News
Inside Cairnspring Mill's bold new model for financing regenerative food systems
1+ day, 5+ hour ago (908+ words) Key to financing a regenerative food system is getting more capital into the "missing middle: the processing and distribution infrastructure needed to take regeneratively grown goods from field to consumer. This is a major challenge right now, as mills and…...
Beyond Meat bets on beverages as alt meat sales slide 19.7% in Q4: 'We believe we can be disruptive and win"
2+ day, 1+ hour ago (435+ words) Beyond Meat's recent foray into beverages is a logical move for a plant protein company and not an admission of defeat, CEO Ethan Brown told analysts after another weak quarter. "We're bringing our hard-fought expertise and capabilities, our commitment to…...
🎥Totality Biosciences bets on plants to scale human milk oligosaccharides for a wider audience
6+ day, 10+ hour ago (1159+ words) Several firms now use microbes to produce high value human milk oligosaccharides for infant formula. But could plants be a better production vehicle? AgFunderNews (AFN) caught up with Totality Biosciences cofounder and CEO Leila Strickland, PhD (LS), and VP R…...
Insect ag recalibrates after a brutal shakeout: Where are the key players now?
1+ week, 19+ hour ago (1700+ words) The insect ag industry is littered with the corpses of startups who found out the hard way that scaling biological systems is not as easy as it looks, prompting a wave of think pieces suggesting its days are numbered. Despite…...
SMEY’s Lipid Atlas taps yeast diversity + AI for custom oils via fermentation
1+ week, 1+ day ago (728+ words) Franco-German precision fermentation startup SMEY has launched Lipid Atlas'a searchable platform built on its proprietary database of 1,000+ non-GMO yeast strains'enabling customers to find oils with customized fatty acid profiles. Users in cosmetics, food, and specialty ingredients can search for yeast…...
UC Davis launches Food & Health Angels to back foodtech startups as GLP-1 'tsunami' approaches
1+ week, 3+ day ago (577+ words) Food industry veterans, including former CSOs at Mars and General Mills, are pooling capital through a new UC Davis angel network, Food & Health Angels (FH Angels), to back early-stage foodtech startups. "With 92% of Americans considered metabolically unhealthy and GLP-1 use…...
Tropic bags $105m to scale gene-edited bananas, deploy TR4 resistant bananas in 2027
3+ week, 5+ hour ago (888+ words) UK-based plant biotech company Tropic has raised a $105 million Series C round to support the rollout of non-browning bananas and bananas with extended shelf-life'innovations it says are opening up the cut fruit market, cutting food waste, unlocking new export markets,…...
Sponsors demand refunds as organizers of delayed Food Tech Congress go 'silent"
3+ week, 4+ hour ago (541+ words) Sponsors of the upcoming Food Tech Congress in Barcelona are demanding their money back as it becomes increasingly clear that the already delayed event will not go ahead as planned in June. The conference, pitched as "Europe's premier food tech…...
California Cultured bets on $3k reusable plastic bioreactors to transform economics of cultured cocoa
3+ week, 3+ day ago (979+ words) California Cultured'a startup growing flavanol-rich cocoa via plant cell culture'has completed its first successful production run in a re-usable 2,000-L custom-built plastic bioreactor that it claims could transform the economics of the approach by slashing capital and operating costs. "When…...
Guest article: The alt-meat reset. Scale won’t fix broken unit economics
3+ week, 6+ day ago (754+ words) Christie Lagally is the founder and CEO of'Rebellyous Foods, a fast-growing startup that has developed a continuous processing system it claims can slash production costs for plant-based meat, enabling meat alternatives to reach cost parity with their animal-based counterparts. Despite…...