Every week we track the business, tech and investment trends in CPG, retail, restaurants, agriculture, cooking and health, so you don’t have to.

Last week’s top story was unsurprisingly in the meal delivery space. Munchery, the San Francisco-based prepared meal startup that’s raised $120M to date, is on the hunt for a new CEO after having trouble raising a new funding round. According to sources, the startup is losing millions of dollars a month, though investors say it is contribution margin positive.

Other major headlines include: an inside look at the sustainable food trends that will shape the future, including regenerative grazing and jackfruit, and how one Canadian farmer is making six figures per acre by growing fast-turning crops on his micro farm.

Check out our weekly round-up of last week’s top food startup, tech and innovation news below or peruse the full newsletter here.

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1. The Next Hot Trends in Food – Wall Street Journal

From moringa and regenerative grazing to clean labels and the proliferation of jackfruit, these are the up-and-coming trends in food innovation.

2. How The Term ‘Clean Meat’ Could Undermine The Alternative Meat Movement – Forbes

Does the Good Food Institute’s emphasis on the ickiness of slaughter with the term ‘clean meat’ belong in a campaign that’s meant to bolster sustainable eating? Villanizing animal meat doesn’t solve our planet’s issues with sustainability.

3. How Meal Kit Maker Chef’d Plans To Get Inside Your Kitchen (And Maybe Already Has) – Fast Company

Unlike its competitors, Chef’d is a fulfillment company that turns anyone’s recipes into a meal kit. It aims to be the grocery store of the future, where recipes serve as ordering slips ad ingredients come in customized portions.

4. Delivering Farm-Fresh Produce, With a Side of Weed – Eater

California farmers are planning to offer America’s first crop of marijuana CSAs, stocked with seasonal produce and freshly harvested pot for medical marijuana users.

5. Money-Losing Meal Delivery Startup Munchery Seeks New CEO – Bloomberg

The meal delivery company is losing millions of dollars per month, though investors say it is contribution margin positive. It’s had trouble raising a new round of funding and hopes a new CEO will help.

6. Philadelphia’s Prison System is Fighting Food Waste and Recidivism with an Organic Farm – Civil Eats

The unique prison program diverts 685 tons of food waste a year into compost and is training inmates to farm without chemicals.

7. J.M. Fortier and the Rise of the High-Profit Micro Farm – Modern Farmer

How one veteran organic vegetable farmer in Quebec makes six figures per acre by focusing on fast-turning crops, and how he hopes to spread and scale micro farming.

8. Why We Need An Internet Of Food – Forbes

How the IoF will enable ag and food to be more traceable, transparent and trustworthy, empowering all of us with more precise and personalized food, diet and health choices.

The post High-Profit Micro Farm, Weed CSAs, Munchery Losing Millions of Dollars a Month + More appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Photo via FAI Farms

Guest Post by Øistein Thorsen, who leads FAI Farms’ strategic consultancy on developing technologies to reinvent deep sea fishing and reduce bycatch. This post is part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

To ensure a sustainable future for our fisheries, our oceans and the livelihoods of fishing communities, we have to disrupt the way we catch fish. And we have to start with bottom trawling, an industrial deep sea fishing method where a large, heavy fishing net is pulled behind a boat along the seabed, which is the most destructive of fishing techniques. Trawling has come under intense scrutiny from both environmental groups and regulators due to its often-negative impact on the seabed and the large number of bycatch, or ‘unwanted’ sea creatures it mistakenly catches.

Recent developments in underwater image recognition, seaborne drones and light and laser technology are expanding our capabilities to better navigate the seas. Combine these technologies with our improved ability to collect, analyze and curate vast amounts of data, and many of the tools needed to spur this disruption already exists.

To help fuel this innovation, three leading seafood-processing brands – Espersen, Icelandic Seachill and Nomad Foods – have launched a design challenge aimed at reimagining fishing as we know it. They are inviting industry actors and fishermen, scientists and technology developers to come together to prototype transformational design concepts for new gear to address the following four objectives:

• Harvest high quality and affordable seafood from sustainable fish stocks, today and in the future.
• Reduce or eliminate the negative environmental impact of trawler fishing, including GHG emissions and on damage to the seafloor and to our oceans.
• Only catch the fish we want by improving our ability to target and select particular species and avoid by-catch.
• Generate real and tangible benefits to the fishermen.

Internet of the Sea

One strong theme emerging from the challenge is the need to have eyes on, and in, the sea to help us better identify locations, species and movements of fish before fishermen even put their gear in the water. Having better data about where to fish has the potential to save costs, fuel and GHG emissions by reducing the amount of time boats have their gear in the water searching for fish. Furthermore, having better imagery of the typography of the seabed and data on the health of the target fishery will enhance selective harvesting efforts while lowering seabed and ecosystem impact.

The project is exploring the viability of deploying huge numbers of solar and wind powered autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) equipped with echo sounders and sensors with the ability to send real-time ocean and fishery data back to a central depository accessible to an entire fishing fleet. Other options include equipping existing vessels, commercial ships, etc. with autonomy packages and sensors to help do the job.

Virtual Nets

A second theme is the replacement of solid trawl doors that account for much of the heavy drag that results in the high fuel use and seabed damage caused by conventional trawlers. One of the participants from Iceland is working on a technology that aims to deploy laser beams to create ‘virtual nets’ at the front of smaller fish catching devices. This has the potential to reduce weight and drag while still ensuring fish are herded in from a large volume of water. The need for further research into the impact of different light-waves and colors on different fish species’ behavior has been identified as an opportunity to increase the selectivity of fish targeting and catching.

Autonomous Catching Devices

A third theme centers around the use of smaller fish catching and storage devices allowing for live harvesting of fish. One such prototype would be powered by multiple torpedo shaped AUVs in front of the fishing vessel. The AUV’s can be programmed to always hover above the seabed to eliminate seabed damage. Such AUVs are in existence – mostly for under water data collection and monitoring – so further work is needed to assess their engine power and ability to drag a catching devise.

The AUV’s would be equipped with visual capacity and enhanced maneuverability enabling the crew on the boat to steer the devise towards the target fish. This could further be combined with underwater image recognition technology deployed to identify and select target species based on size and shape specifications. When deployed in the back of a net or other capture device it allows the fishermen to release non-target fish under water, increasing survival rate and reducing by-catch. While weeding out any unwanted species the target species would be lead into a collection device, before being pumped or water jetted onboard, or recovered through a “moon pool” inside the vessel, for immediate live processing.

With continued support of industry, scientists and technologist these and other concepts are being developed further. Alongside a written report, a designer is developing illustrations visualizing the overall vision and individual technology components. The aim is to present these ideas to potential partners and investors – government, private and philanthropic – to mobilize the capital needed to spur disruption by building the “internet of the seas.” It might be our only chance to secure a sustainable future for our fisheries and fishing communities, our oceans and our seafood.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Øistein Thorsen leads FAI Farms’ strategic consultancy work with global clients including IKEA, Ferrero and Espersen focused on building sustainability into everyday business practices. He has an MSc in International Political Economy from the London School of Economics (LSE) and a BA in African Studies and Development Studies from SOAS. Prior to joining FAI Øistein worked on global agricultural trade policy for Oxfam in Oxford before spending several years representing the organization at the United Nations HQ in New York as an advocate for effective response to humanitarian crisis and conflict. Øistein was the associate producer for the documentary “Black Gold”, a film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival juxtaposing the plight of coffee growers in Ethiopia and the burgeoning global coffee culture.

The post Building The Internet of The Sea To Reinvent Commercial Fishing appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Mike Lee, founder of The Future Market, on how sustainable agriculture and big food can co-exist. This post is part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Since 1974, the average number of items in a grocery store has increased from 9,000 to almost 44,000 today. Yet today, 75 percent of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and 5 animal species, finds the Food and Agriculture Organization. So while the range of products available has widened, the range of crops grown to produce those products has narrowed over the last 40+ years. This is a food system dominated by monoculture.

Today’s Food Megbrands Rely on Monocultures

Despite the groundswell of sustainable innovation happening in food today, much of our industry continues to make products from the same small set of agricultural ingredients. The legacy business model of a food megabrand is largely dependent on sourcing massive quantities of cheap, uniform ingredients. The majority of our industrial food system is based on monocultures–repeatedly planting the same crops on a piece of land–that drain nutrients from the soil, require expensive artificial fertilizers and are more susceptible to pests, weeds and disease.

Monocultures are seemingly perfect for meeting the needs of a large, legacy food brand, but to what end? As large companies lose market share to sustainability-focused food brands and face increasing resource constraints, it’s becoming clear that their current production model is simply bad for business.

Can Sustainable Agriculture & Big Food Coexist?

Are sustainable agriculture and building a large food business mutually exclusive? This is a question that keeps me up at night.

In my food innovation lab, The Future Market, one of the many ways we tackle questions like this is to create concept food products. Have you ever been to an auto show and seen how car manufacturers create concept cars that paint an ideal vision of the future? Our concept food products are like those concept cars, only for the food industry. The goal of building these concept products is to spur a new line of thinking as to what kinds of foods might exist if we massively rearranged today’s food system.

Can you practice sustainable agriculture and have big business at the same time? We began to answer this question with another one: What would the food industry look like without monoculture farming?

Three Sisters: Polycultures Are Key to Making Sustainable Food at Scale

This question led us to develop our latest Future Market concept product: Three Sisters, Polyculture Polenta.

Three Sisters is a brand of instant polenta made from corn, beans and squash. The polenta is available in four flavors, but the bulk of the product comes from these three crops, which are planted together and work synergistically to support each other and the soil. It’s a food brand built on polyculture, instead of monoculture.

The Three Sisters crops have been planted by the Native Americans for over 6,500 years to sustain themselves and their soil. Growing these crops together is one of the oldest forms of polyculture, an agricultural technique where multiple crops are planted together to mimic the biodiversity found in natural ecosystems.

Here’s how the Three Sisters work together: first, corn is planted, which creates a sturdy scaffold for beans to climb up as they grow. Second, beans bring valuable nitrogen into the soil that fuels the growth of the corn and squash, the third crop. Finally, the squash foliage covers the ground, which blocks out the sun and inhibits the growth of weeds. This creates a living mulch to keep soil moist, while the sharp hairs on squash vines help deter pests. It’s a beautiful system that we think the majority of food products should be based on. The good news is there’s many more crop combinations that fall under the polyculture category.

There are certainly challenges with polyculture farming. For example, there aren’t any farm machines today that can efficiently harvest a crop like Three Sisters, which makes harvesting at scale difficult and expensive. Consumers have also become used to having the same packaged food products anywhere, anytime, with little regard to seasonal growing cycles. While these are considerable obstacles, we believe that our concept products can spark conversation and demand, which is a first step to corralling innovators to overcome those obstacles.

Our hope with Three Sisters is to show that a mainstream brand can flourish while also reinforcing a more sustainable way of producing food.

The future of food is food that’s good for people, planet and profit. There are many ways to accomplish that, but I believe that building food brands and business models on a foundation of polyculture, not monoculture, is the key to a better future of food.

Learn more about the Future Market on their website and register now for their Future of Protein dinner on June 28th.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Mike Lee is the founder of Studio Industries, a food product design and innovation studio, and founder of The Future Market, a futurist food lab that explores what our food system could look like in the year 2065 through pop-up experiences and conceptual product prototypes.

Mike’s experience in food design & innovation has covered a wide range over the past 10 years. Prior to Studio Industries & The Future Market, Mike led product development initiatives on the Innovation & New Ventures team at Chobani. At Chobani, Mike focused on building out the Greek Yogurt maker’s savory product platform and drove the product design process from research, insights and ideation, to food, flavor and packaging development, and then finally to business planning and production.

Mike also founded the Studiofeast underground supperclub, a sister organization to Studio Industries. Studiofeast creates unique dining experiences that use food as a medium to design experiences that range from the artful, to the educational, to the hedonistic.

Mike is a frequent and influential speaker on food innovation and has been featured in numerous publications and conferences such as SXSW, Seeds & Chips, EXPO 2015 Milano, Fancy Food Show, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, FastCo Exist, CNBC, Edible Brooklyn, Food Navigator, and more. Mike is a Detroit native and was trained in Business at the University of Michigan and Design at the Parsons School of Design. He now lives in Brooklyn, NY.

The post What If The Food Industry Ended Monoculture Farming? appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Mahni Ghorashi, co-founder of Clear Labs. This post is part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

It’s hard to forget the recalls that have rocked the food industry in recent history, like Blue Bell, Kraft and Nestle. While their recalls may be a thing of the past, the consequences are far from forgotten.

Both the immediate and lasting impacts of recalls are devastating, costing billions in damages and resulting in millions of sick people each year.  On average, recalls cost brands upwards of $10 to $30 million per recall, including pulling food off the shelf, negotiating lawsuits and restructuring plants, as well as dealing with PR crises and brand decay. The human cost is also significant. One in six Americans gets sick from contaminated food or beverages annually, and three thousand of those cases are fatal. Finally, there’s an intangible cost, too. High-profile recalls like those issued by Blue Bell, Kraft and Blue Buffalo erode consumer confidence, meaning consumers increasingly live and shop in fear and doubt.

The problem is obvious, and the industry is continuously enhancing food safety programs to reduce the need for recalls. Yet with everyone waging war against the same problem, why are recalls still so prevalent in the food industry?

The way we test food today leaves gaping holes along the food supply chain. Food testing is expensive, and, as a result, only high-risk foods like meat and dairy are regularly tested. Even then, most tests are only spot checks on certain lots of products, so problems are often only detected after people start getting sick.

The food industry is primed for innovation, and we need a comprehensive solution to close the gaps in the supply chain to prevent costly recalls. Luckily, developments in modern science and technology have shown up to the table and this goal is closer to hand than ever before.

One new technology that has real promise for the food safety industry is next-generation sequencing (NGS). NGS is a process of sequencing and analyzing the DNA of plants, animals and fungi down to the molecular level. When applied to food, it’s able to do what no other testing technology to date can do: look blindly into a food sample and see everything that’s there – the breakdown of different ingredients, bacterial contamination and allergens, to name a few. Traditional food tests, on the other hand, require you to know what you’re looking for at the start of the test (ie. listeria, salmonella, etc.).

The price point is important, too. NGS is cheap and getting cheaper. The price to sequence a full human genome is plummeting like a rock, from $300 million ten years ago to the $1000 today. Sequencing the genome of food is less expensive than the human genome, because you need only a small snippet of the genome to identify a species. NGS testing is still in the early stages and experiencing a rate of improvement faster than Moore’s Law. The possibilities are only just being realized.

Imagine a supply chain in which many more food samples are tested in near real time as they flow from supplier to manufacturer to retailer. This would not just be a technological shift, it would be a business-model shift that allows food producers and manufacturers to catch problems before they even make it to the grocery store shelves.

With this technology, we can envision a future where food recalls are a thing of the past. By shifting the food safety landscape from reactive to proactive, and eradicating the need for costly recalls, the food supply chain will be able to operate more efficiently and safely. As the saying goes, a penny saved is a penny earned. When it comes to recalls, it’s looking like a couple billion dollars on the books.

Embracing NGS is a win-win for everyone. Companies will be able to  reallocate funds drained by recalls to more proactive measures, such as research, development and innovation – just like Target is already doing. Consumers will be able to shop with more confidence and worry less about the possibility of food borne illness. And the food industry will have the opportunity to thrive like never before.

The future of food is not far off, and Clear Labs can’t wait to take a seat at the table.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Mahni leads commercial activities at Clear Labs, including strategy, marketing and corporate development. After graduating from MIT and getting his MBA, Mahni pursued his interest in big data and genomics as Head of Marketing at Bina Technologies (acquired Roche). In pursuit of his next adventure, Mahni co-founded Clear Labs to set a new standard in molecular food quality for the global food industry. Mahni is also a concert pianist in his off hours and is a tireless supporter of the arts.

The post How DNA Sequencing & Big Data Could Make Food Recalls a Thing of The Past appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Photo via Rowbot. Photo Credit: Dean Thomas

Guest post Brian Halweil, editor-in-chief of Edible East End, Edible Long Island and Edible Manhattan. This post is part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Marilee Foster is not the kind of farmer who makes rash decisions. But when she recently heard about Rowbot, a lawn-mower sized autonomous machine that can fertilize the soil, mulch weeds and sow crops on 50 acres a day, she asked, “How much does it cost? And where can I get it?”

Foster, a vegetable grower whose family has been working the same piece on Long Island for nearly four centuries, isn’t particularly tech forward. This card-carrying Luddite still hand-draws her exquisite farmstand stands, plays a transistor radio in her greenhouse and isn’t on social media. So when she showed so much interest in Rowbot, I realized how disruptive the farm droids could be . Was she concerned about Rowbot replacing her? “Not at all. I would consider it a helper,” said Foster, who struggles to find willing–and well-trained–staff for nearly everything she needs help for on the farm.

For decades, farm machinery has targeted industrial-sized farmers, underpinning the “get big or get out” ag model of consolidation. Now, the miniaturization of farm machinery may be the agtech counter-trend that actually encourages smaller, more diverse farms.

“When we think about the future in ten years, we’re going to see smaller machines rather than big ones,” said Rowbot’s founder Kent Cavender-Bares in a recent conversation of This Week in Startups podcast. The 64-row corn planters that crawl across the Heartland today are so large and expensive that they only make sense for the most gargantuan, and debt-worthy, farmers. They’re so heavy they compact the soil. And they don’t work if you decide to plant a rye, sorghum or anything besides corn. In contrast, Rowbot is small enough to get between the rows of corn, dropping fertilizer in microdoses, when the crop needs it. Much less fertilizer gets wasted and runs off the field to contaminate the water supply. These are things a big tractor simply cannot do. “Let’s say we just wanted to mix corn and soybeans on the same field. Today you can’t do that easily at scale.”

By making it easier to take care of a diverse landscape, the Rowbot actually allows the landscape to be resettled with a different type of farm. Small machines can get to spots on a field that farmers sitting in the cabs of big vehicles have struggled to tend well–ecological niches like the understory of a bean plant, in between two rows of corn, between layers of grape leaves.

When I recently spoke to Paul Hoff, COO of Agribotix, a drone-maker and drone analytics platform based in Boulder, CO, he confirmed that the majority of their customers are smaller farms. Hoff said the plummeting costs of drone components, like the near-infrared and thermal sensors drones use to “see” how plants are doing, as well as easy access to software used to analyse drone data, are the big reasons for wide use among smaller farms, whether in Poland, China or Egypt. Agribotix is used in 35 countries, on at least 42 different crops. In fact, Hoff suggested the benefits are greatest on complicated, diverse farms; not vast monocultures. Where labor is short, a surveying flight by a drone can help optimize when a vineyard decides to harvest its grapes, or a vegetable grower decides to check her eggplant for potato beetles.

The downsizing isn’t just about the hardware, but also the business model and outlay for the farmer. Rowbot doesn’t sell its machines but instead leases them. “You heard it hear first: RAAS, or Robots as a service,” said This Week in Startups host Jason Caalcanis, modifying the popular (and lucrative) acronym for Software as a Service or SAAS.

And while the incredible shrinking machine may be trite metaphor to a techie used to the faster, cheaper, smaller trends defined by Moore’s law, the notion of smaller machines is radical for the farm space. And yet the vast majority of the farms on the planet remain relatively small, particularly in poorer nations. A few years ago, when my colleague Danielle Nierenberg and I surveyed those technologies that are most effective at reducing hunger and poverty, for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, our Gates colleagues repeatedly asked about answers to weed control, harvesting and other labor-intensive tasks on small African and South Asian farms. They knew that even in poorer nations, farm labor is not always available, as people are flocking to cities in increasing numbers.

Which brings us to HelloTractor. Calling itself the Uber of Farm Machinery, this startup based in Washington, DC and Nairobi, Kenya, allows farmers to request farm machinery, just as you might “hail” a car with Uber. HelloTractor’s delivery system is tied to its own small, smart tractors, which monitor usage and location for the security of the owner. Owners can help offset the cost of their purchase by renting it out. And because labor shortages on farms can lead to poor harvests and lost income, the wider availability of these size-appropriate machines can help whole communities grow.

Rent to Own Zambia takes this idea one step further allowing small-scale entrepreneurs in rural Zambia to “rent one water pump, one refrigerator and one hammermill at a time.” The platform isn’t just for farm implements, but the concept remains the same: targetted use of machinery to help humans boost production and income. According to an investor in Rent to Own, the company is just beginning to spread, but there is demand across Africa and a clear need for the same sort of machine “helpers” that my neighbor Marilee was so excited about. I think off the farmers in my community who envy a neighbor’s compost spreader or grain mill or legion of budding apprentices. And the farms that either fail, or never get started, because they don’t work as a one-man, or one-woman, operation. In this context, being able to call on Rowbot or HelloTractor, might make the difference between farm survival and farm extinction.

Companies are rolling out small machine products seemingly every week. I just came across BeanIoT, a sensor the size and shape of a bean developed by Cambridgeshire-based RFMOD that can be added to silos or other grain storage to monitor humidity, temperature and spoilage. And Infratab is developing active RFID labels that record freshness data points every 30 seconds and can be put on food packages–or even individual fruits, vegetables or groceries–to indicate if the foods have exceeded certain temperature or humidity thresholds that would compromise quality and safety. The soil-based sensor company CropX has just raised $10 million on the notion that its “internet of the soil” tool will save farmers time and money. These don’t have moving parts like what we think of as robots or machines, but they do “help” farmers in the same way a Rowbot or Agribotix drone will.

Yes, big machines may have allowed a single person to farm miles of land. But they also created farms low on diversity. Small machines could not only help large farms to become more diverse and ecologically sound, they can be a huge help to small, diversely planted farms that suffer from too little machine solutions to help them.

In his classic description of rural decline, The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry recounted the process by which a declining number of very large farmers manage most of the American farmscape. A re-settling is the only antidote. And the rise of small farm machines might actually encourage it.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Brian Halweil is the editor-in-chief of Edible East End, Edible Long Island, Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn and a frequent writer on ag-tech issues. He is part of the team behind Food Loves Tech, an expo on the technology transforming our food chain this June in New York City.

The post How Mini Farm Robots Can Revolutionize Small-Scale Farming appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post Benzi Ronen, Founder of Farmigo. This post is part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Food tech today is centered around convenience: door-to-door delivery of meal kits, take-out, and packaged foods. I believe we have the responsibility to go further and leverage technology to create a food experience that’s centered around quality, transparency, and the championing of diverse, independent local farmers and small businesses.

Food quality will become increasingly paramount

In the current supermarket distribution model, fresh food travels an average of 1,500 miles before getting to store shelves. Unsurprisingly, this has a serious impact on the quality of our food. Fruit and vegetables are typically harvested unripe, so that they don’t spoil by the time they get to supermarket aisles, which means they’re lacking in taste and nutrients. This model also creates a tremendous amount of waste: more than 1/3 of 400 million pounds of fresh food grown each year is thrown out.

As we think about rewiring the food system for the better, we should aspire to collapse the distribution chain instead of adding to it. The solution is to eliminate middlemen, not simply replace them — Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) and tech companies like Farmigo are already applying just-in-time models to directly connect consumers to farm-fresh food, harvesting only what’s ordered to maximize freshness and reduce waste.

Transparency will become a requirement

Consumers are increasingly educated and empowered when it comes to their food choices. They demand to know where their food comes from, how it was produced — whether it’s Certified Organic, or from sustainable farms, or if it contains any GMOs. They’re advocating for greater transparency around what goes into their bodies and are holding the food industry accountable.

Category players who will succeed are those that stay ahead of this transparency curve and proactively look for producers with the same standards. At Farmigo, we help consumers understand where everything we sell comes from. The growing and harvesting practices of all items in our marketplace are detailed in our farmer and artisan biographies. It’s a way of reconnecting us with the origin of our food, so that as consumers, we fully understand what’s on our plate.

Companies that empower small local farmers and makers will have a tremendous advantage

Today, there are over 8,000 local farmer’s markets in the U.S., compared to about 5,000 in 2008. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, local food and beverage sales grew from $4.8 billion in 2007 to nearly $11 billion in 2015. The resurgence of demand for farmer’s markets and CSAs in the past few years have helped promote and foster more sustainable, smaller scale production that provides a viable alternative to the current industrial food system.

These small producers are making higher quality, more unique food than their behemoth counterparts, experimenting with heirloom species of produce, new cooking techniques, and sourcing local and seasonal ingredients in a way that can’t be replicated by slower-moving agribusiness giants. Yet they’re often the first to be squeezed out of the current food system by supermarkets exerting their buying power to drive prices down.

By bypassing the traditional distribution chain, Farmigo is able to provide far wider margins to farmers. Today, Farmigo gives its farmers and producers an average of 60 cents to the dollar, which is unheard of in an industry where 20 cents to the dollar is the standard.

This new economic model allows farmers to focus on quality and sustainability over pure cost cutting and yields extraordinary results in taste and nutrition — customers who experience this leap will have no interest in going back.

Companies that help small local farmers and makers reclaim their vital role in the food ecosystem will succeed in the “better food” revolution. Local food is poised to surpass both organic and natural as more and more consumers experience the benefits of supporting their local food system. It’s a responsible way to shop for better tasting food that lets customers minimize their carbon footprint and boost the local economy.

Providing greater access to a better food experience will win the ‘category war’

With demand for local food increasing rapidly, there is a true opportunity to offer better access to farmer’s market-quality food to more people. 53% of Americans live in the suburbs, and often don’t have the option to go to farmer’s market or buy food from local producers. While door-to-door grocery delivery companies are efficient for city dwellers (who are willing to pay a premium for convenience), most of the population doesn’t have access to or can’t afford these services.

We need more options like Farmigo, a business that’s optimized for accessing suburban neighborhoods to deliver the best possible food in a way that’s also convenient for families and sustainable for farmers. Our network of neighborhood pick-up sites, built on existing communities, enables us to provide farm-fresh food to people who might otherwise be in a local food desert.

We have to recreate the right food experience and re-introduce our lost food connections — bringing people closer to their food, their farmers, and each other. We need to build a better food system for everyone.

This is an extraordinary moment in the history of food in America. Today, technology has the ability to revolutionize the way we produce, distribute, and consume food. The companies that lead the path to a better food experience will not only prosper but also be the ones to redefine the category.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Benzi Ronen is building a better, more sustainable food system.

Having worked in the technology industry for more than a decade, Benzi felt it was time for a change. He noticed a disconnect between where technology was taking us and where it could take us. In today’s food industry, advances are focused largely on minimizing the human element rather than supporting it. Reflecting on the tremendous potential power of technology to bring eaters and farmers together, he decided to focus his newest venture on transforming the suburban and urban food landscape, which tends to be ruthlessly efficient at the cost of both quality and sustainability. Farmigo is a company dedicated to building a better food system from the ground up, one that benefits both farmers and eaters.

Benzi earned his BA from Tel-Aviv University and MBA from the University of Michigan. After graduating, he spent a decade working with giants in the technology world – Microsoft, Netscape, SAP – and launched a successful entrepreneurial endeavor, Octago, a piece of software that optimized user experience.  He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and their two children.

The post Localizing Distribution to Make Better Food Accessible to All appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

The food industry is one of the slowest industries to adapt to and incorporate new technologies. The principle cause of this slow adaptation is the acceptance of an age-old system, parts of which work and, ultimately, get the job done, albeit maybe not in the most healthful, sustainable or safe ways.

For many years the drivers of food production have been based solely on increasing food quantity whilst maintaining low costs. This emphasis on cost has progressively deteriorated the health and safety of our food over time, having a detrimental impact on consumers. Importantly, the blind acceptance of the current food system comes in part from the huge lack of understanding of food in general, both by the industry and the consumer. It is the industry’s role to educate consumers, but their focus is more on marketing their products than educated consumers. Thus, we have minimal knowledge about the food we eat, let alone how these foods interact with our bodies.

The era of the Internet, however, has started to change this. Consumers are now more aware of heath and food safety and, as information is more readily available online, they actively seek out healthier products. This shift in consumer preferences is putting increasing pressure on an outdated food industry to adapt and respond to the growing public awareness and demand for healthier, safer foods.

Artificial Intelligence & Big Data Increase Utilization of Food Co-Products & Reduce Waste

Thankfully, some important technologies have been developed in the last 5 years to disrupt the current system. These technologies include new ways of creating healthy foods, such as locating protein from novel sources (i.e. insects), which can be suitably harvested to feed a growing global population. Other technologies are looking at novel means of making foods safer, for example antimicrobial techniques within meat, which in turn is reducing the downstream disposal of such products.

An advancement that is particularly close to our hearts here at Nuritas is the identification of innovative ways for dealing with food co-products, or by-products from food production, by discovering new uses for them within the human food chain. Whey, for example, is a co-product of yogurt production. Today whey is a multibillion dollar industry, but in 2000 it had zero value. This is incredibly significant as an estimated 25-50 percent of food is discarded at the production level. Indeed, this number doesn’t include the further percentage that is thrown away downstream.

The best way to increase the sustainability, safety and health of food is to use technologies like artificial intelligence to examine food and its co-products at the molecular level. Such an approach has never been undertaken in food before.

So what does this mean exactly?

There are billions of molecules, called peptides, found within food and food co-products, which contain functional health benefits for the food industry and consumers alike. Some of the molecules we have found have antimicrobial capabilities which can thus be used as natural food preservatives to enhance food safety and extend shelf life. Another of our peptide discoveries aids in moving glucose into the muscle. This is important because diabetes is associated with a depletion in sugar movement into skeletal muscle cells.

Using a revolutionary technology that combines artificial intelligence and DNA analysis, we are able to extract these and many other molecules from within food and food co-products. This technology is able to not only add value to a seemingly valueless sidestream, but it is able to unlock unforeseen, health-promoting ingredients in such sidestreams, enhancing the safety and health of food products.

At Nuritas, we have discovered that we can use revolutionary technologies to guarantee safety and sustainability, but also to ensure future food products are life-changing in their capabilities. We believe the way forward is to integrate new technologies to ensure we get the most out of our foods by sustainably using the co-products of food production to unlock their molecular potential. This integration of science and technology will ultimately help the food industry become a healthier, safer and more sustainable industry.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Dr. Nora Khaldi is a global leader in the field of food and nutritional technology. She is a mathematician with a PhD in Molecular Evolution and the founder of Nuritas, the first company in the world to use artificial intelligence and DNA analysis to find new disease-beating molecules in food and food coproducts. Nuritas is not only defining the future of food and health with these disease-beating ingredients but also adding incredible value to currently valueless food sidestreams. The company has been recognised as one the most innovative startups in the world.

The post How Nuritas Uses Artificial Intelligence to Unlock The Full Potential of Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

It is ironic that good, healthy food is harder to find the closer you get to the areas where it is produced. In most large cities it’s easy to find stores offering all kinds of sustainable goods, but it’s almost impossible to find any grocery stores in small villages, let alone ones that sell organic products.

The core reason for this is efficiency, primarily labor efficiency. It is expensive to hire a cashier to stand in a store when there are only a handful of customers shopping each day. Large supermarkets can maintain long opening hours and low prices, because they have the necessary foot traffic. This puts tremendous pressure on small stores that simply can’t compete and whose customers have begun to do their weekly shopping in the city instead.

It’s a negative spiral: small shop owners are forced to raise their prices, decrease their operating hours and replace good food with high margin sugar bombs, all in an attempt to make enough revenue to survive. Ultimately, this drives customers away and, with out customers, the small stores go out of business.

The death of local retail is slowly killing whole villages. Most people want milk to be available nearby. When local shops close people start moving away to cities. Over time only the older generation is left in small towns, even though many people wish they could live in a less densely populated areas.

UNMANNED GROCERY STORES GIVE ANYONE ACCESS TO SUSTAINABLE FOOD

There is a simple solution to turn this around: create unmanned grocery stores that remove the need for humans to be present in stores at all times.

Today’s technology makes it possible to create an unmanned store, such as Näraffär, based in Sweden. Using technology, customers can enter the store, scan their goods and pay without ever interacting with a cashier. All they need is an app on their smart phone.

Suddenly, it’s possible for a small village to open a store with the sustainable goods they want for reasonable prices and opening hours that are unbeatable. Let the local producers in and the shop turns in to a 24/7 farmers market. This is not just a solution for rural areas. Unmanned grocery stores work in towns and cities of all sizes.

Today, we don’t see much retailing in rural areas. In ten years time, however, access to good, healthy food will be readily available for a reasonable price even in the smallest of villages. You won’t have to order it online – you will be able to go down the street to get it.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Robert Ilijason is a contractor who spent the last 20 years using technology and algorithms to automate processes within companies such as Ericsson, TeliaSonera and IKEA. Recently a smashed baby food canister made him open an unmanned store in Viken, Sweden. Now he’s launching Stay Open to create an off-the-shelf solution to help other retailers around the world either create unmanned stores or expand the opening hours on existing stores.

The post Unmanned Grocery Stores Help Improve Access To Healthy Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Paul & Kendra Rasmusson, Co-founders of Farmhouse Market on using technology to build an unstaffed grocery store to bring health, organic food to rural communities. This post is part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Rural communities around the world are facing a similar problem: a lack of access to healthy, high-quality food. Grocery stores in many rural communities are struggling to keep their doors open as a result of high operating costs and low profit margins. Because research indicates a strong correlation between diet-related disease and a lack of access to healthy foods, rural communities are hungry for a solution to this serious problem.

If only there were a way to increase the profitability of the rural grocery store…

Insert technology.

Farmhouse Market is the first of its kind, technology-focused grocery store that, although primarily-unstaffed, is open 24/7 to its members. While not a co-operative, it does employ a member-driven business model, encouraging community residents to purchase a membership in exchange for a 5 percent discount on every purchase.

Farmhouse Market utilizes technologies like a keycard entry system, a 24-hour remote video surveillance and self-checkout to allow its members the ability to shop 24/7 without having to staff the store around the clock. The shop is staffed three days per week for three-hour intervals, during which time non-members are able to shop, too. This business model allows for one person to easily manage and staff the store without requiring them to live on-site or staff the store 60+ hours a week. Through technological advancements like remote video surveillance, the manager can keep a bird’s eye view on the store from afar and track inventory and sales with a few clicks on their smartphone.

More than making food accessible in rural communities, we are committed to making healthy food accessible in rural communities. While we do work with larger natural foods distributors to round out our product offerings, Farmhouse Market hangs its hat on working directly with local farmers and food producers who adhere to growing and food production practices that produce high-quality products. By sourcing food locally from trusted sources, we can better ensure our products are safe, fresh (often picked the same day!) and have passed through as few hands – and traveled as few miles – as possible.

Making healthy food convenient is a good start, but making healthy food affordable is the real dilemma. By using technology to reduce operating and staffing costs, Farmhouse Market makes it once again feasible (and profitable!) to operate a grocery store in a rural community. This profitability allows for some flexibility in pricing practices, which can be extended to consumers. By offering competitive pricing with larger, retail chains and a 5% discount on member purchases, Farmhouse Market can make healthy food options available and affordable to rural communities.

Farmhouse Market opened its pilot location in New Prague, Minnesota in October of 2015. Its opening immediately sparked interest in other rural communities around Minnesota. Farmhouse Market’s technology-based business model could be replicated in any similar rural community around the world, providing for added buying power and increased economies of scale ensuring healthy, safe and sufficient food for more and more people around the world.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Paul & Kendra Rasmusson, Co-founders of Farmhouse Market

Paul and Kendra Rasmusson are the co-founder of Farmhouse Market, a small local and organic foods market that works directly with local farmers and food producers in addition to natural foods distributors to make the good food you want to eat more accessible close to home. Although Paul’s education lies in advertising, his profession is banking and finance. Kendra received her undergrad and master’s degrees in business communication and operates a small marketing consulting business in addition to managing the day-to-day operations of Farmhouse Market.

Ultimately Paul and Kendra’s passion behind Farmhouse Market came when their 2-year-old daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy. Knowing that diet alterations can help some battling seizures, they decided they owed it to their daughter – and anyone else seeking health – to make good food available where it wasn’t previously.

The post How Unstaffed Grocery Stores Can Bring Healthy Food To Rural Communities appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Robyn O’Brien, author, analyst, advisor and mother on building a smarter food operating system. This post is part of our Internet of Food Series, which asks: “How might we use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone?” The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

We have to design new business models to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. There is no “might” but “mighty” that is required.

Right now, our food system is broken. Less than 1 percent of U.S. farmland is organic, we’ve designed an operating system heavily dependent on chemical inputs, and you need look no further than the health of a preschool classroom where 1 in 3 kids has either allergies, asthma, ADHD or autism. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 1 in 3 Caucasian kids born in the year 2000 and 1 in 2 minority kids born that year are expected to be insulin dependent by the time they reach adulthood. That’s this year’s 10^th graders. The President’s Cancer Panel says 1 in 2 American men and 1 in 3 women are expected to get cancer in their lifetimes. And we waste 40 percent of all of the food we produce.

Building A Smarter Food Operating System

We have to do better. We need a smarter food system. When asking “how might we use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone?,” we need to turn the “might” into mighty.

So how can we leverage the best that we have to offer, innovation, entrepreneurship, design, intellect and passion to create a better food system? No act is too small. Whether you start locally or globally, you have to start. Leverage technology, social media and online contacts to start a conversation. Host an event at your school, at your church and in your community, and invite a pediatrician, allergist or a doctor to participate. Do not be intimidated to simply do one thing. None of us can do everything, but all of us can do something. And as we each begin to build out these conversations and our networks, we connect, we interconnect and we begin to create extraordinary change, leveraging human capital and investor capital, leveraging innovation and intellect.

Create apps and technologies to capture data on Americans with food allergies, diabetes and cancer, including what they eat and what they are looking for. Meet that demand in stores, restaurants, gardens and at home. This demand for free-from foods is not a fad or a trend. Cancer isn’t a fad, food allergies are not a trend.

Plant something on your deck, in your yard, in a pot in your kitchen. Do not be afraid to start small. Then teach someone else how to do it. Take a video, write a post. Restore food literacy in our country, starting on your block.

We have to build a smarter operating system. One that relies more on intellect than it does on chemicals. One that is dependent on innovation not artificial ingredients.

Our collective expertise is extraordinary. Capturing data from systems analysts, building platforms that allow those with dietary needs to input and build communities and best practices. Leveraging scientists and farmers to build a food system that works as well for the soil as it does for their sons, that’s as safe for the dirt as it is for their daughters.

We can do this. Our country was founded on this pioneering spirit of creating and designing a better way, whenever we realized there was a need.

There is a need for a new operating system when it comes to our food, recognizing that our most valuable inputs are human capital.

Given the growing number of health conditions we are seeing in our loved ones, there is little room for error, but we are mighty. Let’s rise up to the challenge – a smarter operating system is ours to create.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Robyn O’Brien has been called “Food’s Erin Brockovich” by Bloomberg and the New York Times.  She received her MBA on a full scholarship, graduating as the top woman in her class, and then went on to work as an equity analyst on a team that managed $20 billion in assets and launched the company’s first hedge fund.  As an analyst she covered the food and tech industries, but her life took an abrupt turn when her youngest child had a life threatening allergic reaction.  She turned her analytical skills towards what is happening to our food, the health of our families and what we can do to exercise precaution.  She has helped lead a food movement and regularly appears in the press. Robyn’s work has been recognized by political leaders around the country, by General Mills, Chipotle, Coca Cola, Target, Chili’s Restaurants and others in the food industry.  She is a recognized thought leader, named by Forbes Women as a woman to follow on Twitter, named by SHAPE Magazine as a woman to shape the world, and the author of the bestseller The Unhealthy Truth, founder of the AllergyKids Foundation and advisor to a number of food companies. She is a married, mother of four and a sought after speaker whose work has been recognized by Ted Turner, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, Prince Charles, in the media and at financial conferences, health conferences and food industry and corporate events. More can be found at www.robynobrien.com

The post Robyn O’Brien On Building A Smarter Food Operating System appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Victor Penev, founder and CEO of Edamam on the nutrition information challenge as part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Let’s face it, poor nutrition is most often the result of poor, but perfectly understandable, decisions made with poor nutrition information and data. To witness:

• We stuff up on processed foods, because we think they are cheap and easily accessible. If we knew their actual impact on our health and potential cost in medical bills, however, this calculation may change.
• We avoid cooking at home, because it seems easier and faster to order in or eat out. But if we knew how much sodium and fat we consume when eating out, we might reconsider.
• We routinely overeat, because we are unaware of the amount of calories and other nutrients packed in our supersized portions. If the calorie count of the pasta dish you eat for dinner is readily available, you might eat only half of it.

Bottom line, eating right – that is, eating properly portioned nutritious food that is aiding our health and well-being – is an information problem. If better, more actionable nutrition information is available when making food decisions, people will make better food choices. Many weight loss programs, for example, have people log what they eat, which ultimately drives a change in how much and what they eat. As the saying goes, if you can measure it, you can manage it.

Solving The Nutrition Information Problem

The good news is that the nutrition information problem is infinitely solvable. It can be broken down into three sub-problems:

1. Gather and organize in one place all relevant food and nutrition information. This means data about every food, recipe, ingredient, quantity, measure, cooking technique, etc.
2. “Smarten” up this database by structuring the data and building algorithms to answer real-life questions about food. An example: what is a good recipe with spinach for someone with heart condition, who has kids allergic to nuts?
3. Make the “smart data” available to as wide as possible network of outlets, so you can reach people at every point they make a decision about food.

Edamam aims to solve these sub-problems of the nutrition information problem. We are relentlessly gathering and structuring food data, building algorithms to allow smart querying and partnering with businesses in the food, health and wellness space to make the data useful to their users. In the process, we hope to change the way people eat by giving them the option of a smarter, better informed food choice every time they make one.

Of course, this is not a one-company solution. Initiatives such as GS1 and legislation to make nutrition labeling in restaurants mandatory are examples of the efforts that should happen at the individual, business and government levels.

Another crucial part of the solution is logging and tracking food consumption. Companies such as Apple, FitBit and LoseIt, for example, make it easier for consumers to track their diet and nutrition, as well as their impact on weight, sleep, mood and overall health. The challenge, however, is that people still have to take the time and effort to log their meals.

The true tipping point will come the moment food logging becomes as easy and as tracking movement is today. When people are able to seamlessly track what they eat, it will become much easier to deliver personalized nutrition advice and recommendations. Applications will be able to match food and nutrition data against personal phenome, genome, microbiome and diet preference data to provide people with the best nutrition plan for them. This is not a remote possibility. With the current state of technology, this will likely be a reality in 5 to 10 years.

As food and nutrition have repeatedly been linked to overall health and longevity, the promise of solving the nutrition information problem will mean longer, healthier and happier lives. The age when we might live on average 120 years by just eating right is nigh, and this is something to cheer about.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Victor Penev is a serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Edamam. Previous to Edamam, Victor co-founded and sold Bulgaria’s largest Internet Company, NetInfo BG. Victor Penev also ran the international digital business of Playboy Enterprises, and was instrumental in starting the digital marketing efforts of BMG and in creating key e-commerce capability for Bertelsmann’s book clubs. He holds MBA from Stanford.

The post Information Is The Missing Ingredient To Eating Right appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post on using big food data to create recipes for a sustainable future by Bernard Lahousse co-founder of Foodpairing as part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

“If we just eat what the land gives us, there is food enough for everybody.”
—Chef Dan Barber, Blue Hill

The key to our food sustainability depends on learning to eat what the land and sea already provide us. Rather than industrializing our food systems to coax anything and everything out of (sometimes) nothing, or depleting our current food sources to extinction, we need to embrace the whole world of ingredient options already surrounding us. For example, instead of just eating mainstream fish like salmon and tuna, we can cook with under-appreciated bycatch species. We can also add variety to our daily diets by using other lesser known ingredients such as seaweed, insects and wild, foraged foods.

The challenge is that many people don’t know how to cook with these kinds of ingredients. By analyzing and understanding the aroma and flavor profiles of unfamiliar ingredients, however, we can overcome our biases and discover exciting ways to incorporate them into new recipes.

Big Food Data: Analyzing Aroma, Flavor & Texture at the Molecular Level

At Foodpairing, our goal is to characterize every ingredient in the world. By analyzing individual ingredients on a molecular level, we can pinpoint the actual patterns responsible for their aromas, flavors and textures. These aromatic profiles enable us to calculate the synergy between the flavors of different ingredients, while taking into account seasonality, locality and preparation methods.

Over the last ten years, and with the help of our global network of chefs, bartenders and governmental partners, Foodpairing has been able to source ingredients from around the world. We have also found ways to optimize new recipe algorithms by working in collaboration with some of the world’s best restaurants (Mugaritz, El Bulli, The Fat Duck, Eleven Madison Park, Central and many more).

So far we have analyzed more than 1700 ingredients to understand their aroma and flavor profiles to determine their best ingredient pairings. You can find all product information, discover potential matches, recipes, algorithms and much more through our Foodpairing API.

We partnered with the Belgian-based North Sea Chefs’ bycatch initiative to utilize our technology to minimize food waste and promote the use of lesser-known fish and bycatch. Until recently, 50 percent of the bycatch fish caught in Europe’s North Sea alone were left to die before being discarded at sea, in favor of more popular species to meet consumer demand. We’re proud to say that we now have 30 North Sea fish profiled in the Foodpairing database, and that’s just the beginning. Below, you can see our technology at work with an example of our visual analysis of Pout Whiting’s aromatic profile and its aromatic links to ginger and orange.

Pout whiting is one of many North Sea bycatch fish species. You can see from our aroma analysis that its flavor is characterized as having mostly roasted popcorn-like notes, along with some buttery and floral notes. You may not be as familiar with pout whiting, but it’s every bit as delicious as other familiar fish species. Using Foodpairing, you can find complementary ingredient matches to pair with Pout Whiting, like turnip rooted chervil, codium, fava bean tops, humulus shoots or kimchi.

Data-Driven Recipes For a Sustainable Future

Conventional cooking often relies on intuition and recipe testing. For the most part, personal experience and cultural conventions dictate our notions of how to pair ingredients, which can be somewhat limiting. At Foodpairing, we take a different using approach, using chemistry and physics as a launch pad for the discovery of otherwise hidden ingredient pairings to expand your recipe creations.

Our own Michelin-starred chef Peter Coucquyt crafts new recipes based on potential ingredient matches that have been generated by our Foodpairing Inspiration Tool. Try his North Sea bycatch fish recipe for Pout whiting with orange-carrot ginger soup.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Bernard Lahousse is an author, scientist, food aficionado and co-founder of the Foodpairing Company.

Foodpairing.com is the world’s largest creative chef network. Nowadays, our palates have evolved to eat much more adventurously than before. Unexpected ingredient combinations becoming the new norm and chefs are challenging themselves to churn out innovative menus to not miss out on the next big thing in food trends. Through science and computer-aided intelligence, half a million food professionals, in 125 countries are trusting and leaning on Foodpairing to create surprising flavor combinations for healthy and sustainable recipes.

Building on its extensive flavor experience in working with chefs, the Foodpairing company offers consumer flavor intelligence for brands. The Foodpairing technology helps medium and large, customer-centric enterprises to unveil the trending flavors in market data and identify, in no-time, the perfect flavor combinations for their brand and customers. Unlike slow and expensive traditional customer research based on static data and cumbersome reports, Foodpairing consumer flavor intelligence delivers real-time actionable customer intelligence essential to launch the right flavor at the right time and achieve better business outcomes.

The post Using Big Data to Transform Unfamiliar Ingredients Into Tasty Recipes appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post Marc Zornes, founder of Winnow, as part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Every calorie counts, and reducing food waste should be the first priority in ensuring a sustainable food supply chain. New technologies are transforming how we look at waste. At Winnow, we believe food is too valuable to be wasted and that technology can transform the way we prepare our food. By tackling food waste aggressively and strategically, we all stand to gain from a more efficient, robust food supply chain.

Every day, the world wastes roughly one third of all food that is grown at some point between farm and fork. This is equal to over $1 trillion in waste or over 1 percent of global output. When the world ponders how to feed the growing population over the next 30 years, reducing this waste is first place we should start.

Only in the past 10 years have we really begun to understand the scale of this issue. Now that we appreciate the level of waste that exists in our system, it’s time for us to move from talking about why waste is a problem to finding solutions to address it.

The good news is that reducing food waste is a win-win for everyone in the supply chain. At each point, there is an opportunity to either be more efficient or to find new outlets for food that would otherwise go uneaten.

• Producers find new outlets to sell products that their existing producers cannot or will not buy.
• Food distributers improve their forecasting and buying techniques or gain tax breaks by donating food to those in need.
• Restaurants produce the right food and put the right product in front of their customers.
• Consumers get smarter about what they buy and how much they make.

In all instances, we save money while decreasing the needs for more intensive farming as food demands continue to increase with growing populations.

Reducing Food Waste With Innovations From Other Industries

We are at the nascent stages of innovation when it comes to reducing food waste, particularly with technology. There are only a handful of companies trying to solve this problem and yet the size of the opportunity is enormous. This is bound to change.

Despite the scale of the issue, this is very much a solvable problem. Early innovations to reduce waste such as Winnow are proving that waste can be cut by over 50 percent. The solutions are taking parallels from other businesses solving similar issues and applying them to this problem. These solutions fall into three broad themes:

Big Data: What you measure gets managed. Today, there is only sparse data on what is wasted. Accurately recording what is waste and why and then using that data to drive insights on how you can change operational practices and people’s behaviour has tremendous power. Once you know where waste is occurring, improved forecasting and production planning allows you address the issue at its root cause.

New Markets: We clearly know in advance when something is likely to be wasted. Identifying companies or people who will buy that product and make use of it prior to its expiry is a brand new revenue stream. Today, there are companies doing this at the farm level (Food Cowboys) and at homes (Olio).

Extending expiry dates: A myriad of new solutions are looking at how we can extend the shelf life of produce and other foods to make sure they can last until they are eaten. This can be particularly helpful in supermarkets and homes where the leading cause of waste.

At Winnow, we focus on the first area of big data. We’ve found that kitchens simply don’t know how much is being wasted, and that many large kitchens waste 20 percent of the food they buy. This is not through incompetence, but because they lack the correct tools. By monitoring waste with our technology, we help chefs improve their kitchen practices and drive significant savings to the bottom line.

We are on a mission to solve the problem for restaurants on a global scale. We are already live in six countries and are savings our clients millions. However, we’re only scratching the service. To really solve this problem, we need to be saving our clients billions. When we reach that goal, we will have an exciting business at the same time.

There are so many opportunities to fight waste in the food supply chain and tremendous wealth and impact that can be generated by doing so. Our real question is: who’s going to join us in the fight?

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Marc been working in the food supply chain for over 10 years. He started in logistics working for C&S Wholesale Grocers where he helped run distribution facilities, lead the company’s Vendor Managed Inventory program, and serve as the chief of staff to the CEO. He later worked as a Manager at McKinsey & Company where he was a leader in the Sustainability and Consumer practices.

While at McKinsey, Marc co-authored the McKinsey Gobal Institute report, Resource Revolution: Meeting the World’s Energy, Materials, Food and Water Needs. Marc led the team that conducted the analysis for the report focusing in on global opportunities for resource productivity. One of the key findings of this report was that food waste was one of the largest, untapped opportunities for resource productivity globally.

Marc then left McKinsey to found Winnow. Winnow build technology to help chefs run their kitchens more efficiently. The company’s first product helps sites better understand and prevent food waste. Since launch two years ago Winnow has been deployed in over 200 kitchens and has saved its customers over £2m by reducing food waste.

The post Reducing Food Waste Is A Win-Win For Everyone In The Supply Chain appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Manuel Gonzalez Managing Director, Head of the Rabobank North America Wholesale San Francisco office, and Head of the Western Region Corporate Clients for Rabobank North America Wholesale as part of our Internet of Food Series. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

Feeding an increasing population, changing consumer preferences and resource constraints, present many challenges, but also provide many opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. I am proud to support innovation through my work at Rabobank, the leading global food and agriculture bank. Rabobank has been investing in the food and agriculture industries for over 100 years, and we are determined to contribute to overcoming challenges and seizing opportunities for growth.

The Four Dimensions of Food Security

 
Together with our clients, partners and colleagues worldwide, we believe that we all need to contribute to the four dimensions of food security:

1. Increasing the availability of food
2. Improving access to food
3. Promoting balanced, healthy nutrition
4. Increasing stability

Helping Food & Agriculture Startups Succeed

 
While Rabobank’s view on these dimensions of food security shape our understanding of the challenge of guaranteeing healthy, safe, and sufficient food for everyone, we understand that no one business model or technology will be able to address all elements of these interconnected and complex global food issues. We believe it is crucial to encourage, support and promote an ecosystem full of diverse business models, technologies and viewpoints that will drive innovative solutions to our biggest food challenges. We believe our key role in supporting this type of ecosystem is to promote and facilitate connections throughout the entire food and agriculture value chain. In particular, we aim to offer and facilitate access to finance, knowledge and networks to help the food ecosystem succeed.

One of the initiatives developed by Rabobank to promote and facilitate these connections is FoodBytes!, a series of transformational events in the food, agribusiness and technology space. FoodBytes! events are designed to connect food industry leaders and investors with food and agriculture startups that are innovating and disrupting the food chain with groundbreaking ideas in food, agribusiness and technology. Through FoodBytes!, we are leveraging our experience and knowledge to connect innovators with investors, and create a platform to turn today’s new ideas and technologies into tomorrow’s solutions.

We will continue working to develop this ecosystem around the four dimensions of food security. We are committed to ensuring the knowledge, networks and access to finance that come from our events will help support the most promising technological solutions to our greatest food challenges.

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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Manuel Gonzalez was born in Mexico and is the Managing Director, Head of the Rabobank North America Wholesale San Francisco office, and Head of the Western Region Corporate Clients for Rabobank North America Wholesale. Formerly, he was the Country Head of Rabobank Mexico for four years. Under his leadership, the Mexico franchise significantly strengthened its business performance, achieving considerable increases in revenue, cross-sell and net income.

Manuel joined Rabobank in 1996 as a project manager in the Project Finance business in Mexico. In 2003, he was named Head of Credit and a year later became the Head of Credit and Legal. Prior to Rabobank, Manuel was the General Manager at Gonzalez Guzman Alimentos, a dairy and food distribution company. Manuel holds an MBA from Georgetown University.

The post Why Rabobank Is Creating An Ecosystem To Help Food & Agriculture Startups Succeed appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Guest post by Isha Datar, CEO of New Harvest. The views expressed are are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views of Food+Tech Connect.

At New Harvest, we’re kickstarting the post-animal bioeconomy – an industry of animal products made without animals, including meat, milk, eggs and gelatin – by supporting cellular agriculture as an established area of academic research. Like the agricultural and industrial revolutions before it, cellular agriculture is the next revolution in food.

The post-animal bioeconomy offers a solution to many of the immense problems associated with the food system as it exists today. Our increasing hunger for cheap animal products is having significant impacts on the environment, climate change, water use, antibiotic resistance, and food safety. Cellular agriculture has the potential to offer the exact same animal-derived foods created in a way that bypasses each of these negative effects. As an application of medical science (tissue engineering to be exact) to food production, cellular agriculture is a proven technology that at this point in time requires further research in order to be implemented on a large commercial scale.

Harvesting animal food products from the cell level up, rather than raising millions of animals and breaking them down into their various constituent parts as we do now, may also have the benefit of opening up exciting new culinary possibilities that are yet unimaginable to us. We already know cellular agriculture methods can produce foods with longer shelf lives. Cellular agriculture can also be tailored for specific uses and preferences, for example: meat with fewer saturated fats and more unsaturated fats, lactose-free milk, cholesterol-free eggs, or egg whites intended for different baked goods like meringues or fluffy angel food cakes.

Prior to our harnessing of fermentation for food millennia ago, staples like cheese, yogurt and beer were beyond our comprehension. In time, cellular agriculture products will likely be produced in large bioreactors, machines where biological processes are carried out on an industrial scale, which are sterile, safe, and transparent environments totally unlike the factory animal farms and slaughterhouses of today. The animal food production processes of tomorrow may look and function in a way similar to modern beer breweries, and this could open up all kinds of novel gastronomic possibilities, analogous to the vast array of artisanal craft beer breweries that have existed for centuries.

Cellular agriculture offers significant promise for a more ethical, sustainable, stable, safe and diverse food system – as well as of course, for people simply wanting to enjoy affordable, delicious animal foods

Internet of Food is an editorial series exploring how we might use technology, new business models and design to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food for everyone. Join the conversation between March 23 and April 29. Share your ideas in the comments, on Twitter using #internetoffood, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn, and follow the conversation by subscribing to our newsletter.

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New Harvest CEO Isha Datar has been pioneering the field of cellular agriculture          since 2009, when she began a deep-dive investigation into the technical challenges         and opportunities involved in producing cultured meat. In 2010 Isha published   “Possibilities for an in-vitro meat production system” in the food science    journal Innovative Food Science and Emerging Technologies.

Isha quickly discovered that cellular agriculture research was not held back by a lack of interest or expertise, but instead by a lack of designated funding channels directed at this intersectional work. Thus began her quest to establish the field of animal products made without animals, one recognized by researchers, funding agencies, and investors.

A stint in Policy and Public Affairs at GlaxoSmithKline illuminated the cooperative relationship between non-profits, academia, and companies in translating beneficial science out of the lab and into society. Isha has used a model often used in advancing     medical research to advance cellular agriculture, by funding early stage, foundational research in academia and starting cellular agriculture companies on more ready-to-market technologies.

Isha became CEO and President of New Harvest in January 2013. She co-founded Muufri, making milk without cows, in April 2014 and Clara Foods, making eggs without chickens, in November 2014.

Isha has a BSc. in Cell and Molecular Biology from the University of Alberta and a Masters in Biotechnology from the University of Toronto.

The post Why Cellular Agriculture Is The Next Revolution In Food appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.