Impossible Foods CEO: Focus on food, not politics; African agrifoodtech startups face headwinds; GOOD Meat sued... again


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Last call for AgFunder Fund IV: $90m closed already; final close of $100-125m soon

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Sofia Ramirez, Louisa Burwood-Taylor, and Jenn Marston will be at the Rethink events in London at the end of September. Email sofia@agfunder.com to arrange a meeting.

Africa AgriFoodTech Investment Report - 2023 New!

NEW REPORT: African agrifoodtech startups face headwinds as VC funding drops sharply from record-breaking 2022
​​By John Njiraini

Download the free report here​
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AFN Interviews, Opinions and Analysis

🎥 Impossible Foods CEO on marketing alt meat: ‘We kind of insulted the very people we wanted to try our product, meat eaters’
By Elaine Watson

🎥 AgFunderNews round table: Foodtech investing in focus, from ‘tourist capital’ to a ‘return to fundamentals’
By Elaine Watson

3 agtech startups bringing financial inclusion to farmers in Asia Pacific GROW accelerator!
By Louisa Burwood-Taylor

Why AgFunder invested in Azaneo’s low-power electric weeding tech AgFunder portfolio co!
By the AgFunder team

Meet the founder: TurtleTree’s Fengru Lin on pivoting, ‘rude’ investors, and the economics of precision fermentation
By Elaine Watson

Bytes to Bites part one: Digitizing consumption insights. Leveraging AI in food product development
By AgFunderNews guest contributors Eva Everloo and Dr. Orly Savion

Creative financing is the key to helping more farmers deploy industry-saving solutions
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AFN Industry and Funding News

Crop biologicals firm Biobest eyes South America expansion with $570m acquisition of Brazil’s Biotrop
By Jennifer Marston

Beyond Meat facing ‘existential threat’ says TD Cowen: ‘The core problem is the product’
By Elaine Watson

Eat Just/GOOD Meat sued by 2nd engineering firm (CRB) for failing to pay its bills on time
By Elaine Watson

Meati Foods lays off more staff: ‘We must be nimble and focus on near-term profitability’
By Elaine Watson

UPSIDE Foods to pump $140m into commercial-scale cultivated meat plant near Chicago
By Elaine Watson

Container farming startup Freight Farms to go public for $147m via SPAC
By Jennifer Marston

‘Pee in drinkable water is nonsense’: Toopi Organics lands $17m to turn urine into crop biostimulants
By Jennifer Marston

The Week in AgriFoodTech: J.M. Smucker buys Hostess for $5bn, NotCo’s NotSnacks, Krucial monitors salmon from space
By Jennifer Marston

Data snapshot: 5 years of agrifoodtech investment in Latin America
By Jennifer Marston

Tropical ambitions and fermentation dreams: The most notable agrifoodtech people moves in August
By Jennifer Marston

What We're Reading

What would happen if the world cut meat and milk consumption in half?
Grist

The negative impact of vegetarian and vegan labels: Results from randomized controlled experiments with US consumers
Science Direct

Two Farmers and a Sponge Demonstration: A Visual Story of Climate Resilient Agriculture
Medium

Eco-friendly enzymes: Paving the path to sustainable biochemicals
SynBioBeta

Mars to invest $1bn to cut emissions
Financial Times

In Case You Missed It

Eat Just’s GOOD Meat division hasn’t paid its bills, says bioreactor co; parties in arbitration
By Elaine Watson

‘No comment’ from Indigo Ag on valuation nose-dive report
By Jennifer Marston

CH4 Global raises $29m to scale seaweed-based platform to slash methane emissions from livestock: ‘We can grow it at a much larger scale, frankly, than anybody else’
By Elaine Watson

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AgFunder Research

2023 Latam AgriFoodTech Investment Report
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2023 India AgriFoodTech Investment Report
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2023 Global AgriFoodTech Investment Report
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Jobs at AgFunder Portfolio Companies

Commercialization manager
FYTO (Petaluma, California)

Compliance associate
Retailo Technologies (Karachi, Pakistan)

JR Solutions development analyst
Solinftec (Araçatuba, Brazil)

Engineering technician
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Operational support manager
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AgFunderNews

AgFunderNews reports on the evolution of the global food and agriculture system. By going beyond the headlines, we analyse the people, companies and technologies aiming to improve human and planetary health. Publishing daily news, our team of award-winning journalists delivers deeper insight on the growing foodtech, agtech and climate tech industries. A multimedia publication, AgFunderNews is a division of AgFunder Inc, one of the world’s most active agrifoodtech venture capital firms.

Read more from AgFunderNews

Greetings from London, where the AgFunderNews team has spent the week at the World Agri-Tech and Future Food-Tech summits delving into everything from the disconnect between regulatory and commercial timetables for novel foods and ag biologicals to ongoing questions over how to fund the transition to regenerative agriculture. As for cultivated meat, with private capital increasingly hard to come by, "There's a valley of death we're not going to cross as an industry without a massive infusion...

The big story this week: Are GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic an ‘existential threat’ to the food industry or an opportunity for some creative thinking? Elsewhere, Infinite Roots raised a cool $58m to scale its mycelium-based platform, AgFunder portco IGS netted $28.6m for vertical farming tech, Bluewhite raised $39m to expand its ag robotics operation, while Elo Life Systems bagged $20.5m to scale its plant breeding tech. We've also got some highlights from the recent cell ag innovation day at...

Can cultivated meat transition from a loss-making novelty served at a handful of high-end restaurants to a commercially viable alternative to animal ag? This week, Elaine Watson spoke with a raft of startups and investors in the space, while Jenn Marston caught up with the VP of automation at John Deere to talk about the last 10 years in agtech. It's also been a big week for Entobel, which opened Asia's largest insect protein plant, and Solar Foods, which bagged $8.8m to grow protein from...