A Taste of Success

Food tech’s innovations translate to every industry

Our bodies can do amazing things. They can climb mountains or even skyscrapers. They can perform Olympian feats that push the boundaries of possibility. They can’t do any of it, though, without food. It’s the fundamental element that allows our engines to run and push our bodies to their limits.

Much the same way, the food industry is where innovation grows. Food production is where systems scale, where sprawling supply chains are organized, and where complex problems are solved. It’s where complex systems modernize. If they can scale, integrate, and operate under pressure in food production, they can do it other industries. Food production – and food tech – is a proving ground.

Success there can plant the seeds of innovation everywhere.

Don’t Waste a Drop

The imperative for sustainability is stronger in food production than in any other industry. The world’s population is set to hit 10 billion sometime in the next few decades, while water scarcity remains a major challenge for humanity. That means there are more mouths to feed with less water available to grow food. Since about 70% of the fresh water available to humans is used in agriculture, producers have to make every drop count. Most industries want to be more sustainable. Food production has to.

That’s where services like Agrow and Kilimo come in, helping farmers track and optimize their water usage. They measure soil moisture and producer hyperlocal weather forecasts to recommend where, when, and how much to irrigate. The precision gets the right amount of water where it needs to be and doesn’t waste a drop.

Kilimo’s project in California’s Central Valley aims to reduce water usage by up to 50% while improving crop health in one of the U.S.’s most important growing areas.

“This latest initiative, and our first milestone in the U.S. market, builds on our ongoing work with Microsoft in Chile and Mexico, reinforcing a regional partnership focused on delivering tangible water solutions,” Jairo Trad, CEO and co-founder of Kilimo, told AgDaily. “Bringing our experience to California’s Central Valley is a key step in our mission to ensure a future with available water.”

Once food is grown, it often goes uneaten because of supply chain inefficiencies. This accounts for nearly a quarter of the waste that goes into landfills. Reclaiming that food waste is another way to make production more sustainable. We’re not talking about a few fries that your kid doesn’t finish. We’re talking hundreds of tons of produce that don’t get harvested because they pretty enough for sale in grocery stores or farmers don’t have a way to get them transported to markets where there’s demand.

Programs like ReFED provide the data-driven analysis and capital to coordinate stakeholders and mobilize businesses dedicated to making use of food surplus. Services such as Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market buy such surplus and deliver it to people’s homes, solving logistical problems for vendors and customers.

Scaling the €250,000 Burger

In the lab, research and development reveal what’s possible. It’s there that sustainable alternatives like Mosa Meat figure out how to make the product people love in a way that upends traditional, resource-heavy methods. In Mosa’s case, they found a way to make cultured meat in a sterile lab setting that uses real beef cells but requires a tiny fraction of the water and land that traditional beef agriculture does.

It’s in procurement, though, where those possibilities come up against reality. Mosa Meat’s first burger cost €250,000 to produce. No matter how revolutionary the product is, it won’t have meaningful impact is nobody can buy it.

“Today, through fundamental scientific breakthroughs and scaling efficiencies, we are producing burgers at a price point ready for restaurant menus,” CEO Maarten Bosch told AgFunderNews.

Getting there has taken a lot of hard work to reduce the complexity of producing lab-grown meat on Mosa’s part, and to meet strict regulatory standards. The Dutch firm believe it’s worth the effort “to strengthen Europe’s food system by reducing reliance on imports, enhancing food sovereignty, and ensuring a resilient, sustainable supply chain, as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions for beef production by up to 93%.”

At its Cultivate at Scale facility, Mosa has bioreactors up to 1,000-L scale, enabling it to produce burgers suitable for restaurant sales, Bosch said, with plans to add 5,000-L vessels to further scale. Mosa has filed regulatory applications in the UK, EU, Switzerland, and Singapore and has been accepted into UK Food standards Agency’s novel foods program. In a short time, it could appear on restaurant menus across Europe thanks to a 99.99% reduction in production cost from that first burger.

At that time, it will have met the moment, with the innovation succeeding when it fits how restaurants buy and what their customers want. That translates to any industry, where innovation is global, regulation is local, and supply chains are fragile.

That kind of innovation fuels bodies and fuels industries, pushing both to incredible heights.