#266
Hi there,
Today I’m at EAT Stockholm Food Forum, where the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission will be unveiled.
The 2019 EAT-Lancet report was the first major global scientific effort to set out a diet that is both healthy for people and environmentally sustainable for the planet. Critics saw EAT-Lancet’s 2019 recommendations as elitist, unrealistic (e.g. unaffordable), and biased against certain foods and cultures — e.g. that the diet was too prescriptive and globalized (‘one size fits all’). One major point of contention was EAT-Lancet’s recommendation to cut down on the consumption of animal-sourced foods, especially red meat.
So I’m really excited to see how the 2025 EAT-Lancet Commission has evolved to address these concerns.
Next week I’ll be at Anuga in Cologne, the world’s largest food and beverage trade fair (150K visitors from almost 200 countries, floating around in 290K m² of exhibition space - yikes!). Anyways, on Wednesday I’ll be part of a Hot Take Debate on the Future of Food, hosted by the one and only Marina Schmidt of R2G Media. If you’re around, come join!
This week's rundown:
🤖 SwarmFarm bags $30M for robots cutting herbicide use
🐮 ArkeaBio & NoBACZ raises funds for cow vaccines & lesion coatings
🥛 Alt-dairy brands Arummi & Itz Nuts raise $2M and $500K respectively
Let's go!
💬 Op-ed: “Food-Tech is Failing. Here’s how we fix it.”
“The uncomfortable fact is that climate credentials don’t shift market demand today […] The result today is under-investment and the flight of capital we are seeing from our sector. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Imagine if food companies were rewarded—via visibility and consumer preference—for reducing Scope 3 emissions. There is one change that could help up-end these challenges and reverse this equation.”
Read the full op-ed by Fermtech CEO/Founder Andy Clayton to see what solution he suggests (and to see his call to actions)!
Andy (center) and the Fermtech team
💰 Funding
🇦🇺 SwarmFarm Robotics has harvested $30M in Series B funding, led by Edaphon and joined by e.g. Tenacious Ventures and Tribe Global Ventures. The company develops autonomous farming robots that lower costs, lower soil compaction, and cut herbicide use by up to 95% thanks to precision spraying.
🇺🇸 ArkeaBio which develops a vaccine administered to ruminant animals like cows to help cut methane emissions has completed the first close of a Series A+ round at $7M. The new funding round was co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures and AgriZeroNZ.
🇬🇧 NoBACZ Healthcare, a spinout from the University of Cambridge, has raised a £4.8M ($6.45M) round, led by The Yield Lab. The startup has developed a robust, flexible, waterproof, and biodegradable coating that can be applied to lesions in cows, allowing them to heal. The startup says their solution can help cut the use of antibiotics in livestock farming.
🇦🇺 Harvest B has banked $3.5M in pre-Series A funding led by Mandalay Venture Partners. The company produces plant-based proteins as well as blended meats that also include animal-sourced components like beef, pork, and chicken.
🇬🇷 Terra Robotics has announced nearly €1.8M ($2.1M) in new funding led by Uni.Fund. The startup develops an AI-powered laser weeding system that helps cut the use of herbicide as well as manual labor, while improving sustainability.
Terra Robotics
🇮🇩 Arummi, which develops and sells cashew-based milk nationally and across Southeast Asia, has secured $2M in Seed funding in a round led by Beenext, Korea Investment Partners, and Fondation Botnar.
🇹🇷 In somewhat related news, Itz Nuts, which makes alt dairy products such as yoghurt and cheese from cashew nuts, has bagged $530K in new funding from ŞirketOrtağım and entrepreneur Mehmet Betil. The startup now aims to expand its product range and distribution.
🎙️ Investment Climate: Giacomo Cattaneo (CEO) and Alex Morel (CTO) of FOOD Founders Studio on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Giacomo Cattaneo (CEO) and Alex Morel (CTO), co-founders of FOOD Founders Studio, a venture studio building B2B food-tech companies from university IP to market-ready startups. They’ve raised $1.2M toward a CHF 3M holding-company model that funds and co-founds 3–4 ventures (roughly $1M per project) while keeping meaningful founder ownership and targeting faster, M&A-driven exits.
The full conversation can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Timeline: A Year of “No’s,” Then Yes. It took ~12 months from first rejection to the lead check—bridged by pure grit and personal financing. “Almost a year from the first No. Me [Giacomo] and Alex were pouring money into it to make it up till our accounts were dry. Too many pieces of the puzzle of this very ambitious puzzle that is taken on its own technology. The founders, the story, the positioning on solving the systemic issues, as well as the technology. We stayed on, and fortunately, we were able to build the first foundational partnerships, and now we are building. ”
From “Are You a Fund?” to “We’re In.” Giacomo and Alex converted confusion into commitment by delivering value—securing tech, partners, and an investable first venture; the family office joined the investment committee, too. “We started like everybody, a beautiful story on a PowerPoint that promises the world. But at some point, you need to start showing you can do it. As soon as we got very confident in our selection of the first technology, we could give a real, concrete outlook about what kind of ventures we are going to build, and our ability to execute on our mission. I think that also gave the family office a better justification to sit around the table internally, trying to figure out that this just makes sense. Now this family office is in… It’s in on our investment committee as well.”
Problem-First Scouting, Then Tech. FOOD Founders Studio starts by validating urgent industry problems, then sources university tech that can solve them—flipping standard “tech looking for a use” on its head. “One of the benefits… is that we do create a portfolio of startups… We take a lot of time to really refine this funnel, selecting only one technology… that becomes then the foundation of the new startup that we built.”
🧐 Noteworthy
🦗 Struggling insect ag firm Aspire Food Group has sold its Ontario, Canada processing facility to Halali Group Holdings; at 150K sq ft (14K m²) it was once touted as the world’s largest cricket processing plant. Aspire produced crickets for animal feed and pet food.
🦇 Farmers try to lure in bats, as they’re the perfect predator for taking out destructive moths.
🛒 How to use behavioral science to help consumers make better choices for their wallets, their health, and for the planet, when shopping for groceries (h/t Niklas Laninge).
🌶 A new study shows that spicier meals make us feel fuller faster, which help reduce food intake (h/t Dr. Sophie Attwood).
🍬 Oobli has received its third FDA approval letter (aka GRAS, Generally Recognized as Safe), allowing the startup to sell its novel sweet protein ingredient ‘brazzein-54’ as a sweetener in various food and drink products. The natural sweetener is up to 550x sweeter than sucrose.
Oobli
🟫 The everyday magic of soil. Great read by Ariel Patton.
🏛️ U.K. pet feed startup Omni has filed and published its first patent, a wet cat food combining cultivated chicken with plant-based protein and starches, that all form meat-like chunks in gravy.
💵 Kenya-based venture studio Pyramidia Ventures has secured $2M from the Dutch Good Growth Fund (DGGF), and a group of angel investors. The studio builds companies addressing food security in Africa. Since launching in 2021 Pyramidia has launched five businesses including e.g. precision crop spraying and drone company Acre Insights.
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🎲 Random Stuff
👔 The death of the corporate job. Good read!
😮 ChatGPT is now 20% of Walmart’s online referral traffic (h/t Julia Glotz).
🍣 Speaking about salmon, this is how sushi went from something exotic to convenience food in the U.S.
🤷♂️ It seems my inbox isn’t the only living museum of procrastination:
I love you.
Daniel
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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to See Her Out (That’s Just Life) by Francis and the Lights.
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