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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

CSA

Make Alcohol From an Astronaut’s Breath? Yep. Here Are the Finalists For Phase 2 of the Deep Space Food Challenge

This week, NASA’s ability to keep astronauts fat and happy on a mission to Mars took another giant leap forward for mankind.

That’s because the U.S. space agency, in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), announced the 11 finalists for Phase 2 of the Deep Space Food Challenge, a competition designed to help explore and better understand how these agencies can feed humans in space.

The second phase of the competition kicked off in January 2022, and both new teams and previous Phase 1 winners were challenged to build small-scale prototypes of their ideas. Dozens of teams developed prototypes to use minimal resources, creating little waste, and producing safe, healthy, and tasty foods for astronauts.

The judging panel, which featured experts from academia, industry, and government, evaluated submissions on various criteria such as design innovation, scientific and technical approach, and the feasibility of their design.

The following U.S. companies were selected as finalists:

  • InFynity (Chicago, Illinois) is utilizing fungi protein to prepare nutritious and delicious foods.
  • Nolux (Riverside, California) is producing plant- and fungal-based food using artificial photosynthesis.
  • Mu Mycology (Hillboro, Oregon) uses a closed-loop mushroom cultivation system allowing for scalable growth of various edible mushrooms.
  • Kernel Deltech USA (Cape Canaveral, Florida) produces inactivated fungal biomass using a continuous cultivation technique.
  • Interstellar Lab (Merritt Island, Florida) produces fresh microgreens, vegetables, mushrooms, and insects to provide micronutrients for long-term space missions.
  • Far Out Foods (St. Paul, Minnesota) developed a nearly closed-loop food production system called the Exo-Garden that is capable of producing a variety of mushrooms and hydroponic vegetables.
  • SATED (Boulder, Colorado), or Safe Appliance, Tidy, Efficient, & Delicious, cooks a variety of well-known foods from long-shelf-life ingredients.
  • Air Company (Brooklyn, New York) developed a system that captures carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts, combined with hydrogen made with water electrolysis, to produce alcohol that is then fed to an edible yeast to make proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.

In addition to these U.S. companies, the NASA and the CSA recognized three international finalist teams from outside the U.S. and Canada:

  • Enigma of the Cosmos (Melbourne, Australia) created a food production system with an adaptive growing platform that could increase efficiency by at least 40%.
  • Solar Foods (Lappeenranta, Finland) uses gas fermentation to produce single-cell proteins.
  • Mycorena (Gothenburg, Sweden) developed a circular production system utilizing a mix of microalgae and fungi, resulting in a microprotein using minimal resources while generating minimal waste.

The top 5 U.S. companies will be recognized as Phase 2 challenge winners, each awarded $150,000. In addition, up to three top-scoring international teams will be recognized as Phase 2 challenge winners. The winners of Phase 2 are scheduled to be announced in April 2023.

Looking at the finalists, it’s clear the big winner was…fungi. Six of the final eight finalists have built systems that create fungi in some form or another. But maybe the most intriguing system chosen by NASA is from Brooklyn’s Air Company, which has technology that can convert an astronaut’s breath into alcohol, which is then used as feed media for an edible yeast that produces proteins, fats, and carbs. As it turns out, the company’s technology can also produce vodka, which I’m thinking might just come in handy during a long-term space flight.

Online Grocer Cropswap Launches New Feature to Help Food Insecure Families

“Farm-to-phone” grocery platform Cropswap today announced a partnership with Nourish LA to bring healthier food donations to underserved residents of Los Angeles.

Food insecurity, which the USDA defines as “the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or limited or uncertain ability to acquire acceptable foods in socially acceptable ways,” has increased over the last year. Los Angeles county alone estimates that “nearly 1 in 4 residents” in that county has suffered food insecurity since the COVID-19 pandemic started. 

Cropswap, which launched during the pandemic, connects its users with local farmers via an app. In June of last year, the company also launched a subscription service through which customers can get delivery or pickup orders of produce, seeds, and other items on a regular basis. 

For the Nourish LA partnership, Cropswap as added an in-app donation feature that lets users give a seasonal Harvest Box to those in need for $50. The box is filled with organic produce from Sow a Heart Farm, in Fillmore, California, and contains what Cropswap says is enough to sustain a family for one week. Users can simply add the donation to their existing total. Cropswap and Nourish LA handle the actual process of getting the food to its recipients. 

Given that they’re a relatively easy way to encourage giving, in-app donation buttons have surfaced in multiple different areas of the food industry over the last twelve months. Uber Eats last year set up an in-app donation button to help struggling independent restaurants. Also last year, Delivery Hero partnered with the United Nation’s World Food Programme’s Share the Meal program. Users can donate a meal via the regular Delivery Hero app interface.

A $50 box of food is obviously more costly for the giver than, say, donating a few bucks or a single meal. However, online grocery has seen a surge in new users over the last year, and consumer enthusiasm for buying from local farms has also increased. Those two factors working together means there’s a much bigger potential audience for Cropswap’s self-proclaimed “Instacart for local produce.” That in turn means a wider pool of those able to and/or willing to donate a week’s worth of food to those in need.

Harvie’s Customizeable D2C Farm Sales Platform Could Help Local Growers Survive

Connecticut farm Farmer Joe‘s Gardens announced today it is partnering with Harvie, an online farm share platform, to pivot and serve people during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pittsburgh, PA-based Harvie connects people online with local farm shares, also known as Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs). By using its service, Farmer Joe’s Gardens can specialize its CSA boxes based on individuals’ preferences. “For 10 years, we’ve packed a standard box of food for each member regardless of what they like and what they don’t like,” Farmer Joe noted in a press release. “We now have the technology that allows us to customize each box, so we make sure each member gets what they want.”

Going forward, Farmer Joe’s Gardens will go onto Harvie’s platform and enter a list of all its available crops. At its core, Harvie is a D2C sales platform connecting small farmers with local consumers. Harvie’s algorithm will match the crops to each member’s preferences to optimize their order, which can be one-time or a subscription box, like a CSA. It sends the lineup to the customer, who has 24 to 48 hours to make changes and order extras from the farm, like milk or eggs. Harvie then sends the optimized order back to Farmer Joe’s Gardens, which takes care of the fulfillment and delivery.

To be clear, Harvie does not actually grow any crops itself — it just manages farm share subscriptions for agricultural producers. According to Harvie’s CEO Simon Huntley, who spoke with me earlier today, the service’s real value-add is in its personalization feature. “The original CSA box is just farmers throwing whatever they have in a box,” he said. “We’re helping farms provide customization at scale.” Harvie also handles any customer service requests and provides add-ons, like recipe recommendations and storage tips.

Farmer Joe’s is a hyper-regional example, but overall Harvie — or services like it — could be key to help local farms survive through the coronavirus pandemic. In a time when small farmers are struggling to stay afloat with COVID-19 shutting down farmers markets and restaurants who typically purchase farm-grown food, growers are looking for new ways to get their products into the hands of consumers. Optimizing D2C sales, like CSAs, could make the difference between surviving the growing season and having to fold completely.

Thankfully for farmers, the popularity of CSAs is actually on the rise. According to Yelp, sales of farm shares have risen a whopping 405 percent since the beginning of March. But in order to make it through this crisis, farmers will have to make sure that folks who sign up for CSA continue their membership. Having a customized produce offering could go a long way in maintaining customer loyalty. As a bonus, personalized CSAs could help cut down on food waste, since people aren’t stuck with a basket of produce they don’t like or know how to prepare.

Thus far Harvie works with 150 small farms in the U.S. and Canada. According to their website, Harvie member farms see an average increase in retention rates of 15-20 percent. According to Huntley, the coronavirus pandemic has actually helped sales for their growers — Harvie farmer’s sales are up almost 200 percent. He also noted that they’re seeing an increase in farmers signing up for the platform. “We’re in the right place at the right time.”

To work with Harvie, farms pay a $500 setup fee and a 7 percent transaction fee on all farm share purchases. Harvie also takes a small percentage of credit card sales.

That cost is not insignificant, especially if you’re a local farmer struggling to stay operational. But with markets and restaurants closed, or at least drastically reduced, CSAs are the only way forward for many farmers. If services like Harvie can help them gain a larger swath of loyal customers, even just to get through the pandemic, it’s likely worth the fee.