Future Food

This episode is perhaps a tad awkward as I interview my boss Rob Leclerc, founding partner of AgFunder, but Rob was as insightful as ever, sharing his thoughts on working in and around the agriculture sector for the past decade.

We talk about agtech acquisitions, food trends, the impending shift to look at food as medicine, lessons he's learned since starting to invest and who is favorite team member is - hint, it's me!

In this episode, I speak to Bruce Friedrich, the co-founder of the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that promotes plant-based alternatives to meat, dairy, and eggs, as well as those using cellular agriculture to produce replicas of animal-based products at the cellular level.

We catch-up and go back to questions I asked him back in 2016: https://agfundernews.com/whats-next-for-alternative-proteins-an-interview-with-good-food-institutes-friedrich.html

In this episode I speak to Jack Bobo, founder of Futurity, a consultancy firm for startups and established food brands to consider the future of food and what it means to them. 

"I'm very optimistic and excited about what the world will look like in 2050 but I think it is helpful though to think about where we've come from in order to think about where we're going."

In this episode of Future Food, I speak to Klaus Kunz, head of Sustainability and Business Stewardship at German agro-pharma giant Bayer. We talk on many topics including smallholder farmers, biodiversity, and of course pesticides. The company has come under serious fire for its glyphosate-based weedkiller Roundup, which is accused of causing cancer and bee deaths. This episode, though heavy, is full of important insights from Klaus, who addresses pertinent issues across agriculture. Don't miss it!

Did you know one of our most common drugs was derived from plants, and that just 15 of the 50,000 edible plants on the earth provide 90% of our calories?!

In this episode, I speak to Sofia Elizondo, cofounder of Brightseed, a Silicon Valley startup unearthing the bioactive compounds in plants that can have positive impacts on our bodies using artificial intelligence and computational biology. Tips for female founders too! Enjoy!

(Disclosure, Brightseed is an AgFunder portfolio company)

In this episode of Future Food, I speak to Jennifer Betka, the chief marketing officer of Indigo Agriculture.

Jennifer is an expert marketer with a career spanning many different industries, most recently at StubHub, so it's really interesting to hear about her transition into agriculture.

"When I look at our brand, I think it's a really curious brand that's asking really important questions. If growers can be incentivized to put carbon back into the soil, do consumers care?"

Turns out they do!

The UK is the most active ecosystem for foodtech and agtech startups in Europe and Nadia El Hadery has played a role in it from London since 2015. Nadia is founder and CEO of YFood, an event and media company focused on the industry. London FoodTech Week is next week - find out more about the event, Nadia's vision for the future of food -- including drones and personalized food delivery -- her love of avocados, and some of the challenges startups have faced in the UK and beyond.

Hear former co-CEO of Whole Foods Walter Robb, a proponent of whole and natural foods, talk about the advent of new technologies from robotic retail to his contrarian views of plant-based meat. He also talks about how Amazon came to acquire Whole Foods and the importance of big data. I hope you enjoy the second installment of Future Food!

For entrepreneurs and investors in the agtech startup space, David Friedberg is a major celebrity. When he sold his startup The Climate Corporation for $1 billion in 2013 - achieving that elusive "unicorn" status - he put the category on the map. David now has an investment company The Production Board.

David is a visionary - the insights he offers on what & how we will be eating in the future are inspiring, exciting, if perhaps a little scary.

I hope you enjoy this special first edition of Future Food!

In this podcast, Louisa talks to Nick Fereday, a consumer foods analyst at Rabobank, about how the large food and agriculture companies are reacting to new innovation and working with startups. They also talk about the acquisition of Whole Foods by Amazon, and consumer trends around natural, simple food as well as alternative meat products.