Future Food

How does an environmentalist become an aerial imagery data analytics and AI entrepreneur? Find out in this episode with Al Eisaian, a serial entrepreneur from the mobile apps and software space.

Al's company IntelinAir uses images captured from airplanes to help farmers identify problem areas in their fields and make decisions that can reduce the burden of their activities on the environment, such as water usage, pesticide usage and so on. It can also importantly help increase the efficiency and therefore the bottom line of those farming businesses that typically operate on very tight margins.

So I hope you enjoy this farmtech episode and thanks for listening!

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.

Rob first started working with our other founding partner Michael Dean when they set up an agriculture business in West Africa at the start of the decade before founding AgFunder in 2013.

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 executive director and 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 these animal-based products at the cellular level, without any animal involvement. GFI engages scientists, policymakers, and entrepreneurs to advance the creation and adoption of these food products by producing research and a range of resources to help innovators and the industry at large come to grips with this emerging food sector. The organization has achieved a lot in its short life as it was only founded in 2016. I've known Bruce since the start, and this conversation is us touching base to talk about GFI's epic growth and that of the alt protein sector generally. And it's also me picking up on a few things I asked him back in a 2016 interview. Bruce is an awesome interviewee, especially as I did jump this podcast on him when he answered the phone; we were just scheduled for a catch-up call but I thought I'd grab the opportunity, so he very graciously allowed me to record our conversation, and this is it. Thanks Bruce!

We cover the entrance of the large food companies into the plant-based space, the role GFI took in getting government funding and policy advances for the sector, how alt protein companies are communicating about their use of genetic technology, costs of cultivated meat, white spaces of innovation for entrepreneurs, how to separate the winners from the losers, and of course, what Bruce had for breakfast.

Key quote: "Our goal is not to change anybody's metrics for food choices; our goal is to change the foods so that the plant-based and the cultivated alternatives have significantly lower external costs, no need for antibiotics, and a fraction of the climate impact so that consumers choose them because they are the most delicious and most affordable alternative."

Enjoy!

Blue River Technology is a Silicon Valley startup bringing robotics to the farm. In August 2017, Blue River was acquired by John Deere, the world’s largest tractor company, for $305 million. This was extremely exciting news for the agtech industry as exits for the venture capital firms backing the sector have been relatively few and far between. In this episode, Louisa speaks to Jorge Heraud, founder and CEO of the company about the startup's journey to success.

In this episode, Louisa speaks to Sam Kass, venture partner at Acre Venture Partners, the food system venture capital firm. Kass has had a varied career working as a chef in the White House, as well as a nutritional policy advisor, and launched the Let's Move campaign with Michelle Obama. Here he speaks about investing in food technology and the importance of access to nutritional food.