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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Food Tech News: Artificial Pollination for Almond Orchards, Brave Robot Available Nationwide

If you’re anything like me, the days blur together easily after months of stay-at-home orders, and you probably have to look at a calendar to determine what day it is. However, our Food Tech News is out today, which means it’s a Saturday! This week, we have stories on artificial pollination in almond orchards, Brave Robot’s nationwide expansion, Keurig’s phone app, and a fully plant-based Starbucks location.

Edete to use artificial pollination for Australian almond orchard

Edete Precision Technologies for Agriculture, an ag tech startup based in Israel, recently signed a contract with one of Australia’s largest almond orchards. This August, when the almonds trees begin to bloom, Edete will apply its artificial pollination technology to the almond trees. The company’s machines collect flowers and then separate out the pollen. The collected pollen can be stored for up to a year, and when trees are ready to be pollinated, the machines dispense the optimal amount of pollen per flower. Due to the decline of pollinators and issues like bee colony collapse disorder, crops that require insect pollination (around 75% of all crops) are at risk for severe yield declines, so Edete’s technology may become crucial in the upcoming years. The company also plans to work with almond growers in California.

Brave Robot’s animal free ice cream made in partnership with fermentation company Perfect Day Source: Perfect Day

Brave Robot is now available in 5,000 stores across US

Brave Robot, a brand of The Urgent Company, shared that its animal-free flora-based ice cream is now available in 5,000 locations across the US. The ice cream comes in eight flavors, and uses Perfect Day’s proprietary animal-free whey. Although the ice cream does not require the use of cows for milk, it does contain dairy because the whey protein is essentially an exact replica of whey protein from cows. Brave Robot ice cream is available in stores like Kroger, Sprouts, Safeway, Lassen’s, and Ralph’s throughout the US.

Keurig Commercial Remote Brew App

Keurig announces new phone controlled and touchless brewing feature

Keurig Commercial announced a new touchless feature available for its commercial coffee makers intended for workplaces. Users can download the Keurig Remote Brew App, and through the app select which coffee or specialty beverage they would like to brew. Developed with the existing Bluetooth Kit, the Remote Brew App can be used with Eccellenza Touch and Eccellenza Momentum models. This new feature was created to make coffee in a COVID-19 safe manner for those employees who may be returning to the workplace.

Photo from Starbuck’s website

Starbucks to pilot fully plant-based location

An existing Starbucks location near Seattle, Washington will be piloted for offering only plant-based menu items. This was announced by Starbucks CEO in the recent Q1 earnings call, but it is unclear when the plant-based transition will occur, or which exact location it will be. On the Starbucks website, an article was released in January 2021 that shared that plant-based items will continue to be added at Starbucks locations globally as part of the company’s sustainability initiatives. New plant-based items being trialed in the U.S. include an Impossible breakfast sandwich, vegan bagels, oat milk, and a variety of almond milk-based beverages.

Here’s Why Future Cattle Farmers and Fishermen May Work at an Office Park or Abandoned Mall

As more and more companies in the cell-based meat space migrate from prototype to full pilot production phase, one of the questions that we need to start thinking about is how exactly all this meat will be made at scale.

Sure, scaled production is likely 10 years out for many of these companies, but the reality is re-configuring an industry as big and significant as meat, poultry or fish production will be a herculean task, so it’s worth starting the conversation now.

One of the futuristic visions I keep hearing about is the idea of “meat breweries“, where buildings host giant bioreactors that grow cultured meat.

It’s a weird concept now, but in fifteen years time there’s a good chance we’ll need meat breweries sprinkled throughout the country (and globe) if we plan to get anywhere near the volume of production where cell-based meat can account for 35% of all meat consumed predicted by consulting firm AT Kearney by 2045.

If we’re going to use the brewery concept as a model to frame the conversation, it’s worth comparing the idea of meat “brewing” to that of traditional beer brewing market and ask: will meat breweries be something akin to big high-production beer breweries like those of Anheuser-Busch, producing a bunch of meat centrally and shipping around the country?

Or, alternatively, will meat brewing be something closer to the microbrewery model where meat is made city-by-city for consumption within a hundred mile radius?

My best guess based on conversations with early entrepreneurs in this space is the meat-brewing production model will be much closer to how one makes my favorite local IPA to than, say, Budweiser. In other words: There will be lots of meat breweries around the country and around the world, producing cell-based meat to be consumed locally.

So where will these meat breweries be built? The reality is that while cell-based meat production can certainly be done in a building built on farmland (and I definitely think livestock farmers should consider such a thing), the reality is that meat brewing can and will be done just about anywhere where there is space. Space like in old factories, warehouses, empty office parks and even restaurants. Just as with today’s brewpubs, you can even envision some restaurants that make their meat on site in the future.

And then there’s empty shopping malls and abandoned retail spaces. Retail real estate demand is shrinking quickly and likely won’t come back as more people buy online and work remotely. We’ve already seen some empty retail locations turned into vertical farms, so why not think about turning these spaces into the meat farms of the future?

No matter where we decide to put these future cell-based meat, poultry and fish production facilities, chances are we will need a lot of them. Those developers, entrepreneurs and city planners that start envisioning a future now that includes distributed cell-based meat production could help us usher in the cultured meat farmers and fishermen of the future.

Tevel Raises $20M For Its Flying Fruit-Picking Robots

Tevel Aerobotics Technologies, which develops flying fruit-picking robots that provide autonomous on-demand harvest, announced this week it has raised $20 million for its technology. Investors in this round include venture capital firms Maverick Ventures Israel, OurCrowd, AgFunder, as well as Asian agriculture equipment producers Kubota and Forbon. This brings the company’s total funding to $33.9 million, which includes a $2.5 million grant from the Israel Innovation Authority (news from AgFunder News).

Tevel, based in Tel-Aviv, Israel, has developed a patented platform called FAR (Flying Autonomous Robots) that is a combination of the actual flying robots, algorithms, AI, and data analytics. The flying robots are equipped with computer vision and AI that detects fruit and foliage, and identifies the type of fruit, size, and ripeness. Attached to the drone is a three-foot-long claw for grabbing and picking the fruit. Additionally, the small drones are capable of other tasks like pruning, trimming, and thinning of orchard trees.

Fruit picking is very dependent on the available labor force, which has been consistently declining throughout the world in the past few years, causing labor shortages in orchards. On top of this, even though agriculture workers are considered essential personnel, the pandemic has caused delays for laborers seeking visas to pick fruit in other countries. Tevel aims to provide a solution to this issue through its platform, which will also allow fruit farmers to use its services exactly when needed to fill unmet labor needs on an on-demand basis.

Tevel is the first flying produce picking robot we’ve covered at The Spoon; however, there are plenty of other agriculture companies using robots on the ground to reduce labor costs and increase efficiency during harvest. Root AI raised $7.2 million last summer for its tomato and strawberry harvesting robots. Companies such as Greenfield Robotics, Small Robot Company, and FarmWise use AI-powered robots to remove weeds from crop fields. My colleague Jenn Marston predicts that we will see more automation in agriculture in 2021, which will include more robots and software technologies that create the optimal environment for particular crops.

Tevel’s new funding will be used to continue the production of its technology and launch its commercial services for orchards. The service is not commercially available for farms yet but the company says it will be conducting pilots of its platform this year in Spain, Italy, and the US. Tevel is also accepting additional equity crowdfunded investments directly and through the investment platform OurCrowd.

Food Tech News: First Indoor Saltwater Hydroponic Farm + A Boozy Advent Calendar

It’s our weekend food tech wrap-up of stories you might have missed from around the web.

If you celebrate Christmas, we hope you enjoyed the holiday even if it looked a bit different this year. Maybe your loved ones gifted you something from The Spoon’s 2020 gift guide, and you’re busy playing around with your brand new Bonbowl or BEERMKR. Between new gift admiring and leftover cookie scarfing, we invite you to take time to catch up on some Food Tech News. This week we rounded up news on the first indoor saltwater hydroponic farm, Bombay Sapphire’s advent calendar, and a new vegan vending machine in Las Vegas.

Heron Farms is the first indoor saltwater hydroponic farm

Based in Charleston, South Carolina, Heron Farms uses the most plentiful resource on the planet, ocean water, to grow crops in an indoor hydroponic farm. This is apparently the first indoor saltwater hydroponic farm, and it is currently focused on growing sea beans. Sea beans have a crisp, crunchy texture with a flavor close to asparagus, and can be used in dishes such as salads and stirfries. The farm replaces freshwater, which is a resource being drained faster than its being replenished, and uses micronutrient-rich and abundant seawater to feed the crops.

Bombay Sapphire creates an advent calendar

Most advent calendars are filled with chocolate or candies and distributed at the start of December. Bombay Sapphire has partnered with the London Graphic Centre to provide an atypical boozy and artsy advent calendar that celebrates the days between Christmas and the new year. Behind each door of the calendar, there is some type of tool relevant to either making cocktails or art. The calendar comes with a cocktail-making guide, and behind each window of the calendar, there is a QR code that takes you to a website that provides videos and additional instructions.

Las Vegas is getting a vegan vending machine

The Vintage Vegan Diner in Las Vegas, Nevada has been doing catering, curbside pick-up, and delivery of its American-style vegan food since May of this year. The business will now be launching the city’s first vegan vending machine. The machine will contain the most popular dishes from the diner, including tofu bites, sliders, and cookie dough. The retro pink vending machine will pop-up at different areas throughout Las Vegas, eventually settling in one location.

Soos Technology Wins $1M Prize in Grow-NY Competition

Israel-based Soos Technology, an animal agriculture technology start-up, was named the winner of the $1M prize for the Grow-NY food and agriculture competition this week. The competition was comprised of over 260 competitors from around the world and included the following runner-ups winners: SoFresh, Zetifi, Candidus, Halomine, Leep Foods, and PureSpace.

Soos Technology aims to disrupt the commercial egg hatchery industry through its incubation system. Through this system, the sex development of poultry embryos is influenced to change a genetic male chick to an egg-laying female. A variety of factors, including temperature, humidity, sound vibration, and carbon dioxide levels, are used to affect the gene expression responsible for the reproductive system.

SOOS - Egg sex determination

The commercial egg hatchery industry is notoriously cruel for male chicks. Since males cannot lay eggs and it takes too long to raise them to become the proper size for meat, male chicks are often culled as soon as they hatch. This means that 6 billion male chicks are culled each year; Soos Technology wants to end this waste of life, energy, water, and incubation space through its incubation system.  

Several countries like the U.S., France, Germany, and Canada aim to get rid of this standard industry practice and are trialing “in-ovo” sexing. The method involves determining the gender of the embryo long before the chick hatches in order to completely avoid the culling of male chicks. The male eggs would be removed from incubation and used for making vaccines and pet food. A Texas-based company, Ovabrite, is developing a technology that separates female and male eggs based on the sex-specific volatile molecules that leak from eggshells. Jerusalem-based eggXYT is implementing CRISPR gene-editing that would cause male eggs to glow under certain lighting.

With “in-ovo” sexing being trialed and Soos Technologies incubation system, it seems possible to end the culling of male chicks in the near future.

The DFA CoLab Accelerator Is Now Taking Applications for All Things Dairy Tech

Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) announced this week that applications are open for its 2021 accelerator program, newly renamed the DFA CoLab Accelerator. Any early-stage food product company working in some portion of the dairy supply chain is welcome to apply, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The DFA, a decades-old cooperative of U.S. dairy farms, has run the accelerator program for the last five years, using it as a way for startups to get a foothold in agtech and for the dairy industry to keep an ear to the ground when it comes to new technologies and processes. The solutions that come out of this program showcase just how much milage the food industry could actually get out of dairy products. The 2020 cohort, unveiled last May, included, among others, a company that makes sustainable fashion from excess milk and one brewing up premium alcoholic spirits from whey.

“On the food front, the sky is really the limit as long as one of the main ingredients is dairy,” Doug Dresslaer, director of innovation at DFA, said in this week’s press release. 

To that end, the 2021 program is looking for early-stage companies that are “dairy-focused or dairy-based” and using “applications or technologies related to any portion of the dairy value chain.” Some areas include supply chain optimization, traceability, data management, herd health management, and sustainability. 

The 90-day program will be a mix of virtual and onsite training that takes place from April through June, 2021. Participants get mentorship opportunities with DFA executives as well as training around business development, finance, product development, brand building, supply chain logistics, and several other areas of running a business. 

Applications are open through December 29, 2020.

Arable Raises $20 Million Series B Round For Agriculture Data Collection Tools

Arable, which makes tools that collect and synthesize agricultural data, announced today that it raised $20 million in its Series B funding round. This round was led by San Francisco-based Prelude Venture Capital, and brings the company’s total funding to $38 million.

I spoke with the CEO of Arable, Jim Ethington, on the phone this week, and he said the company will use the new funding to expand globally and increase its teams in Brazil, Chile, and the U.S. Additionally, the funding will be used to continue the company’s efforts in R&D, including new undisclosed projects.

Arable’s proprietary tech is called the Arable Mark 2, which is essentially a frisbee-shaped disc with several sensors that attaches to a pole. This hardware can be set up by a farmer in as little as 5 minutes. The sensor is able to monitor important metrics like rainfall, humidity, soil moisture, plant temperature, solar radiation, wind speed and direction, and chlorophyll index to name a few. After this data is collected, a farmer can go onto Arable’s app to check these metrics. Additionally, the app can be set to send notifications for any information collected that is important or out of the ordinary.

There are a few other Agtech companies besides Arable focusing on using unique techniques for data collection. Hawaiian-based Sensei Ag has built a 10,000 sq.ft. greenhouse, and uses an AI platform to collect crop data and implement an algorithm for growing practices. InnerPlant recently launched its first sensor plant (a tomato plant) that is fed a particular protein, and using a camera with augmented reality, the plants appear to be a different color when stressed, under attack from pests, or dehydrated.

The Arable Mark 2 and the system that comes along with it start at $850 a year. This subscription includes the hardware, the app, service, and support.

TeleSense Raises $10.2M for its IoT Crop Spoilage Prediction Platform

TeleSense, which uses IoT-enabled sensors to detect and predict crop spoilage, announced today that it has closed a $10.2 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by existing investor, Finistere Ventures with participation from Fulcrum Global Capital, UPL Ltd, Artesian and Mindset Ventures. This brings TeleSense’s total amount of funding to $17.5 million.

When we first wrote about TeleSense in 2018, it was focused on grain spoilage detection. Connected sensors placed in grain stores would monitor conditions like humidity and temperature to help farmers prevent spoilage.

But since then, the company acquired Dutch sensor company Webstech, and expanded TeleSense’s use case from just detection and more into prediction. TeleSense now combines it detection data with machine learning and AI to help maintain grain quality and optimize its path through the supply chain.

“Sensing temperature and humidity is nice, but that’s only part of the value,” Telesense CEO Naeem Zafar told my by phone earlier this month. “It’s beyond spoilage and more [about] operational efficiencies.”

To that end, TeleSense has also shifted its target customer. Initially, the company was going after farmers, but it has since shifted to focus more on large grain trading companies and co-ops. With its sensing and analysis technology, TeleSense can help predict how long to store grain and the optimal time to sell.

The company is also expanding into grain transportation. According to Zafar, dozens of grain barges catch fire because grains overheat. With its temperature monitoring, TeleSense sensors can help prevent this type of crop loss during transport.

In addition to prediction, Zafar said that TeleSense is also moving beyond grains and applying its technology to potatoes and other perishable commodities.

TeleSense is among a new crop of companies fighting food waste along the supply chain. Other players include companies like HWY Haul helps automate the trucking of produce, Silo aims to automate supply chain operations, and Strella Biotech, which uses IoT sensors on shipping palates to track produce freshness as it travels from farm to fork.

Headquartered in California, TeleSense also has offices in Australia and Europe.

Food Tech News: Cryogenic Avocado Trees, Vegans Take Over Television

This Friday, I bring you news on freezing avocado trees for future generations, vegan food brands advertising on television, and plant-based seafood hitting the frozen food aisle of Walmart. Between avocados and vegan food, these news tidbits are a direct appeal to millennials. Now all I need is some food tech news about brunch.

Avocados can now be cryogenically frozen for the future

I am pleased to share that my descendants will now be able to experience avocado toast. Chris O’ Brien, a Ph.D. student at the University of Queensland in Australia was able to revive avocado plant cuttings that he froze at -320°F with liquid nitrogen. Avocado trees are susceptible to disease, pests, disasters, and climate change; this discovery is important because it may help ensure that we will have avocados for future generations. Beside avocado trees, other plants like potatoes, grapevines, apples, bananas, and berries have all been successfully frozen then revived using cryopreservation.

Vegan foods brands are advertising on T.V.

Big names in the plant-based space have started running T.V. advertisements this year. Beyond Meat ran its first television campaign in August during the Lakers vs. Jazz game, with actress Octavia Spencer as the narrator. The Meatless Farm showcased its pea protein meat alternatives in a tantalizing commercial that ran in the UK, and Dr. Praegers used vegetable superheroes to promote its veggie burgers.

Vegan food brands seem to also be expanding their advertisements off the television. In the past week, I have personally seen ads for OZO pop up on my computer, and cheeky Oatly ads on the side of bus stops.

Sophie’s Kitchen brings plant-based seafood to Walmart

Sophie’s Kitchen, which makes plant-based seafood, will launch in Walmart this month. The company’s frozen plant-based crab cakes and shrimp will be made available in 400 Walmart locations. Sophie’s Kitchen joins other vegan brands available at Walmart including Gardein, So Delicious, Beyond Meat, and Lightlife.

Sensei Ag Uses AI Platform and Hydroponic Technology to Grow Food

As the world’s population inches towards its estimated 10 billion people by 2050, finding more, not to mention more sustainable, ways to feed people becomes more and more important. High-tech, indoor agriculture is one solution getting a lot of attention lately, and recently, a new company joined the fast-growing sector. Sensei Ag is the brainchild of Oracle’s Larry Ellison and scientist Dr. David Agus, and the company’s goal is to grow more greens using hydroponics and AI.

Based on the small Hawaiian island of Lāna’i, Sensei Ag has built a 100,000 sq. ft. hydroponic pilot greenhouse that is expected to grow 1 million pounds of food per year. I spoke with Sensei Ag CEO Sonia Lo by phone this week, and she described the company as an integrated solution to indoor farming that uses the best practices in computer vision, germination, and seeding to optimize indoor growing.

I asked Lo about how the company incorporates AI into their greenhouses. She said that their AI platform will act as a data engine that harnesses global grower knowledge, and will create an algorithm for the best-practices in indoor growing. She did not go into the specifics of their platform, but did mention that this would be made available to other growers, and it would be embedded into each part of their agricultural system. Sensei Ag also uses advanced cameras within their greenhouses to identify pests, pathogens, plant health, and uneven growth in crops. The company’s goal is to enable platforms within the greenhouse to make decisions on growing food autonomous of human intervention.

The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and a growing population has forced us to consider the possibility of global food insecurity. In response, companies like Phytoponics, Element Farms, and Gotham Greens all operate indoor farms that use hydroponic techniques to grow leafy greens. Meanwhile, companies like Verdeat, Rise Gardens, and Seedo offer at-home vertical farming products that allow you to grow leafy greens in your living room. 

Sensei Ag grows cherry tomatoes, basil, and butter lettuce, and Lo said that they will definitely be expanding the crops they grow. They are currently scouting for a location in California or Nevada for their flagship farm, which will be used as a template for rolling out future farms. 

Farmers Business Network Raises $250M

Farmers Business Network (FBN), an ag tech platform and online farmer network, announced yesterday that it has raised a $250 million Series F round of funding. The round was led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, with participation from Baron Capital Group, Balyasny Asset Management, Mandi Ventures, Lupa Systems and Ron Shaich. This brings the total amount of funding raised by FBN to $517.4 million.

Existing investors DBL Partners, Temasek, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., GV, Expanding Capital, and Kleiner Perkins also participated in the round. According to Bloomberg, Farmers Business Network now has a valuation of $1.75 billion.

FBN connects farmers with one another so they can share information on things like seeds, chemical and other inputs to bring more price transparency to the market. The farming sector is not immune from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ability for a farmers to save money on things like agricultural inputs can help farms stay afloat.

According to yesterday’s press announcement, Farmers Business Network now has 12,000 members farming more than 40 million acres across North America. For comparison, when we covered FBN back in Dec. of 2017, the company had 5,000 farmers across 16 million acres.

In addition to providing industry wide price analytics, Farmers Business Network also sells seeds and inputs directly to farmers via its FBN Direct online marketplace. FBN said that it will use the new funding to expand its Direct market as well as develop new FBN Crop Marketing and Financial Services products to help farmers get the most value out of their crops.

Finistere: Food Tech Investment Reached $4.8B in the First Half of 2020

An unusually high volume of food tech investment news has kept us on our toes all summer, and we’re not the only ones to notice. Food tech VC firm Finistere Ventures said today that 2020 so far as been an “extraordinary” investment time for both food tech and agtech, with much of that investment happening smack dab in the middle of the pandemic. More importantly and according to the firm’s latest findings, much of the capital is actually a direct reaction to the pandemic. Finistere, whose investment portfolio includes Memphis Meats, CropX, and Good Eggs, released the findings today in collaboration with PitchBook Data, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

For the first two quarters of 2020, total agtech investment reached $2.2 billion compared to the $2.7 billion raised for the entirety of 2019. While slightly lower, food tech investment reached $4.8 billion during the first two quarters of 2020 compared to $7 billion for all of 2019, and that number will continue to rise rapidly (see below). 

Large investments, what Finistere calls “mega rounds” of more than $100 million have continued and encompassed all of the top 10 food tech investments and 50 percent of the top agtech investments. 

Other notable points, as quoted directly from the report, include:

  • Investors are helping startups push their funding needs outside the “Covid zone” and build more evidence of their value as future growth investors will be looking for signals of scalability.
  • Rounds led by new investors have been a lesser part of the 2020 total, which is likely to continue while capital managers take stock of the market conditions.
  • While early-stage Agtech has seen a decrease in pre-money valuations, valuations for late-stage financings continued to increase in 2020 despite the current pandemic. Valuations will be under pressure looking forward and will likely require a year or more for the true impact of Covid to manifest in this metric.

Food tech, in particular, has a promising outlook right now, thanks in no small part to consumers’ collective behavioral shift to eating more at home. “It is our view that there will be lasting and persistent changes to consumer behavior in at-home consumption, and interesting to note this is the first year since 1994 that restaurant share of food consumption dropped versus in-home,” the report stated.

Other activity around the food tech sector supports this idea. Online grocery sales have experienced record highs since the start of the pandemic. Many companies, from plant-based meat producers to snack brands, have launched direct-to-consumer channels in response to this shift away from public spaces and into the consumer home. And with the state of the restaurant industry still very much in flux, these behaviors aren’t likely to change anytime soon.

Finistere noted that for food tech, retaining customers and growing margins will be important to future funding rounds.

Agtech will have a bit more of an uphill climb. The report states that agtech companies “are likely to face a turbulent outlook for 2021,” citing farming margins, labor costs, trade conflicts, and pressure to develop more sustainable farming methods as factors. The industry should expect much consolidation in the future.