other methods in terms of environmental footprint and economic efficiency.

We Talked To Bowery Farming About the Community Impact of Their Indoor Farming Expansion

Back in December, The Spoon reported on Bowery Farming’s plans to build a new, indoor farm in Bethlehem, Pa. The New York-based company already runs two commercial farms in the Mid-Atlantic region, plus two R&D facilities and a plant science innovation hub in New Jersey.

Bowery plans to open the Bethlehem farm sometime this year or in 2022—and meanwhile, they’re expanding in other ways. The company has doubled its revenue this year. Its products are sold in over eight times as many stores as they were last January.

Last week, The Spoon joined Bowery’s Chief Commercial Officer, Katie Seawell, on Zoom to find out how the company is engaging local communities as it expands its operations.

The most obvious way that Bowery’s farms bring value to their communities is by producing nutritious, pesticide-free food. The company expects its new Bethlehem facility to produce about 20 million clamshells of leafy greens and other produce per year. (To grow that volume of food via conventional agriculture, you’d need to use up 5 million square feet of land.)

Seawell attributes some of Bowery’s recent growth to rising consumer interest in locally grown produce and food supply chain issues—both in turn influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the end of the day, she says, the company wants to build a more sustainable, productive farming model that will weather disasters.

“If we can minimize the externalities of climate change, weather events, and other disruptions that you see in the traditional food system, and can create surety of supply in a way that is more sustainable,” says Seawell, “then we can meet the moment, meet the demands of our growing population. That’s the model we’re cracking with indoor vertical farming at Bowery.”

Last year, the USDA declared Bethlehem’s South Side a food desert. The Brown and White, a local newspaper, reported on the abundance of fast food and relative lack of healthy options in the area.

Of course, Bowery’s expansion won’t solve that problem if its products aren’t accessible to locals. Seawell says that the company is taking a multi-pronged approach to boost accessibility as it expands its commercial footprint. First, the team is taking steps to make its products available to consumers across a wide range of retailers—from Whole Foods and independent grocery stores to Walmart and Giant.

“We’re also looking at innovative models for bringing our product to communities,” says Seawell. Bowery donates produce to nonprofit hunger relief organizations, including Maryland Food Bank and Table to Table.

The company has also partnered with D.C. Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that acts as a wholesale partner, reselling Bowery products to local corner stores at reduced rates. Through its Healthy Corners food program, the organization is working on building the infrastructure for corner stores to carry more fresh foods. “It’s a really cool program because it’s not just access to fresh food that these communities need,” says Seawell, “it’s the infrastructure to support fresh food programs.”

Seawell says the company will explore further community partnerships as it expands to Bethlehem and beyond.

The team is also excited about the Bethlehem farm because of the opportunities that it represents for the former industrial powerhouse. Bowery received grant support for the project from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and the Governor’s Action Team. The farm will be part of an economic redevelopment project intended to boost employment and create new opportunities in the area.

The farm will be located at a site that was once home to a steel mill. The tract has been identified as a brownfield (or potentially contaminated) site. “This is land that you could not farm in a traditional sense,” says Seawell. “So what we’re doing is transitioning this non-arable land into a highly productive farm that will serve this community.”

Seawell says Bowery provides entry-level employment opportunities that require no previous agricultural experience. Bowery farms also provide year-round employment, in contrast to conventional farms, which generally have seasonal work cycles.

“We cast a very wide net in terms of who we recruit in the community,” she says. “We look more for a cultural fit than any specific, hard skill set.”

The company is also considering the energy footprint of its new facility. Its existing commercial farms are run using low-impact hydropower. Seawell says the team is currently considering renewable energy strategies for the Bethlehem farm.

Last spring, Bowery raised $300 million in Series C funding, which it will use to accelerate its farming expansion and bring new products to market. Seawell says that as the company considers new sites in the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond, the team will continue to weigh their commercial bases, the availability of untapped talent pools, and sustainability issues.

“We aspire to take this model nationally, and eventually globally,” says Seawell. “So in many ways, the new Bethlehem farm is a milestone for us as we continue to think about a national footprint for Bowery.”

Edete Precision Technologies Increases Pistachio Yields With Pollinator Robots

Many plants and trees rely on natural phenomena like bees and wind to be pollinated and produce fruit. However, bee colony collapse and climate change threaten the ability of these crops to be pollinated. An Israeli ag-tech start-up called Edete Precision Technologies addresses this mounting concern using robots and artificial pollination technology.

This week, the company announced in a press release sent to The Spoon that it has successfully used its robot pollinators to increase yields in pistachio orchards by 24 percent. 

The start-up’s robot is called the 2BeTM pollinator, and it disperses a precise amount of pollen into flowers during the pistachio tree blooming season. Normally, pistachio trees are naturally pollinated by the wind blowing pollen (male sperm) into the female ovule. However, climate change may be contributing to the desynchronization of male and female trees blossoming, which results in lower crop yields. 

For pistachio farmers, this 24 percent increase in yields equates to an additional $1,850 in income per acre.

The last time The Spoon wrote about Edete, the company was addressing the problem of bee colony collapse and the role this plays in the crops that depend on this. In Australia and California, Edete uses its technology to artificially pollinate almond trees. 

Robots and automation are becoming more prevalent in agriculture. Tevel, another Israel-based ag-tech company, developed flying robots for harvesting fruit. Farmwise, Small Robot Company, and Greenfield Robotics all have different variations of autonomous weed-picking robots.

Edete completed its pilot run of artificially pollinated pistachio trees in Sacramento, California on an 82-acre orchard. Now, the company is gearing up to offer its pollination technology to other growers in California for when the pistachio blooming season starts in April 2022.

You can see how Edete’s robotic pollination works in the video below:

Edete Artificial Pollination 2020

With New Funding in Hand, TrusTrace Looks To Make Supply Chains More Sustainable

Supply chain is the buzz phrase filling daily news headlines related to empty supermarket shelves and this year’s hottest toys being in short supply. Specifically, one longer-term issue is the traceability of products—especially food and other perishables—as consumers become increasingly conscious of their health and the environment.

Companies such as Stockholm-based TrusTrace are among those who are applying a combination of technologies to empower suppliers and consumers in the flow of information from field or processing plant to table. To further its growth in this space, the company recently received a $6 million investment from Industrifonden and Fairpoint Capital. The funds will be used for product development, global expansion, and building out the company’s management team.


“TrusTrace enables product-level traceability and supply chain transparency to drive better, more sustainably-conscious and socially responsible sourcing decisions,” said Shameek Ghosh, CEO, and Co-Founder of TrusTrace said in an interview with The Spoon. “With this latest funding round, we will continue leveraging cutting-edge technology and the best minds in the industry to achieve positive, restorative change for people and the planet.”

Consumer interest in the details about the origins of their various foods is becoming more than just a nice-to-have. According to research by ADM, the trend had been growing for several years with the pandemic, and it’s the associated concerns about health and safety, acting as a catalyst for a greater understanding of what is in everything from farm-fresh tomatoes to canned string beans. Global supplier ADM discovered 58% of global consumers would be more concerned with locality claims because of COVID-19. In addition, ADM reports that 38% of global consumers will back their interest in sustainability with their wallets and pay more for verified products.

Among the details of sustainability, tracing include place of origin, ingredients, the use of chemicals, processing stops along the route, and other factors related to the environment.


TrusTrace hopes to expand beyond its current client base, including Coop, a Swedish retail chain. As Ghosh explains, one of TrusTrace’s signature advantages is that it fully integrates with a client’s ERP system using blockchain and its own proprietary technology. Being connected to Coop’s inventory management system allows TrusTrace to collect accurate information to document sustainability, which measures ten different parameters across 10,000 food products. In simple terms, TrusTrace creates a mapping of a product’s supply chain, which allows a customer to know essential details about a given product.


In the case of Coop, consumers can use an application that deploys a scanner to investigate the sustainability of a product and manifest that information in an easy-to-read diagram. The parameters used by Coop via its TrusTace implementation are based on an agreement by the county’s leading companies in conjunction with The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).


Ghosh hopes to bring TrusTrace to major retailers across Europe in the coming months and is even eyeing the United States as a potential target. At issue, he explains, is the need for national consensus on specific areas to measure to create a helpful mapping. The lack of a universal agreement in sustainability will be a hindrance to educating consumers worldwide.


TrusTrace is not alone in looking to cash in on this trend. Other companies in this space include Alpharetta, GA-based Aptean, IBM with its Food Trust product, and New York-based ripe.io

Supplant is Expanding its Fiber-Based Sugar Throughout the US Following $18M Raise

Americans have a problem: we consume way too much sugar (about 57 pounds a year on average) and not nearly enough fiber (only about 5 percent of the population ingests enough). The Supplant Company aims to offer a solution to this issue with its sugar made from the fibers of agricultural side streams like corn, wheat, and rice.

At the start of this week, The Supplant Company announced that it has raised a $18 million Series A funding round. Celebrity investors like Ayesha Curry (actress) and Chris Paul (Basketball player) joined this round, along with Manta Ray, EQT, Khosla, Felicis, Coatue, Y Combinator, Agfunder, and more. This brings the company’s total funding to $27 million.

I spoke with Dr. Tom Simmons, the CEO and founder of The Supplant Company, earlier this week to discuss the latest funding round and what the next steps will be for the company. When asked what the next year will look like for the company, Simmons said the “…we’re really sort of focused on driving further rollouts of the product, so more products, and more places more consumers having them. And of course the scale-up size. There’s a whole load of technical work going on behind the scenes by all the scientists to ramp up production and use different feedstocks as well.”

The Supplant Company launched in the U.S. in June 2021 in partnership with Chef Thomas Keller and his restaurants in California and New York. The company’s sugar is currently still being used in the dessert dishes at these restaurant locations. Now, Supplant’s sugar is being used at You’re a Cookie (Illinois), Cookie Fix (Alabama), Sweet Republic (Arizona), Bakeology (California), and RiverSea (Virginia).

The Supplant Company is both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C), although it has primarily focused on business partnerships since its launch. I asked Simmons when I could buy a bag of Supplant’s sugar in say, my local Whole Foods, and he said, “We’re not planning to sell sugar anytime soon directly to consumers, maybe at some point in the future. We don’t think it’s where the big business opportunity nor the big social opportunity is.” Americans consume a shocking average of 71 grams of sugar per day, and Simmons sees most of this sugar consumption mostly stemming from foods, like cookies, cake, ice cream, and other sweets, that the consumers purchase outside of the home.

A few other companies in the food tech space are attempting to tackle the issue of individuals consuming too much added sugars. DouxMatok uses sugar reduction technology for its Incredo Sugar product, and launched its sugar-reduced products in April of this year. Better Juice uses enzymatic technology to reduce the amount of sugar in natural juices. Siggi’s, a company known for its Icelandic skyr cultured dairy products, released what it called a “Palate Training Kit” to help consumers reduce their sugar intake.

As The Supplant Company continues to rollout its sugar in the U.S., it will also work on developing new products. Simmons mentioned that the company will release new products in the not-so-distant future, including some that are not sugar.

Update: This article previously stated that The Supplant Company had raised $25 million USD in its most recent funding round, but the correct amount it has been updated to reflect is $18 million.

Oishii is Bringing its Specialty Indoor Strawberries to Los Angeles

The Omakase Berry is a varietal of strawberry grown in Japan known for its creamy texture, level of sweetness, and aromatic qualities. Courtesy of Oishii, a controlled environment agriculture (CEA) company that grows strawberries, Omakase Berries are coming to Los Angeles.

Oishii currently has two indoor farm locations on the East Coast in New York and New Jersey, and the new Los Angeles facility will be the first on the West Coast. According to the press release sent to The Spoon, Oishii is the “only vertical farming company to have perfected the strawberry at commercial scale”. Its indoor farms use zero pesticides, and its strawberries are a carbon-neutral crop.

When we last wrote about Oishii in April 2021, an eight-pack of the Omakase Berries cost $50. Unfortunately, heading west hasn’t resulted in lower prices, despite the company’s stated plans that it had plans to start growing an “everyday berry” that would be offered at a more affordable price. If you want to order the berries in Los Angeles, they are still set at the same expensive price.

With its focus on strawberries and other fruits and vegetables, Oishii stands apart from other indoor farm companies which mainly grow leafy greens and herbs. In October 2020, Driscoll and indoor farm company, Plenty, announced their partnership to start growing strawberries indoors. Hopefully, once Plenty makes it berries commercially available and Oishii develops an “every day” strawberry, consumers will have access to a more affordable indoor-grown strawberry.

The Omakase Berries are available for pre-order on Oishii’s website. The berries are available at a restaurant called Destroyer in Los Angeles.

Paul Lightfoot of BrightFarms Discusses the Trajectory of Carbon-Neutral Foods

In 2011, Paul Lightfoot founded BrightFarms, an indoor hydroponic farm for growing leafy greens. BrightFarms is alive and well, and this past August, the company was acquired by one of its investors, Cox Enterprises. I had the opportunity to catch up with the serial entrepreneur to discuss his latest passion and project: advocating for carbon-neutral foods in his newsletter, called “Negative Foods Newsletter“. Here is our conversation:

The transcript has been lightly edited for clarity

Ashlen: Do you want to start by discussing what you’ve been working on and what your newsletter is about?

Paul: The thesis for the newsletter, and for my future book, is that the food system is responsible for, depending on who you ask, about a third of global greenhouse gases. Food, however, is unique. It’s unique in the sense that we all have to eat constantly to survive, but it’s also unique that food can be grown regeneratively, crops can be grown in a way that doesn’t release carbon into the atmosphere, and can actually draw carbon down out of the atmosphere. So if, as a society, we continue to make changes so that we eat food that draws carbon on a net basis, the food system can actually be a lever to reverse climate change. Food is sort of different, and I would say it’s better than energy let’s say, or transportation. You can eliminate your emissions with energy, with things like wind or solar or hydro, but it doesn’t actually pull carbon out of the atmosphere and that’s what is sort of magical about food, that it can, I think, can be a lever to go backward on climate change. So that’s what I’m working on and that’s what I’m excited about.

Ashlen: Could you briefly describe the process of what it might look like to go carbon neutral? I know that’s going to look different for a lot of different crops and companies.

Paul: I’m going to answer your question two ways. The first part is, with respect to a particular category of food, and the second is with respect to society, our society in America, I’ll use, beef as an example, and I like to make this example because it’s pretty well studied and well known and because the stakes are so high. So industrial meat, in my opinion, although it’s, I would say it’s a fact, it’s true, but industrial meat is the worst actor in terms of climate in our food system.

It’s grown in a way, typically that releases incredible amounts of greenhouse gases. Part of it is that we’re generally feeding grains like corn and soy, to our cattle, and the fertilizer for those, those grains are generally made from natural gas. And often, a lot of those grains are grown in places that used to be carbon sinks and the worst parts of those stories are like the Amazon rainforest that’s burned down to grow corn and soy for cows in the United States.

It’s a disaster, not only did we burn down 1000s of years of stored carbon, but every year there’s not more carbon stored in that case. The cattle themselves, of course, release methane, because they’re eating the wrong food. And so you’ve got those three reasons why there’s an enormous amount of greenhouse gases released with industrial beef. 

Now, on the other hand, there’s beef that can be grown regeneratively and people might think of words like grass-fed. This is truly having pastures, and a low enough density of animals per space and pastures, that the grass itself is the product, and the beef is sort of a byproduct. The grass itself is grown naturally in a way that on a net basis results in more carbon being taken from the atmosphere than released. So, if people convert their beef, eating away from distribution toward regenerative beef, they’re actually making climate change, better. 

It’d be fine if you got rid of all beef compared to industrial beef as well but you can actually become a lever for good. 

So that’s one example, and we could give examples for perennials, like olives and lots of different ways as well, and even examples in row crops like wheat, but I’ll move on now to think about how do we do this as a society, right. And, I think that consumers will be a big part of what changes things and I’m pretty optimistic. I think that when consumers have more understanding of the carbon footprints of their food choices, they will make choices, such that foods with a lower carbon footprint, which will have a competitive advantage. 

I say this based on recognizing that over the last 20 years, consumer demand for organic skyrocketed. People paid more and people bought more organic foods, even though there wasn’t really clear data that organic was better for the environment, or for your health. And that gives me confidence that when they understand foods are better carbon footprints, they’ll be willing to pay more and choose those foods. I think when that happens, when consumers start choosing foods that are carbon negative or carbon-neutral, you’ll see this massive shift in consumer demand, and then you’ll have farms and food companies racing to meet that demand and that’ll result in changing the practices to more regenerative practices.

 So I’m excited about that. The one thing that’s missing, by the way, is that knowledge for consumers, I do think we need to get a paradigm in a place where there’s some standardization, about what labels being what and where you can give consumers knowledge about their foods carbon footprints.

Ashlen: I think you make such a good point about the organic movement. I was in Whole Foods actually the other day and I saw a box of cereal that said it was made with regenerative grains, and thought whoa, I have not seen that yet.  

Paul: That’s interesting, I wonder what brand it was. Maybe General Mills. It’s such early days for that, and if you stop 100 People walking through that aisle in Whole Foods, I think 90 of them won’t really understand what your regenerative is, which is part of the challenge today. I think there’s a risk that if we don’t define it, it could get sort of watered down in a way like the word “natural” is now, which would be a real shame. But it’s great to see that big food companies are not in, you know, in my pattern recognition famous for innovation, or for cannibalizing their existing portfolios of brands, but there have been some massive investments and announcements made by big food companies. Maybe my favorite is that Unilever intends to roll out carbon labeling voluntarily, pretty soon on 1000s and 1000s of products. I’m hoping that is the rest of the industry.

Ashlen: Many companies are making claims and pledges to go carbon neutral. What should look for, and should we trust all of them? How do we avoid greenwashing as consumers? 

Paul: I don’t judge companies or people by their motives, so I don’t think to myself, this company is bad because of what they’ve done in the past, I judge them by their actions. I do think that there are good people working at Unilever and General Mills that want to do the right thing. It’s hard to change big companies. It’s hard to cannibalize your revenue stream, it’s hard to innovate. PepsiCo was, I remember famously, would say, we’re making our food so much healthier, “Look at the reduced calories” when they were just changing the unit sizes and their products. That’s one of these cases where I think that’s B.S. that’s not making food healthier. 

So I do think we need to worry. I do think that the consumer demand for regenerative food and carbon-friendly food is so strong, that there will almost certainly be claims made that don’t bear out. So I think we should judge people less than what they say and what they’ve done in the past and more on what they do. I’m pushing the world to get good labeling and pushing the world to get good definitions and standardization. In the meantime, we probably have to be a little bit circumspect and really analyze what companies are doing and say.

Ashlen: Are there certain foods and beverages that are easier to make carbon-neutral? I’m thinking along the lines are animal-based products more difficult to make carbon-neutral than say cereal or something.

Paul: Yeah. Oh, such an interesting question. I think the starting point by the way is that eating whole and unprocessed plants is almost certainly way better on a Planet basis. Right, so the carrot is not screaming for attention on the shelf, but if you’re eating a carrot, that was, you know produced thoughtfully, especially if it was produced without synthetic fertilizers which generally would be if it was organic. You likely have a very small carbon footprint, certainly, relative to processed food like cereals or relative to meat that’s grown in CAFOs, or in any sort of an industrial system. 

There are some rules of thumb that you can follow, you can go back to Michael Pollan’s old “how to eat” phrase, which is “eat real food, mostly plants, and not too much”, that probably goes a long way and of course, when he said food he was implying that it was real food and not processed. With that being said, this is a nuanced topic. Like I said with beef, it can be produced in a way that’s climate positive, what I would call it negative food. It’s just not what you generally find in supermarkets today, so it’s unfortunately, a little bit complex for consumers right now.

Ashlen: As you said, this is still very new, we’re still figuring out a lot and it’s exciting to see it unfold. 

Paul: It’s new, but it’s pretty urgent, so I feel like there’s a little bit of a race on, and we got to get people thinking about it, talking about it more. 

Okay, so I’m thinking of a Pennsylvania grocer called Giant, it’s like the supermarket in Pennsylvania, they have a big push for regenerative sourcing. I hope that retailers have an important role to play in this. I think we all need to be out there, getting people to understand this, and holding them accountable for any greenwashing as well.

Ashlen: Do you want to just briefly discuss some brands and companies that you like to support? 

Paul: I’d love to. Yeah. So, one that I just learned about was at the regenerative food systems, investment forum in Oakland last week, which was fun, and there was a beer brand at a cocktail party from Patagonia Provisions, Patagonia’s food investment group. Basically, they’re sourcing the main ingredients like wheat that were grown regeneratively to get a regenerative beer. And I thought that’s awesome. I don’t know that I can buy it here in New York yet but I’m going to have someone, you know, drive a truck across the country for me so that’s one of my favorites. 

There’s a beef company near Asheville North Carolina called hickory nut gap. And that’s a multi-generation family-owned business that buys regenerative animal products from farms that are following certain practices, run by a guy I trust and with a good brand and I think that’s an example of one of my favorites.

I do like the olive oil story, that’s Corto, that is the company that I covered in my newsletter. I actually made one of my kids a fried egg, in their olive oil this morning. Maybe another company is not a food brand itself but it is sort of a platform is in Northern Virginia. There’s a company called for 4P Foods, and it’s this digital platform that’s connecting the buyers that care about this stuff so the universities, the corporate campuses, the school districts that have these mandates to source regenerative food, and it’s connecting them with the farmers that are growing regenerative food because those farmers are having a hard time getting through the bigger national distribution networks. And so far 4P Foods is creating a new network essentially because there’s demand out there, and they’re bringing the farms to these buyers. It’s not just online, they have warehouses and trucks so they’re really trying to be everything. And I think that’s a pretty exciting business as well.

Scientists Discover How to Manipulate Plants’ Response to Light for Food Growth

What if you could turn a plant’s genes on and off depending on changes in light and temperature? A group of scientists from UC Riverside has done just that in a recent study that could have important implications for farmers in an era of rapid and unpredictable climate change (reported on by UC Riverside News).

Plants need light to develop and grow, and the protein found in plants that detects light is called phytochrome B. This particular protein changes the expression of genomes and alters plant growth based on light information received. Additionally, phytochrome B can control the activity of a group of proteins called PIFs. If the activity of the PIF proteins are reduced, this could lead to the plant’s stem slowing in growth.

According to the researchers, this discovery can assist in increasing food production and crop yields. When plants are too close together in a field, they compete for light. Shorter plants that end up in the shade of other plants exert extra energy to grow their stems taller than their neighbors. This extra energy is taken away from growing the “food part” of the plant, like the seeds, leave, or fruit.

The scientists, led by UCR botany professor Meng Chen, reduced the activity of the PIF proteins and reduced the stem growth. In turn, they discovered that plants with shorter stems can free up energy for the more desirable edible portions to grow more rapidly and robustly. They also found that manipulating a plant’s response to light can allow plants to be grown closer together and in the shade.

With the human population rapidly approaching 8 billion and expected to hit close to 10 billion by 2050, finding alternative solutions to growing high crop yields is prudent. Indoor farming, as companies like CropOne, AeroFarms, and BrightFarms practice, allow for a fully controlled environment and can result in consistent crop yields. A company called InnerPlant edits plant DNA to turn the plant into a living sensor to mitigate crop loss.

Climate change is expected to affect growing seasons and the ability to grow certain crops worldwide. However, studies like this give hope that one day crops will better adapt to fluctuations in light and temperature, making them viable in a rapidly changing environment.