Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Kathleen Merrigan, former deputy secretary and COO of the United States Department of Agriculture, helped write the original 1990 Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), and now she says “the time is right to enhance the National Organic Program with biodiversity dictates.” She argues that rather than creating new standards and labels, which often just confuse consumers, there are already built-in mechanisms to push organic standards to better support things like biodiversity and soil health. She also urges that the only way to drive real food system change is to diversify leadership to better reflect societal demographics. In particular, Merrigan argues for increased investment in female founded companies and great representation of women on boards.

Below, I chat with Merrigan about true cost accounting, how we might evolve organic standards to support biodiversity, and how she’s supporting biodiversity through her new role as the director and professor of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State, as a venture partner at Astanor Ventures and as an advisor and a board member and advisor to a number of organizations.

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Danielle Gould: What is Arizona State University doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

Kathleen A. Merrigan: To understand food production in its full context, we need to factor in, and cost-out, all impacts – biodiversity, human health, water quality, climate, wasted food, etc. In doing so, what are now largely invisible costs (because they are not valued monetarily), become explicit and the choices we make about what, how, and where we produce food will become transparent.

ASU is excited by, and supporting the work that I’m doing related to TEEB for Agriculture and Food, a UN Environment Programme Initiative with several supporters, including the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Some of your readers may be familiar with TEEB, which stands for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity. The goal of TEEB is to “make nature’s values visible.” TEEB “AgriFood” grew out of the overall TEEB effort and for the past several years, we’ve engaged nearly 200 scholars across 33 countries in an effort to develop a framework approach that allows us to identify, and place a value on, externalities of food production, be they positive or negative. The simple idea is this: valuations of externalities enable us to understand the true cost of food. This will help our leaders, especially policymakers, make informed — and hopefully better — decisions.

Would such transparency really lead to more sustainable food systems? There is no guarantee of course, but consider the example of wasted food. People were shocked to learn the cost of wasted food, which FAO has estimated to be $1 trillion annually, and the result has been more policy proposals to address the problem. While insufficient reform has occurred to date, I am optimistic that the revelation of the issue through cost accounting will ultimately compel policymakers to act (e.g., not that long ago France prohibited grocery stores from throwing away edible food).

DG: Are there certifications or other signals that can help the average consumer determine what kinds of foods are helping promote biodiversity?

KM: The organic label is best in class when it comes to voluntary certification programs, and I believe the time is right to enhance the National Organic Program with biodiversity dictates. I can assure you that we had biodiversity on our minds when drafting the 1990 Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA) and its implementing regulations published in 2000, and yet you won’t find a specific section on ‘biodiversity dos and don’ts.’

There was anxiety then, and likely now, that it is difficult to measure and enforce biodiversity standards. But we’re smarter today than we were 30 years ago and we have a built-in mechanism to improve organic standards for biodiversity, soil health, and other aspects without new law. OFPA requires every producer and processor to establish an organic plan to be reviewed as part of certification. This requirement has not been utilized in the ways that I had imagined and yet it provides all kinds of opportunity to implement creative and updated thinking about production and handling standards consistent with OFPA and organic philosophy. Unfortunately, this seems to be lost on too many people and we are seeing various labels and certifications in the marketplace promoted as “better than” organic – which is almost always not true and confuses consumers looking to do the right thing.

While we will be prioritizing work on organic at the Swette Center, I should also point out that voluntary standards of any kind are no substitute for public policy – laws and incentives that support biodiversity. Consumers should pressure the marketplace for biodiversity information, but they should also be engaging in policy discussions that create biodiversity mandates, ensuring compliance across food production. A 2017 report on the 400+ voluntary sustainability standards illustrates this point with some good data.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

KM: The influx of new capital, particularly from venture capitalists who made their first fortune in Silicon Valley, has the potential to transform the food sector. Many of these firms engage in “impact investing” – meaning they only make investments that align with sustainable food systems. I am a venture partner in such a firm, Astanor Ventures, based in Europe as well as an advisor to S2G Ventures here in the US. Given the current intractability in government at the federal level, I’ve shifted some of my attention to innovations coming from the private sector, and I’m encouraged by the young entrepreneurs whom I’ve met.

Putting a twist on your question and related to the upsurge of venture capital, I want to pitch the power of people diversity. I’ve always said that it is foolish to think that we’ll change the food system without changing the decision makers around the table so to better reflect societal demographics. Part of the ‘biodiversity’ agenda needs to be about supporting women, who find it more difficult to raise capital for their companies and who are poorly represented in board rooms. I cling to the belief that things will evolve naturally, but maybe we need something like the European legal mandate that 50 percent of board seats be held by women or the new California law that requires all public boards to have at least one woman director by the close of 2019 and by 2021, at least three female directors if the board is six or more people; 2 if the board is five people; and at least one female if the board has four or fewer directors.

DG: What are some examples of food products that promote biodiversity?

KM: We need greater diversity in what we grow and eat for the many reasons your readers understand. My students will tell you that I’m pulse-crazy.  FAO has a pretty good website that describes pulses, along with their health and environmental benefits. It goes to my lifelong interest in figuring a way to make crop rotations profitable for farmers. Good, soil enhancing crop rotations are a cornerstone of sustainability and a practice mandated by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990. But too often farmers lose money on crops that do right by the environment but for which consumers are not clamoring. Chef Dan Barber thinks quite a bit about this dilemma and is championing great cuisine. He has served me “rotational risotto” and “cover crop salad” – both celebrating crops that are not yet mainstream but certainly delicious.

Cover crop salad with oat bread, which she was served by Chef Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns // Credit: Kathleen Merrigan

DG: If we get to a perfectly biodiverse food system, how would that change the typical selection of products we see in a grocery store?

KM: There is seeming abundance of choice as we travel up and down the aisles of our grocery stores. It is fairly common these days to confront up to 60,000 different items in a grocery, with some superstores having as many as 200,000! The Food Marketing Institute reports that the average number of Stock-Keeping Units (SKUs) in 2017 across all kinds of groceries was 30,098. Yet there is a falseness to this – the many brands, labels, and quantity suggest diversity, but when you get beyond the marketing jazz, much of what is presented to us is basically the same – same ingredients, same varieties, same companies. And changing this is tough. It is difficult to get a new item into a grocery unless you’re one of the big guys. I loved that Whole Foods Market had local food foragers who helped smaller scale farmers and food producers make it onto their shelves, but with all the changes that company has and is going through, those days may be over.

Years ago I used to bring my students to the University of Massachusetts Cold Spring Orchard Research and Education Center in Belchertown where they grew over 200 varieties of apples (today it’s more like 100). It was sheer joy to taste the diversity of the apples, and also learn from scientists why certain varieties fell out of favor, or were better than others in resisting pests. But what grocery is going to carry more than a handful of varieties? Even with growing interest in a tastier apple, I would love to see a grocery store with its core mission being a celebration of biodiversity. I’m going to have to dream on that awhile.

On April 30, 2019, join Kathleen Merrigan and Chef Dan Barber for an event on the Power of Deliciousness. The event will also be livestreamed by Food Tank.

Read all of our biodiversity interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Kathleen A. Merrigan is the Kelly and Brian Swette Professor of Sustainable Food Systems at the Arizona State University School of Sustainability and director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems. Previously, Merrigan served as Deputy Secretary and COO of the United States Department of Agriculture. She is currently a board member of FoodCorps, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) and World Agroforestry (ICRAF) and is affiliated with Astanor Ventures and S2G, two firms investing in ag-tech innovations.

The post Biodiversity Requirements Will Enhance Organic Standards, Says Kathleen Merrigan appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Can aquaponics and aquaculture support and protect biodiversity? We speak with Edenworks co-founder and CEO Jason Green about why seafood biodiversity is critical and the role aquaponics and aquaculture can play in preserving it. He also talks to us about how the company is creating biodiverse ecosystems, including microbial ecosystems, to grow seafood with no antibiotics, hormones, mercury, or waste discharge, and plants with no pesticides or added fertilizer.

Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for Edenworks? If so, how and why?

Jason Green: Biodiversity is at the core of what Edenworks does. We are an aquaponic vertical farm. We grow complete ecosystems that combine aquaculture (fish farming) with hydroponics (fertilizing plants with nutrient-rich water), inside controlled environments.

Our aquaponic ecosystems are multi-tiered food webs, just as you find in nature. We start by farming animals — fish and shrimp — both for food and for their waste. Next, we grow the microbiome — all the bacteria and fungi that live with our fish, break down their waste into fertilizer that our plants can use, and colonize plant roots to improve the health of our plants. Finally, we grow plants, which absorb all those nutrients.

By growing biodiverse ecosystems, we generate seafood with no antibiotics, hormones, mercury, or waste discharge, and plants with no pesticides or added fertilizer. It’s a beautiful marriage.

DG: How does Edenworks define and think about biodiversity? What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like? How do you measure biodiversity?

JG: Ideal, biodiverse food systems source from working, biodiverse ecosystems. What ends up on your plate — the items and ratios — should be representative of what nature can sustain.

We measure biodiversity in terms of “food webs” within our ecosystems, ie. what’s eating what. In the language of ecology, we’re looking to increase both “species richness,” the breadth of different species (x-axis), and “trophic diversity,” the number of tiers within a food web.

Beyond the visible levels of biodiversity, there is an invisible aspect to biodiversity: the microbiome. The microbiome is the community of bacteria and fungi that live in and around all of our plants and animals (and us humans).

Our oceans and soils have an almost unbelievable level of microbial diversity. A gram of healthy soil has between 100 million and one billion microbial cells. Unhealthy soil might have around 10 thousand bacterial cells, a difference of 100,000x!

It’s also now been studied that monocultures, pesticides, and industrial fertilizers reduce microbiome diversity, which creates a dependence on those chemicals. Increasing the levels of visible biodiversity exponentially increases the levels of microbiome diversity and removes the need for chemicals. So there’s a virtuous cycle at play here.

DG: What role might aquaculture play in promoting biodiversity?

JG: Seafood has been referred to as the last wild food. It is the last protein market to have meaningful levels of biodiversity. In contrast, beef, poultry, and pork have very low levels of biodiversity. So there’s real concern that if aquaculture goes the way of other protein markets, we’ll lose all that biodiversity.

Aquaculture also has unparalleled opportunity for impact. It’s the largest and fastest growing protein market in the world. In fact, it’s the fastest growing food segment overall.

What’s exciting is that biodiversity is already getting traction as a treatment for the biggest issue threatening future growth in aquaculture: pest pressure. Salmon monoculture operations globally have been under a years-long assault by sea lice. In shrimp farming, the lack of genetic diversity globally is such an issue that every few years, a huge portion of global shrimp stocks get wiped out by a single virus. Industry finds a new species that is resistant to that virus, those genetics come to dominate the global market…rinse, repeat.

Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA; it’s a mouthful) is the industry term for growing whole multi-tiered aquatic ecosystems. For example, instead of just growing salmon, also growing seaweed to absorb excess nitrogen, and bivalves to absorb organic nutrients. These biodiverse ecosystems are more disease resistant and more profitable than traditional monocultures, creating an economic incentive for biodiversity.

Fun fact: in IMTA, the biodiversity doesn’t stop at the species being farmed. All manners of wild sea creatures will begin to colonize these ecosystems, especially the “kelp forests”. Once you start farming for biodiversity, nature helps to snowball.

DG: What is Edenworks doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

JG: Edenworks is the most biodiverse indoor farm. We’ve yet to find another indoor farm that’s growing as much diversity in terms of both produce and protein. To date, we’ve grown four species of fish and more than 80 varieties of leafy greens.

In terms of what’s next for us, there are new, amazing technologies that are also allowing us to measure the diversity and contents of our microbiome.

DG: What is the business case for biodiverse aquaculture?

JG: The business case for biodiverse aquaculture is that it improves quality and profitability. I mentioned the traction that biodiverse aquaculture is gaining in improving disease resistance and profitability in offshore aquaculture. What Edenworks is doing with aquaponics is a parallel approach for growing on land instead of in the ocean.

On the plant side, a square foot of bedspace for Edenworks yields 230 percent of the average for vertical farming of leafy greens. And we deliver those yields using 90 percent less nitrogen fertilizer (derived fully from our aquaculture waste) than vertical farms that use synthetic fertilizer. Without using pesticides or sanitizers, we’ve eliminated foodborne pathogens, including E. coli, and reduced crop disease incidence from one in four harvests to one in one hundred harvests.

Using conventional (synthetic) practices, a 200 percent increase in yields requires a 500 percent increase in fertilizer. Doing some math, we’re showing that biodiversity is about 50x more powerful as a driver of yields.

On the fish side, we’ve improved the feed conversion ratio (ratio of feed in to meat out) by about one third for our bass, and early data from salmon is promising. Feed is the single largest cost and sustainability challenge in aquaculture. We’re showing that through a biodiverse approach, we can improve the dominant cost item, making higher quality, more sustainable product a cost competitive option.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

JG: Hopefully we’ve established that aquaculture can increase the biodiversity of our food system. The biggest hurdle to growth of the US aquaculture industry is regulation. In 1983, the US Joint Subcommittee on Aquaculture commissioned a study on why the US was lagging international growth in aquaculture. It found 11 federal agencies directly involved in regulating aquaculture, another 10 indirectly involved, and more than 1,200 state laws.

Instead of encouraging sustainable, biodiversity-enhancing aquaculture development, the US regulatory environment is all but impenetrable. Little has changed in the 35+ years since that study.

Edenworks sidesteps the regulatory nightmare by growing indoors — which recirculating aquaculture technology only recently made possible. But there are so many opportunities for aquaculture to enhance the biodiversity of our protein market, our watersheds, and our oceans. Improving the regulatory environment to encourage sustainable aquaculture development should be a national food security imperative.

DG: What are the greatest challenges and opportunities Edenworks faces for creating a more biodiverse system? What are you doing to overcome or capture them?

JG: Today, we’ve achieved the metrics that validate our thesis that biodiversity improves quality and profitability — higher yields, safer and more stable production through pathogen resistance, improved fertilizer & feed conversion.

The biggest challenge in getting to this point of validation was fear from most in the capital market that our biodiverse approach added complexity without benefit. We were fortunate to align ourselves with investors who shared our thesis from first principles and who were willing to ride with us so that we could collect the metrics.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

JG: More domestically farmed seafood! It’s especially important that chefs help break negative stigma about farmed seafood and educate diners about high quality, sustainably farmed seafood. Dan Barber has a great TED talk about biodiverse aquaculture: “How I fell in love with a fish.”

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

JG: I’ll explain my vision by analogy. One of our investors runs an amazing grassfed beef business. A few years ago, they realized they weren’t growing beef, they were growing grass and the grass was growing the beef. So they started focusing on the grass. Then they realized that they weren’t growing the grass, the microbes in the soil were. So they started focusing on the microbes. Perhaps counterintuitive, but they realized that in order to maximize the quality and the profitability of their beef, they had to build their ecosystem from the ground up (literally).

My vision for our near future food system is that holistic or whole ecosystem farming approaches become table stakes. I’d like to not be surprised by the cattle farmer who talks to me about worms and protozoa, or the salmon farmer who’s excited about mussels and kelp.

DG: Anything else you want to share?

JG: For further reading on aquaculture, including why the US has an unfair advantage in becoming the next aquaculture powerhouse, we have a great blog post.

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Jason Green, CEO & Co-founder of Edenworks

Jason Green is CEO + Co-founder at Edenworks, a Brooklyn-based aquaponic vertical farm. Founded in 2013, Edenworks’ mission is to become the world’s largest fresh food supplier by replacing globalized supply chains with local product that is sustainable, organic, and low cost. Edenworks grows a variety of leafy greens that are fertilized by the seafood the company grows, including shrimp, salmon, and striped bass.

Prior to Edenworks, Jason developed virtual and augmented reality-based neurorehabilitation technologies and served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Fellow. Jason was honored by Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30: Social Entrepreneurship in 2017 and the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s 30 Under 30 in 2018.

The post Edenworks on How Aquaponics & Aquaculture Can Promote Biodiversity appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Throughout this series, we’ve spoken a lot about diversifying what we’re eating, but diversity in our soil is equally important. Soil biodiversity, the variability of living organisms in our soil that interact with one another and with plants and animals in the ecosystem, is critical to the health and functioning of all ecosystems. Healthy soil provides a myriad of essential ecosystems services, like carbon sequestration, storing and processing water and enhancing plant health.

Below, I speak with Tina Owens, senior director of agriculture for Danone North America, about how and why the company is supporting soil health through its multi-million dollar research program dedicated to helping farmers enhance the organic matter in their soil and its overall fertility. She also shares insight into how the company measures its impact on soil health, as well as how it invests in farmers to help them covert to soil practices that promote biodiversity.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for Danone North America? If so, how and why?

Tina Owens: Yes, biodiversity is a major priority for Danone North America because it is a major driver of the health of our planet. Our global vision of One Planet. One Health is guided by the belief that the planet that feeds us and the lives of everyone on it are deeply interconnected. As a public benefit corporation and the largest Certified B Corporation® in the world, we are committed to both business and social progress, and we embed responsible animal welfare, sustainable agriculture and innovative regenerative farming practices into how we do business.

DG: How does Danone North America define and think about biodiversity?

TO: Because we know the health of people and the health of planet are inseparable, we think about and prioritize biodiversity through the very foundation of our food system: the health of our planet’s soil. Soil is key to all survival on planet earth – 95 percent of food directly or indirectly relies on it. We offer a diverse range of dairy and plant-based products, and all of them rely on and have the ability to contribute to healthy soil.

DG: What is Danone North Americadoing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

TO: As America’s largest yogurt maker, we saw an opportunity to initiate a breakthrough soil health research program through our own supply chain and relationships with farmers. In March 2018, we launched a multi-year, multi-million-dollar soil health research program to help farmers reach for better soil health and improve their own livelihoods. We also announced our ambition to commit up to $6M for the research program over the next five years.

Through our soil health research program, Danone North America aims to identify ways to help regenerate soils – including enhancing organic matter and soil fertility with long-term benefits like soil carbon sequestration, reduced chemicals use, water holding capacity, biodiversity and economic resilience of farmer communities. In partnership with growers, dairy farmer partners and third-party soil health experts, our program includes soil sampling, review of crop yield, conversations with growers about their individual needs, data collection and analysis, first reports and field days with farmers to provide training around soil health best practices.

But we can’t do it alone, so Danone North America joined The Carbon Underground, Green America and other food companies to inform the design and development of a new global certification standard for food grown in a regenerative way.

Finally, the company is exploring options to participate in the Regenerative Organic Alliance, a group working to develop a new standard, which will be known as Regenerative Organic Certification. The work with the Regenerative Organic Alliance would complement our commitment to the USDA Organic Standard through pioneering brands, like Horizon Organic, which was instrumental in working with the USDA to establish organic standards and the USDA Organic seal. We seek to understand how this proposed certification can benefit our planet and farming communities through soil health, animal welfare, social fairness and offer more choices for our consumers and our business.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

TO: With all life beginning in soil, using agricultural practices that can help regenerate soils is an urgent need. We believe all food companies have a responsibility to protect the health and vitality of soil we rely on for business. Danone North America believes that making changes like embracing innovative farming practices is critically important for the future of agriculture, and the private sector has an essential role to play in making sure these changes happen on a significant scale.

Beginning in 2017, we began working with EcoPractices, a third-party partner that gives us the technology we need to assess risks and sustainability performance in our supply chain, to better understand the practices behind how crops are grown on several farms that feed into our dairies. This partnership allowed us to determine whether the farms were increasing biodiversity through the planting of cover crops and crop rotations, and we began monitoring pesticides, fertilizers and herbicide application. In addition to our animal feed crops like non-GMO corn, soy and canola, these farms grew twelve cover crops including varieties of oats, triticale, winter wheat, rye, peas and radishes. Because cover crops help our farmers with productivity, while also reducing environmental impact, we continue to advance our strategy of funding cover crops and crop rotations throughout our supply chain.

Our North American agriculture team is heavily focused on opening avenues of new investment via grants, private partnerships and impact investing that will help more of our farmers convert to soil practices that promote a more biodiverse system. But we do not expect the individual farms to bear the brunt of work required to change current agricultural practices, so we use our position within the industry to open doors across the food system – through policy advocacy, access to funding or training or raising awareness – to drive positive change throughout our agricultural community.

DG: What are the greatest challenges and opportunities your organization faces for creating a more biodiverse system? What are you doing to overcome or capture them?

TO: As America’s largest yogurt maker and top plant-based producer, we have an opportunity to promote the vitality of soil on a large scale with the help of our grower and farmer partners. That’s why we’ve committed more than $6 million over five years to our soil health research program and engaged a host of growers, farmers, NGOs and experts to support a healthy planet.

DG: How are you or how do you plan to handle the sourcing and scaling of biodiverse ingredients or agriculture?

TO: As the top organic food maker in the U.S., with pioneering organic brands, we work to find opportunities to apply our knowledge of sustainable practices across all of our businesses and diverse supply chains, from organic to Non-GMO Project Verified to conventional. Whether it is driving more sustainable ingredient sourcing or advancing packaging recyclability, we bring all of our businesses along on the path to a better world through food. We’ve put responsible, sustainable sourcing practices into place throughout our supply chain and made them an integral part of our strategy. Some examples of this work in action include: rolling out a compliance program to 100 percent of our suppliers to help us track where they are located so we can be conscious about working with local suppliers where possible and working to drive change in packaging by committing to pursue the goals outlined in Danone’s 2018 Packaging Policy.

Participating in pilot programs or working groups like Regenerative Organic Certification or the Carbon Farming Innovation Network allows us to serve as a leader within our communities when it comes to incorporating innovative ways of working and adopting new standards and certifications. We’re participating in industry leading programs, engaging at the nucleus of these groups to embed new ways of working and thinking into our long-term strategies.

An example of scaling a biodiverse agricultural product would be under our Horizon Organic brand, the first national organic milk brand in the United States, and a brand that worked with the USDA to establish organic standards and the USDA Organic seal. Our Horizon Organic Grassfed milk, which is from cows that are pasture-raised and graze on certified organic fresh pasture, launched in 2018 and represents our commitment to raising the bar on the organic experience for both the consumer and the dairy cow.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

TO: We believe a more biodiverse food system requires a reinvention of our relationship with food. In fact, we’d go so far as to call it a food revolution — one for greater well-being for people and the planet — which we are eager and ready to boldly lead, together with consumers, retailers, farmers, suppliers and not-for-profits, to design, produce, market and consume food in new, healthier and more sustainable ways.

We all have a stake in food, both for the fundamental nutritional needs it serves and the enjoyment it brings us. The profound role that food plays in unlocking the health of people and the planet is a central premise behind our parent company Danone’s signature — One Planet. One Health — which invites others to use their everyday decisions to join us in building a healthier world through food.

We are using our size as a large food company as a force for good and hope others join so we can leave this planet for future generations in a state of health better than that which we inherited.

Read all of our biodiversity interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Tina Owens, Senior Director of Agriculture at Danone North America

Tina Owens is the Senior Director of Agriculture for Danone North America, the largest public benefit corporation and the largest Certified B Corporation in the world. Tina leads the charge for regenerative agriculture practices, farmer profitability, unique animal feed supply chain development and regenerative financing. She also oversees Danone’s public commitment to soil health in North America, working with partners such as Cornell University and EcoPractices.

Prior to joining Danone in 2018 Tina led sustainability and strategic sourcing at Kashi Company, including the brands Bear Naked, Stretch Island Fruit Company, and Pure Organics. At Kashi she led the strategy on eight commodities to convert farmers to organic practices via the company’s collaborative effort with QAI on the Certified Transitional protocol. Under Tina’s leadership this program returned over $2 million in increased profitability from 2016 to 2018 across a cohort of 14 farms. Tina instituted responsible sourcing programs related to honeybee health, cocoa, wheat and oats. In 2011 Tina achieved the first round of Non-GMO Project Verified products for Kashi and continued to support the Non-GMO Project Renovation work for the full Kashi portfolio.

Tina and her family live on 12 acres in Michigan where they are transitioning previously farmed land to grow a variety of food using an agroforestry and regenerative approach.

The post How Danone North America Aims to Improve Soil Health appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

The National Young Farmers Coalition is an organization dedicated to helping young farmers succeed. Below, I speak with executive director Lindsey Lusher Shute about why biodiversity is critical to the future success of agriculture in the United States, what policies and investments are needed to help farmers cultivate more biodiverse farming operations and what eaters can do to support a more biodiverse food system.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for National Young Farmer Coalition? If so, how and why?

Lindsey Lusher Shute: Biodiversity is an important component of our mission as we support the policies and practices that enable a more sustainable, successful future for U.S. agriculture. According to our latest farmer survey, practices that support biodiversity are also a priority for young farmers: 75 percent of our farmers practice sustainable methods, 63 percent follow organic standards and 81 percent of our farmers run diversified operations.

DG: How does the National Young Farmers Coalition define and think about biodiversity? What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like?

LLS: On a farm, biodiversity means not only the plants, invertebrates, mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish that already live there — but also what we as farmers introduce to the landscape.

I can’t imagine an upper limit for biodiversity, and particularly in this moment when we are seeing the collapse of biodiversity on a global scale. It’s frankly hard to even describe what “good” might mean when it comes to biodiversity because there are still so many discoveries being made. We are a long way off from knowing even the extent of life on this planet and the interwoven nature of it all.

DG: As a farmer, how do you think about biodiversity?

LLS: On our farm, we’ve collaborated with the Hawthorne Valley Farmscape Ecology Program to look at insect biodiversity on our farm and how beneficial insects interact with pests. Over the course of the research on our property, they found three kinds of butterflies that we didn’t even know about: the Fiery Skipper, the Common Buckeye and the Hackberry Emperor. With wild pollinators responsible for pollinating half of all food crops, knowledge of these native species and the habitats that support them is incredibly valuable.

Biodiversity is meaningful to Ben and I because we want our farm to support life in all of its forms, and also because we know that biodiversity is critical to the farm’s success.

DG: What is National Young Farmer Coalition doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

LLS: Biodiversity cannot be achieved on one farm alone; policy and practices across the globe impact the health of our land and the biodiversity of our individual farms. We have spoken out on behalf of our farmers on many issues that impact biodiversity: land use changes, climate change, seed biodiversity, pesticides and herbicides, sustainable farm practices that are intended to work in tandem with the natural environment.

We advocate with our farmers, bringing producers from across the country to Washington, DC to ask Congress to support conservation policies that support and encourage biodiversity on the farm. Lastly, we also work to empower young farmers who are passionate environmentalists and farm in a way that supports biological diversity.

DG: What is the business case for biodiverse agriculture?

LLS: There is no farmer, no matter the scale or practice, who doesn’t recognize the importance of biodiversity. Farmers continuously rely on the bounty of nature and ingenuity of science to help them grow healthy crops.

That said, I would like to see more farmers embrace seed and breed biodiversity because what farmers choose to buy and grow on their farms today has an real impact on future farm biodiversity. When we no longer use a seed variety or only raise a certain kind of livestock — promoting, say, certain traits for economic efficiency alone — our community intentionally narrows the genetic diversity in agriculture.

And really that’s the crux of it: in a world with climate change, we need choices and regionally adapted varieties of seed and breeds. With choice, and with diversity, we reduce risk and build needed resilience.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

LLS: Farmers need to be supported as they implement conservation practices that increase biodiversity. A farm conservation plan, as currently required by USDA, should incorporate more measures of biodiversity and considerations for increasing it on each farm. We need ongoing research into organics, seed varieties, breeding and the like to continue to expand what farmers can grow, as well as more research into farm practices that are both efficient and ecological.

And lastly, we must address climate and land use. The nation must invest in a new economy that will drastically reduce our carbon footprint and halt global warming, and we need to protect our natural landscapes and habitats from fragmentation and development. All of these things — smart planning, research, science and conservation —represent major investments.

DG: What are the greatest challenges and opportunities farmers face for creating a more biodiverse system? What are you doing to overcome or capture them?

LLS: This might not be an obvious answer, but one of the most difficult issues for our farmers is land ownership. Without land ownership very few of our farmers can make investments into farm infrastructure and conservation that could adequately address the global crisis of biodiversity. Who owns and manages our landscapes is a critical question.

We also hear from many farmers about their need for extension and technical support services for organics and sustainable agriculture. This is a major need.

And lastly, we need to take a hard look at pesticides and herbicides and how they are impacting biodiversity. The recent issues around dicamba are a stark reminder of the negative impacts that farmers can have on the environment, and an impact that can extend well beyond the farm.

DG: How might we get more farmers to invest in biodiverse agriculture?

LLS: First and foremost, farmers need to own land. After that, they need low-interest loans or grants to support the cost and a consumer who is willing to pay a little more for food grown with practices that support a healthy ecosystem.

Research that makes the economic case for biodiversity may also encourage these practices. If you can demonstrate that improved diversity ultimately boosts productivity and sales potential, many more farmers may make the transition. As we’re already seeing, the increased consumer demand for sustainably grown products, even at higher price points, is also enabling farmers to invest in these practices.

Lastly, ensure that farmers, including beginning farmers and farmers of color, have access to key conservation programs so incentives are distributed equitably to farmer to promote biodiversity on their farms and ranches.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers, retailers, chefs and other key actors across the food supply chain can do to support biodiverse agriculture?

LLS: Buy local. Make the effort and deal with the small quantities that may be available now — because your purchases will help a farm and a farm community grow. I’ve also been impressed with Dan Barber and other chefs who are actively seeking to expand the varieties available to them, and who are working directly with farmers on breeding.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry — either in foodservice or CPG — that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

LLS: Again, I just want to have the opportunity to buy more products that were made by family-scale farmers with good practices. I also think that the entire idea of “foodservice” does not lend itself to biodiversity. When an institution is seeking perfect uniformity of weight or size or fat content, they are naturally limiting diversity of what’s grown. To address biodiversity, the entire industry would require a significant shift in priorities and different expectations for preparation and price.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

LLS: I’ll just say that 10-15 years is lightning fast when it comes to farming and agriculture. We have moved so far from animal and crop production that truly reflects a diverse food system, that I know it will take decades to build something that’s truly different on the ground. That said, I do think that we’re on our way in many respects and I am so hopeful about the young people I see farming today who care deeply about these issues. As these farmers take more leadership in the food system, we see positive shifts.

A more biodiverse food system must be fundamentally based on a system that defaults to locally grown products and is prepared for differences and diversity in ingredients. It is a system where consumers put even greater value on food that is grown with community in mind, with biodiversity in mind and is willing to be a little bit slower overall.

The idea of “slow” and “patient” is a fundamental value in a biodiverse system. We must take the time to listen and observe the environment around us, and work with it as we grow food; consumers must take the time to buy local products and support biodiversity and sustainable practices with their food budgets; and communities must take the time to listen to each other and advance innovative solutions to land use, climate and the pressing environmental issues of our day.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Lindsey Lusher Shute, Executive Director and Co-founder of the National Young Farmers Coalition

Under Lindsey’s leadership, Young Farmers grew from a few volunteer farmers to a nationwide network with 42 chapters in 28 states and a base of over 150,000. Lindsey has edited and authored nine reports for the coalition, including Building a Future with Farmers: Challenges faced by Young, American Farmers and a Strategy to Help Them Succeed. This report established Young Farmer’s first policy platform and was the first to survey the nation’s millennial farmers. Farmland Conservation 2.0: How Land Trusts Can Save America’s Working Farms and a New York Times op-ed, “Keep Farmland for Farmers”, launched a national land access campaign that engaged hundreds of land trust professionals in making farmland affordable for future generations of farmers.

The coalition has become a force for leadership development and grassroots campaigns. It has passed 4 state laws and recently won hundreds of millions of dollars for small and sustainable farms in the 2018 Farm Bill. The national network of chapter leaders is now a pathway to leadership for young farmers, helping them raise their voices at the local, state and national levels.

Lindsey regularly speaks at conferences and to national media on farm issues, and was recognized as a “Champion of Change” by President Barack Obama. She was named among “20 Food Leaders Under 40” by Food Tank, and an “American Food Hero” by Eating Well Magazine. Lindsey holds a M.S. in Environmental Policy from Bard College and a BFA from New York University.

Lindsey and her husband, Benjamin, own and operate a 900-member CSA farm in Columbia County, New York.

The post The Future of Farming Must Be Biodiverse, Says National Young Farmers Coalition appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Data will be key to creating a biodiverse future. The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) has created a global coalition of over 850  governments, academia, researchers, private companies and farmers to ensure food security and to preserve biodiversity through the sharing of open agricultural and nutrition data.

Below, I speak with GODAN executive director André Laperrière about how open data can be used to help eaters, health professionals and governments improve public health and preserve biodiversity. He also shares great examples of initiatives to protect biodiversity, like Biodiversity in Standards and Labels for the Food Industry, an EU-based project aiming to standardize biodiversity criteria and labeling standards and to encourage manufacturers and retailers to include biodiversity criteria in their sourcing guidelines.

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Danielle Gould: How does your organization define and think about biodiversity?

André Laperrière: Biodiversity is a critical element of the world’s ecosystem. As we are learning, the combination of all species currently inhabiting our planet creates a balance that allows for each, including us, to survive, thrive and contribute to each other species development. Every time a species become extinct, it creates a misbalance in the world’s life equilibrium. This is the first reason why biodiversity is important.

The second important element is that there are still thousands of species yet to be discovered, from fungus to mammals in the seas and land alike. These may be part of the discovery for cures and diseases affecting human life, as better knowledge of the specifics of livings whose existence we are aware of, will also lead to medical and nutrition progress, unless we fail to protect them.

Third reason why biodiversity is important is nutrition. Since 1900 the world has lost 75 percent of its crops variety, meaning we grow on average only 25 percent of crops we used to grow for human consumption.  As we know, 75 percent of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and five animal species, as few as 3 crops in some countries. Consequence: much less diversity in human food consumption, resulting in various forms of mal/incomplete nutrition problems. Fortunately, some countries are beginning to address that; in the most recent Food Security Index, for instance, South Korea won the palm, with its agriculture sector sharing half of its agriculture for traditional high volume crops, and the other half for a variety of other crops, who make nutrition much better – and Korean food taste so good.

DG: What is GODAN doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

AL: GODAN is a global institution composed of 850 governments, academia, research, private companies and civil society/farmer institutions in more than 110 countries. We help them develop and implement the right policies to trigger innovation in increasing agriculture productivity (currently around 20 percent in a number of countries), managing better cultivated land instead of simply expanding bad practices to new lands where biodiversity is trying to survive.

We awork with academia to increase knowledge on nutrition across the entire value chain to encourage valuing high quality crops that have been neglected (ex: Quinoa). We also work to develop adapted technology (again to manage agriculture in a way that safeguards and better, capitalize on biodiversity, like harvesting wild forest fruits – many proven to be up to 10 times more nutritious than the traditional ones found in the markets) in order to learn to live with nature and protect it, instead of falling into the biodiversity killing ‘slash and burn’ practices still in use in big segments of the world. We are working with farmer and fishermen organizations, as well, with the same goals. GODAN also has a senior advisory role in a number of organizations that promote and work hard on biodiversity, such as SDSN, CGIAR (including biodiversity international) and many others, and works closely based on the expertise available in its network.

DG: What’s at stake for our society if biodiversity is reduced? Are there examples where a lack of biodiversity has caused problems within an ecosystem or community?

AL: Unfortunately, there are many. For example, IPS reports that fish catches are expected to decline dramatically in the world’s tropical regions because of climate change. Furthermore, in 2006, aquaculture consumed 57 percent of fish meal and 87 percent of fish oil as industrial fisheries operating in tropical regions have been scooping up enormous amounts of fish anchovies, herring, mackerel and other small pelagic forage fish to feed to farmed salmon or turn into animal feed or pet food. This has resulted in higher prices for fish, hitting the poorest the most.

Another example is the elimination of natural predators for various reasons, from commercial interests to myths. More than 100 million sharks, for example are estimated to be killed every year. As another example, wolves mostly eradicated from western Europe have resulted in overpopulations of deer, leading to disease, starving, accidents through interaction with humans, damage to types of crops, etc.

Another example is when a campaign was done to stop seal hunting in eastern America/Canada; already with the shark population dwindling down rapidly, humans had over the years become a key predator that kept the seal population in balance through its annual hunting. Further to the virtual halt of such hunting due to bad publicity (resulting from poor hunting practices), the seal population exploded, which in turn triggered a significant attack on other parts of the fish fauna such as the lobster industry, very affected as lobsters and other species suddenly became under threat as food for much larger number of seals.  These are a few examples as to how the natural biodiversity balance can be rapidly affected once one of its elements is removed from the chain.

DG: What is the scientific and/or business case for a biodiverse food system?

AL: Biodiversity, when well managed, leads to more food products available and sustained, increased income and quality of life from its caretakers, increased economic activity linked to tourism (ex: in Namibia former poachers were converted in nature guards and villages whose populations used to hunt wildlife now protect it to further develop eco-tourism industry in their area).  Biodiversity can also lead to improved nutrition of the populations thanks to greater food diversity, itself leading to a decrease in food/malnutrition related illness and costs to the state.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

AL: We need to enforce laws designed to protect diversity. Second, we need to increase the awareness of the consumers as to the importance of diversified and sustainable foods, implement relevant fiscal regimes that will encourage the consumption of more varieties of food – especially those that can be produced locally – and their production. We also need to educate as to how species that we may not eat as humans, may have a critical importance due to their interaction with other species that are useful and desirable for human consumption.

DG: How might we reinvent capital structures or create incentives to increase investment in biodiversity?

AL: The two keys are sustainability and awareness. Sustainability is important for those who grow and harvest species for consumption. Through relevant trainings, many good projects across the globe have led to the protection and efficient management of fishing areas by fishermen themselves, whose long term life depends on it. Learning better fishing techniques and tracking catches have managed to protect these fishing environments, increase their catches as the fish population (like lobster) increased thanks to a more facts/data-based approach they learned. At the national level investments need to be done to help consumers make better nutrition related choices and choosing sustainable food sources over others. Access to tax incentives, but most important to credit, is also key especially for small farmers who are unable to invest in sustainable agriculture practices (ex: fertilizers, precision agriculture data, etc.). Finally, have governments and communities look at biodiversity in itself as an industry from which its protection can generate income, both through eco-tourism and through marketing wild and relatively unknown foods with great nutrition qualities.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers, chefs, retailers, farmers, and other key parts of the supply chain can do to support biodiversity?

AL: Promote the greater use of natural, local and wild foods to demonstrate their nutritive benefits and to create unique new tastes that in turn will enhance consumer knowledge about biodiversity and the advantages provided in protecting it. Restaurant NOMA in Denmark, for example, became a world success based on this approach.

Farmers should also be educated as to how modern practices can play a significant role in improving their productivity, reducing their costs and increasing their income in harmony with the environment they are living in. Good examples in Latin America show where cattle owners learned to raise their animals without cutting all the trees to make grazing areas. Rather, they learned to use the natural forest crops as a source of income, more and more in demand as people become aware of them their new flavors and high nutritive values. For this approach to be adopted more widely, actual data must be shared, understood and used to increase awareness and demand towards protecting biodiversity.

DG: Where can consumers and food industry professionals go to learn more about biodiversity issues and what they can do to help?

AL: Through open data, consumers can learn to make better food choices, health professionals can give better nutrition advice and governments can make better policies and incentives to protect biodiversity and improve the health of their populations (through food diversification, better food quality, sustainable food production respecting/protecting biodiversity. This is at the heart of GODAN’s mission.

DG: Are there certifications or other signals that can help the average consumer determine what kinds of foods are helping promote biodiversity?

AL: Yes, and this is coming more and more. For example, in August 2016, Global Nature Fund, Lake Constance Foundation, Agentur AUF! (Germany), Fundación Global Nature (Spain), Solagro, agoodforgood (France) and Instituto Superior Técnico (Portugal) have initiated the project “Biodiversity in Standards and Labels for the Food Industry,” funded by the EU LIFE programme.

WWF and other organizations have also begun to associate their logo/brand to sustainable food production, as large food chains and markets have begun to realize that consumers are more aware of the importance of preserving biodiversity so adhering to such practices becomes a positive, marketing element built in their business model. This trend will grow and be further promoted by organizations like GODAN and many others.

DG: How would a biodiverse food system change the typical selection of products we see in a grocery store?

AL: Your dinner plate probably doesn’t include goosefoot, hopshoots, vervain, beremeal, medlars, Saltcote Pippin apples or Shetland black potatoes. But it could. These plants were once common British fare, and they grow here still. We simply don’t eat them. Nor do we eat the majority of the 30,000 edible plants growing on the planet today. For the most part, we eat about a dozen, according to the Soil Association’s Robe Percival.

In a perfectly biodiverse food system, the diversity of products available at the store will be based on products that are grown/raised in a sustainable manner respectful of the environment and that protects the soil, water and other resources that will allow the production of these products to continue. The products we will see will be based on evolved taste and awareness of the consumers on the relative benefits of each types of food available, its origin and processing, again encouraging sustainable production and consumption of healthier food. It will also display more of the locally available food, that often times due to marketing, trends, and commercial reasons had been gradually replaced by a limited number of high volume crops.

DG: What, if any, exciting products, technologies or services are you seeing that support a more biodiverse food system?

AL: I see a wave of innovators using open data, motivating producers to further open their product-related data (origin, composition, nutritive value) and producing a range of apps, bar code readers, websites and campaigns to promote knowledge of food alternatives for consumers to choose what is better for their health. Now, two new parameters are being included in this advocacy mix that will shape food purchases: food miles/carbon footprint of food products and sustainable production practices (ex: promoted by WWF). Among our partners, as an example, we have a small organization composed of volunteers that have now tracked composition and origin of thousands of products and developed a free app that allows consumers to scan their possible purchase and learn how it compares with other options vis a vis parameters listed above.  These are the pioneers that are moving, especially the new/young generation, towards making more environment/biodiversity aware decisions which in turn will contribute to their immediate (nutrition) and long term (environment) health.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

AL: I would like to see more locally available foods made available locally. More high quality crops that can grow very well even in harsh environments and are a healthy substitute to other high volume crops. Quinoa is an excellent alternative to millet, for example. I would also like to see more transparency in food related data, especially in terms of origin, processing and contents vis a vis nutrients and components that should be avoided (sugar, salt, fat for example, who is more and more displayed but where norms/limits still lack in many countries). I would like sustainable food products to be more clearly advertised and promoted, and that this effort be supported not only by the producers but also by the state as in the end if benefits through reduction of health problems, stimulating local production, and better informed populations.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

AL: In 15 years, I believe food systems will be much more data driven than they are now, as the trend has started and is increasing very rapidly. This will range from consumers demand for better food, leading to production producing it and stores making it available. I would expand the vision of the food system to education, quoting Japan as a great example where they made nutrition a mandatory part of their curriculum, with great results.

Read all of our biodiversity interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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André Laperrière, Executive Director of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) 

Mr. André Laperrière joined the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative as its first Executive Director, in September 2015. During his career, Mr. Laperrière has led/managed numerous projects on behalf of large Private Corporations and subsequently, within the United Nations and the World Bank. In this context he played a senior role in the design and the implementation of major reforms within a number of agencies such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF. He has extensive work experience in the Americas, Caribbean, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, in particular in developing countries and in conflict/post conflict environments.

Before joining GODAN, Mr. Laperrière was Deputy Chief Executive Officer at the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Washington DC. Among other positions, he has also been the first Executive Director of the Trust Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Director of the Administration and Finance Division in the World Health Organization (WHO), and Coordinator for reconstruction and rehabilitation activities under the responsibility of UNICEF in Iraq.

Prior to his career in the UN, Mr. Laperrière was Director in the International Services of Price Waterhouse. In this position, he led multiple large scale business evaluations, privatizations, mergers and structural reform projects in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Caribbean. Mr. Laperrière was born in Canada, where he completed postgraduate studies in Administration and in Industrial Relations. Mr. Laperrière is an expert in international development.

The post GODAN on Open Data to Support Biodiversity & Health appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Creating a regenerative and more biodiverse food system will requires significant investment. FoodShot Global is doing just that by helping innovators tackle some of our greatest food system challenges through its integrated capital platform of non-dilutive, equity and debt funding. Below, I speak with founder and chairman Victor Friedberg about white space opportunities  and capital structures that can help us transition to a regenerative and biodiverse food system at scale.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for FoodShot Global? If so, how and why?

Victor Friedberg: Yes, biodiversity is a priority for every organization I’ve built in the food sector. While I could argue for biodiversity as an end in itself, I would rather make the case that striving for biodiversity is an opportunity to create a new generation of flavorful, nutrient-dense and sustainable food products — and the agricultural systems that can support them. Consumers will drive the growth of this new biodiverse food system by voting for policies and practices that support its development, and, over time, businesses and organizations will reap the benefits of this biodiverse system by reducing risk (climate, supply, economic) and generating growth.

DG: What is FoodShot Global doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

VF: I founded FoodShot Global to identify global food system challenges and invest in groundbreaking solutions. With Sara Eckhouse, the Executive Director, and a world-class consortium of Founding Partners – including Rabobank, Generation Investment Management, MARS, the Innovation Institute for Food and Health at UC Davis, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Builders Initiative, Armonia and the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture – we’ve built a capital continuum of non-dilutive, equity and debt funding to address global food system challenges.

In our inaugural year, we are focusing on healthy soil because it is the foundation of agriculture. Rich, biodiverse soils are essential to achieving the healthy, sustainable and equitable food system that will feed 10 billion people. In order to catalyze innovation to build a regenerative and sustainable soil system, FoodShot Global established the $525,000 GroundBreaker Prize for research, social enterprise and policy advocacy. We have also aggregated up to $10 million a year in equity investments and $20 million in debt financing. With our Founding Partners – and additional supporting partners ACRE Ventures, The Soil Health Institute, The Nature Conservancy, the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and Activant Capital – we leverage our collective thought leadership, networks, market access, pathways to commercialization and convening capacities to accelerate the development, deployment and impact of new techniques, technologies and breakthrough science that will enable soil to be the engine for a 21st century regenerative, biodiverse, nutrient-rich food system.

DG: What is the business case for products that promote a more biodiverse food system?

VF: The business case for healthy, biodiverse soil is simple: without it, eventually the economics of the planet will degenerate with the soil. We’ve set up an economic agricultural system in which we make massive withdrawals (nutrients, water, organic matter) with meager deposits. Nature is already starting to make its margin call, and the ripple effects of that on our agricultural system and for farmers has been profound – reduced yields, entire crop seasons wiped out, floods, drought and wildfires.

But beyond this macro frame for soil, there is a market case for building biodiversity into our food system. Food brands, whether CPG, food service or ingredient, will be seeking out unique and powerful flavors and new functionalities that differentiate them from their competitors and provide customers with unique food experiences. And just like investors diversity their portfolios to mitigate risk in the face of market volatility, we need to diversify our food system to reduce vulnerability to pests and disease that could lead to catastrophic crop failures.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

VF: Investments that prioritize biodiversity need to be made throughout the entire food system. When it comes to soil, these could include capital investments into soil analysis systems that measure soil fertility, nutrient content and compaction; soil inputs including bio-pesticides, inoculants and microbial seed coatings; intelligent farm management systems that offer predictive analytics; market innovations that increase the profitability of cover crops and crop rotations; and seed varieties that prioritize flavor and resiliency. At a systemic level, we need to invest in genetics that allow more diverse crops to compete in the marketplace, new ingredients that efficiently integrate biodiverse, nutrient-dense crops into food at a large scale, infrastructure to distribute fresher food that delivers to consumers the flavor and functional benefits of biodiverse crops, research that links the functionality of biodiverse crops and efficacy around human health, and support for the rural and indigenous communities that can grow biodiverse crops.

DG: How might we reinvent capital structures or create incentives to create more investment in biodiversity?

VF: There are existing capital structures that will continue to be effective at investing into brands, ingredients, agricultural products, services and land. A broad range of venture funds, including S2G Ventures, the one I co-founded, are doing incredible work in the sector. An increasing number of investors share common values around a more healthy, sustainable and equitable food system, and they see the opportunities to generate both financial returns and impact.

But shifting the food system and bending it back towards biodiversity will be difficult. Doing so at the needed speed and scale will require innovative models, including permanent capital, evergreen funds, land funds and real estate investment trusts that can provide time and resources for transition. This will allow the creation of virtual vertically integrated supply chains that are not owned by the brand/manufacturer but are so tightly bound by the specifications, agreements and incentives that they function as vertically integrated systems (with the potential for biodiverse and regenerative crops). We also need debt instruments that can be made accessible to farmers or structures that provide farmers with upside ownership for taking on the difficult work of transitioning to a biodiverse system.

DG: What are some of the most important things investors, food manufacturers, retailers and other key actors across the supply chain can do to support biodiversity?

VF: Identify, adopt and promote .

DG: What, if any, exciting products, technologies or services are you seeing that support a more biodiverse food system?

VF: One example is Dan Barber’s work at Row 7 Seed Company, an innovative, system-level start-up that is naturally breeding seeds for flavor and functionality rather than for yield and other efficiencies. Row 7 is using creative partnerships, such as the collaboration to incorporate the Koginut squash into SweetGreen salads, to market these crops. Another company I’m a co-founder of, Alpha Food Labs, is building biodiversity into the product development processes by leveraging the insights and early-adopter power of the Alpha community to create food products that use functional ingredients from various geographies and cultures.

There are also CPG companies with “hero” ingredients that are bringing biodiversity to grocery stores. Lavva, a best-of-class non-dairy yogurt, which I am the executive chair of, is a great example of the benefits of a biodiverse mindset. Lavva’s hero ingredient is the Pili nut, a tree nut with amazing emulsification properties and high mineral content from the volcanic soils in which it grows. Kuli Kuli is another company that is using a hero ingredient by building a product line based on the mainstreaming of Moringa.

Finally, Patagonia Provisions and the Land Institute have developed an interesting project to build a market for Kernza, a perennial long root grain. On the soil biodiversity systems perspective, there is a tremendous amount of innovative work being done to create biological soil inputs, inoculants, and microbial seed coatings, as well as new models and techniques for larger-scale farms that are implementing rotational farming.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

VF: The vision for the next 10-15 years is dependent on three macro frameworks:

1. First, that renewable energy becomes both politically and economically massive so that crops are no longer used for biofuels.

2. Second, that meat consumption continues to reduce in the Western world (partly through scaling of meat alternatives), that developing countries do not drastically increase meat consumption, and that large-scale regenerative meat farming becomes viable.  These conditions must be met so that the massive, industrialized mono-cropped acreage currently dedicated to biofuels and animal feed can be reclaimed for agriculture that embraces biodiversity and meets consumer demand for biodiverse products.

3. Third, that agriculture is able to adapt to climate change and associated GHG levels. A recent Harvard report found that levels of carbon dioxide from human activity are making staple crops such as rice and wheat less nutritious and could result in 175 million people becoming zinc deficient and 122 million people becoming protein deficient by 2050.

The demand for biodiversity in food will come from both the ability of science to discover new ingredients and from the ability of innovative brands and chefs to promote the health and wellness benefits of the widest range of crops and flavors. In the world, scientists have identified about 1.75 million different species, including 950,000 species of insects, 270,000 species of plants, 19,000 species of fish, 9,000 species of birds, and 4,000 species of mammals. This is only a small portion of the total number of species on Earth. There are millions more species yet to be discovered and named. About 25 percent of the medicines used today are taken from or modeled on chemicals found in plants, animals, or other living things. We are just beginning to realize the human benefits of biodiversity.

We need to de-commodify commodities. We have built a food system that is designed to extract and discard identity, diversity and value from our crops.  In the future, corn, soybean and wheat will be a smaller percentage of overall acreage in the world. Instead the future is our ability to be able to efficiently. And the enabling driver assumption is that soil biodiversity, through a broad range of solutions, whether low tech farm management best practices or high tech regenerative soil interventions have regenerated soil ecosystem diversity and organic matter.

Read all of our biodiversity interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Victor E. Friedberg,  Co-Founder, Seed 2 Growth Ventures (S2G); Founder and Chairman of FoodShot — MoonShots for Better Food ; Executive Chairman of Lavva ; Co-Founder of Alpha Food Labs

Victor has been at the forefront of innovation, global development and sustainability for over 20 years. As Co-Founder of S2G Ventures he has been a principal force in developing the S2G mission, culture, strategy and team.  Through his work, he has pioneered system investing as a strategy for investing into food and agriculture and applied this approach in building the S2G portfolio.  As Managing Director, Victor lead the S2G investments into Beyond Meat, sweetgreen, Ripple, Maple Hill Creamery, Apeel Science, Ataraxis. FishPeople and Lavva.

He is Founder and Chairman of FoodShot Global — Moonshots For Better Food an innovative investment platform to accelerate global food system transformation with partners Rabobank, Armonia, Generation Investment Management, MARS, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Builders Initiative, FFAR, The Innovation Institute for Food and Health at UC Davis and The Stone Barns Center For Food and Agriculture.

As Executive Chairman at Lavva, Victor guides forward-looking business strategy to establish pathways to brand aligned sourcing, manufacturing and new product development. He works collaboratively with the management team at Lavva to provide support for key opportunities and needs for the day-to-day execution of the business as needed.

He was named by Forbes Magazine one of the Top 25 deal makers and influencers in Consumer Products in 2016.

The post FoodShot Global on Investing in a Regenerative, Biodiverse Food System appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 16, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Farm.One is a hydroponic vertical farming startup growing over 500 different specialty produce crops year-round in New York. With a focus on flavor, rarity and a technology-driven approach, the company counts restaurants with 18 Michelin stars – like Eleven Madison Park, Atera and Daniel – and among its customers. Below, I speak with founder and CEO Rob Laing about how the startup uses technology to cultivate a diversity of flavorful crops.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for your organization? If so, how and why?

Rob Laing: Our company is devoted to growing a huge range of culinary plants. To date, we have grown and sold over 500 varieties of rare herbs, microgreens and edible flowers. We also grow without pesticides, using beneficial insects instead to control pests. Our customers thrive off this diversity.

DG: How do indoor agriculture companies think about biodiversity? What role might indoor ag play in promoting biodiversity?

RL: An advantage of indoor agriculture is that you can create an enclosed, separate space for the cultivation of edible crops. This allows you to grow varieties that are not necessarily hardy, but are extremely flavorful. It allows you to eliminate pesticides, which reduces your impact on the external environment. And it negates the need to prioritize crops that are optimized for shelf-life or cold storage, because you can grow much closer to the customer.

DG: What is your organization doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

RL: We are currently focused on growing a wide range of crops commercially for chefs. We believe that many of the software and hardware technologies we have developed can be adopted by other commercial and not-for-profit farms.

DG: How might we get more indoor agriculture farms to invest in biodiverse agriculture?

RL: Fundamentally, traditional agriculture and supply chains create anti-diverse systems, as players are incentivized through efficiency gains and by scaling to reduce the number of different crops they grow and distribute. Most new indoor ag companies follow this same model, optimizing for a very small range of fast-growing crops. To push in the other direction, we have to be quite creative. Software can allow us to manage farms with a much more diverse crop selection. Building small commercial and not-for-profit farms across cities can allow different groups to grow foods that are actually representative of their cultural heritage. To fuel this movement takes time and money, but the good news is the technology for urban farming is becoming more affordable every year.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers, retailers, chefs and other key actors across the food supply chain can do to support biodiverse agriculture?

RL: Chefs and food manufacturers can respond to a huge growth in consumer demand for healthier, plant-based food by becoming more familiar with the massive diversity of plant ingredients out there in the world. They can start with simple things like sourcing different grains, working with farmers to discover new kinds of squash or brassicas and move on to discover more creative herbal flavors. They can take the initiative to discover the footprint of each kind of ingredient they source, and interact with local farmers to innovate on new varieties and new relationships to uncover new flavors.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

RL:  As the majority of us live in cities, our food future must solve for an urban audience and embrace the positives of our urban environments. Urban environments foster diverse food cultures, and by catering to these cultures with a diversity of traditional ingredients using a range of commercial and community-driven urban farms, as well as a wider-scale agricultural system that moves away from monoculture and animal farming towards a wide range of exciting plant-based ingredients, we can radically improve the diets of our population while fostering a far more biodiverse food system.

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Rob Laing, CEO and Founder of Farm.One

Rob Laing is the CEO and founder of Farm.One, which runs chef’s farms in TriBeCa and downtown Manhattan. Started in 2016, Farm.One grows rare herbs, edible flowers, microgreens and other exotic produce year-round and pesticide-free, using hydroponics and LED lighting. Rob is an experienced startup founder who is passionate about plant-based eating and using technology for clean, accessible food.

The post How Farm.One Uses Tech to Grow 500+ Specialty Crops For Chefs appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 16, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Bowery is an indoor agriculture company growing leafy greens and herbs in a high-tech warehouses. Utilizing robotics, hydroponics, sensors, machine learning and predictive analytics, the company aims to grow food more efficiently and sustainably than traditional agriculture.

Below, I speak with Susan MacIsaac, head of agricultural sciences at Bowery, about how the vertical farming company is expanding on the traditional definition of biodiversity by utilizing previously unusable industrial space to grow over 100 crop varieties. MacIsaac also explains how Bowery’s farming practices allow it to grow a variety of crops on a smaller footprint of land, and how the company is cultivating crops specifically suited for indoor farming.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for Bowery? If so, how and why?

Susan McIsaac: Yes, at Bowery we believe that indoor farming practices expand on the traditional definition of biodiversity. Right now, there’s not enough arable land in the world to feed a population of this size using today’s conventional practices, and we have already lost more than 30 percent of our arable land in the U.S. as a result of traditional methods. While we believe it’s crucial for outdoor growing to reflect biodiversity, at Bowery we understand there’s a clear need to improve upon the industry at large and think beyond the field. Just like efforts around biodiversity improve longevity and health of an ecosystem, we’re growing food in a more sustainable way. We’re reappropriating previously unusable industrial space to grow over 100 types of crop varieties, and are able to grow reliably, year-round using more than 95 percent less water, regardless of weather or seasonality. Bowery’s farming method is a scalable, sustainable way to grow more kinds of food for a healthier environment, and a better future.

DG: How does Bowery define and think about biodiversity? What role might indoor ag play in promoting biodiversity?

SM: Biodiversity is an essential agricultural practice in order to produce food for the long term, since monocultures strip the land of essential nutrients and create more vulnerabilities for pests and contaminants. Bowery is a more evolved growing approach in line with this thinking. Of course, we don’t use soil, aren’t impacted by seasonality and our closed system dramatically reduces the risk of pests and contaminants. But, Bowery’s impact on resources and support in plant diversity is similar. Our system and proprietary technology allows us to grow a dynamic portfolio of different crops on a smaller footprint of land to feed a growing population in years to come.

DG: What is the business case for biodiverse indoor agriculture?

SM: Agriculture sits at the epicenter of many global issues today. Over 70 percent of our global water supply goes to agriculture, we use over 700 million pounds of pesticides each year in the U.S. alone, contaminating our water and causing serious health risks, and industrial farming practices have caused a loss of over 30 percent of the arable farmland in the last 40 years. Additionally, seasonality and varying weather patterns leave farmers with unpredictable yields; traditional farming methods can also lead to topsoil erosion and create unnecessary monocultures. At Bowery, our farms grow crops twice as fast as traditional farms, year-round. We use more than 95 percent less water than traditional farming methods and completely eliminate the need for pesticides. Bowery farms are 100 times more productive than traditional footprint of land because we grow in vertical stacks, harvest many more crop cycles per year, and achieve a higher yield per crop cycle than the field. We’re also able maintain a high level of genetic diversity and offer a wide range of climates for plants to thrive.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

SM: We need to think beyond what’s grown in the field and also invest in more advanced growing methods. Right now, we’re looking into cultivating crops that are best suited for indoor agriculture, which will be a huge milestone for the industry. There are certain types of crops that don’t thrive in current climate conditions, and by optimizing their growth indoors, we can maintain a high level of diversity.

DG: How might we get more indoor agriculture farms to invest in biodiverse agriculture?

SM: As a nation, we currently depend on cheap, mass-produced food, sacrificing quality for quantity at the expense of our health and environment. Our global population will grow to 9-10 billion people by 2050, and we need 70 percent more food in order to feed a population of that size. The result is a world in which the current food system must support the needs of an expanded population with a rapidly dwindling set of resources. Biodiversity is crucial in maintaining the quality and quantity of food produced and ecosystem at large, but we also need to invest in alternate methods that support traditional agriculture. It’s the “high tides lift all boats” mentality – indoor farming companies need to keep an open dialogue with traditional growers. By working together to rethink the current agricultural system and address the needs of an ever-increasing population, we all win.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers, retailers, chefs and other key actors across the food supply chain can do to support biodiverse agriculture?

SM: At a high level, our current food system must support the needs of an expanded population with a rapidly dwindling set of resources. We’re seeing a shift towards more sustainable practices in the food industry as a way to address these issues, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. When it comes to indoor farming, Bowery’s goal is to educate more retailers, chefs and stakeholders in the industry on the crucial benefits of our growing method and offer indoor-grown produce on menus and shelves. We have incredible support from key food industry leaders and retailers like Tom Colicchio, José Andrés, Carla Hall, David Barber, Whole Foods, sweetgreen and Dig Inn, who understand the unique freshness and diversity of Bowery’s crops and the technology that allows us to promote this level of quality.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

SM: Biodiversity is one important part of a larger mission to create a more sustainable food system, and Bowery’s ability to grow a wide array of crops in a more efficient way is a testament to how we can continue to innovate in the next 10-15 years. We’ve intentionally designed our technology and systems to maximize our ability to scale Bowery quickly, profitably, and effectively. Plus, our R&D efforts will allow us promote even more genetic diversity in cities around the world.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Susan MacIsaac, Head of Agricultural Science at Bowery

Susan MacIsaac is the Head of Agricultural Science at Bowery, overseeing a team that focuses on new growing methods and develops the next generation of products beyond leafy greens. Before joining Bowery, she worked at the Climate Corporation, a leading company in digital agriculture. There, she led a diverse team of scientists and agronomists in the development of new digital tools that help farmers make decisions about how to manage their crops. Prior to Climate Corporation, Susan led a team at Monsanto focused on developing and deploying advanced analytical tools for the development of enhanced flavor and yield in crops. She is a plant scientist by training, and enjoys working on the cutting edge of science and technology.

The post How Vertical Farming Startup Bowery Approaches Biodiversity appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 16, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. Read all of the interviews here. 

Smart capital that is willing to invest in and support farmers is a critical piece of building a biodiverse food system. rePlant Capital, a new financial services firm dedicated to reversing climate change, is doing just that. The firm is “replanting” integrated capital into companies operating from soil to shelf. Below, I speak with vice president Robyn O’Brien about how the impact investment firm supports American farmers and companies tackling some of the greatest challenges created by climate change.

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Danielle Gould: How do you define and think about biodiversity?

Robyn O’Brien: Biodiversity is a system that restores more than it extracts, healing the soil, saving the planet.

DG: What are you doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

RO: I have recently joined an impact investment firm, rePlant Capital, that is investing integrated capital from soil to shelf. Our goal is to reverse climate change while supporting the American farmer by investing and replanting capital into privately held opportunities that are tackling some of the greatest challenges created by climate change.

DG: How do we get eaters to care about biodiversity?

RO: They already do. Every consumer that purchases organic is mindful that these products are made without the use of toxic pesticides. This is better for the soil, it helps it to maintain its vitality and serve as a more effective tool to capture carbon. We have created a food awakening in the last decade that is fundamentally changing the landscape of our food system. We can all make an impact with what we choose to put in our shopping carts.

DG: What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like? How might we measure biodiversity, and when will we know when we’ve arrived at a “good” level of biodiversity?

RO: Let’s start with the opposite: what does the worst system look like? We built that at the end of the 20th century when companies like Monsanto introduced genetically engineered corn and soy. Our farmers went from polyculture farming and planting many different crops, to planting just a few. We lost our diversity. So let’s flip that: by reinvigorating a food economy that is diverse and polycultural, supporting the regeneration of specialty crops and produce, not only are we healing the soil, but we can also heal ourselves.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers, chefs, retailers, farmers, and other key parts of the supply chain can do to support biodiversity?

RO: Listen to the consumer. We are all staring down a host of conditions and diseases in the health of our families and loved ones like never before. We are seeking out new foods, avoiding certain ingredients and learning to ask better questions. The 21st century consumer is a compass. Follow her lead.

DG:What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

RO: Our farmers are suffering from several epidemics: suicides, bankruptcies and an opioid epidemic. We need to value and invest in our farmers for our food system to be sustainable. They need to have access to capital to restructure loans, refinance equipment and take advantage of new opportunities. At rePlant, we are investing soil to shelf and part of our work is to work directly with farmers to help them with their financial needs.

DG: How might we reinvent capital structures or create incentives to increase investment in biodiversity?

RO: Financial benefits should accrue to farmers and companies who are mindful of the future: B corp certification, organic certification and those demonstrating best practices. Loans should be more affordable to those building biodiversity.

DG: Are there certifications or other signals that can help the average consumer determine what kinds of foods are helping promote biodiversity?

RO: Yes, bring this knowledge into our school systems. Teach food economics and biodiversity to grade school children, high school kids and in colleges.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

RO: We have refinanced our farm economy, creating polycultural cropping systems and removing the middle man, so that farmers can have transparency into market trends and demands and access directly to buyers.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Robyn O’Brien, Vice President of rePlant Capital

Robyn O’Brien is the Vice President of rePlant Capital, a new financial services firm, with funds focused on reversing climate change. The rePlant team is replanting integrated capital into privately held, deep impact opportunities from soil to shelf, while supporting American farmers.

Robyn was a founding team member of of AIM/Invesco’s first hedge fund of $100+ million and a team member on their $20 billion Constellation Fund. She was an advisor to Paul Hawken’s “Drawdown”(published in April 2017) and has advised startups, banks and multinationals, while working with global CEOs and management teams in the food industry. Robyn is also the founder of Do Good, a strategic advisory firm, and AllergyKids Foundation, which serves the 1 in 3 children with allergies, asthma, ADHD and autism. Random House published Robyn’s book, The Unhealthy Truth, in 2009, and her TEDx talk has been viewed by millions and translated into multiple languages. She received her BA from Washington and Lee University, her MBA from Rice University on a full scholarship and also received a Fulbright fellowship.  She is named after a farmer in New Zealand.

The post rePlant Capital on Investing From Soil to Shelf appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 8, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. See the full list of participants and read about why biodiversity in food is important here. 

Spices and where they come from are one of the most overlooked parts of cooking. Burlap & Barrel is trying to change that. The startup sources unique, flavorful spices from artisan farms around the globe that have never before been available in the US.

After visiting over 100 spice farms, the company has found that the most interesting and tastiest crops are grown in biodiverse environments, but often have smaller yields. To overcome this challenge, Burlap is rethinking the traditional spice supply chain. Below, co-founder Ethan Frisch talks to me about how the company is developing a supply chain that is able to scale horizontally, so it can work with a wide variety of producers of different sizes in a multitude of countries.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for Burlap & Barrel? If so, how and why?

Ethan Frisch: Burlap & Barrel was founded on the inherent connection between good agricultural practices by expert farmers, and unique, beautiful spice crops. Biodiverse and biodynamic conditions aren’t simply a secondary benefit of our work – they’re the reason that our partner farmers grow great spices. Our cardamom is grown under the canopy of Guatemala’s cloud forests; our cinnamon, cloves and black peppercorns grow wild on the islands of Pemba and Zanzibar; and our turmeric is intercropped with sugarcane because our partner farmer in India has seen improved quality of both crops when he grows them together.

DG: How does Burlap & Barrel define and think about biodiversity? What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like? How do you measure biodiversity, and when will we know when we’ve arrived at a “good” level of biodiversity?

EF: High quality spices are always the result of a skilled farmer and specific growing conditions. In the past three years, I’ve visited over 100 spice farms, and the farms with the most interesting crops are always growing them in biodiverse environments. My approach to measuring biodiversity has been pretty unscientific. I look for farms where multiple crops are growing together, and I ask farmers a thousand questions about why and how they’ve decided to cultivate their crops in certain ways. I’m looking for systems that are regenerative, where inputs outweigh outputs and the crops express that environmental health in their flavor, color, size and shape.

DG: What is Burlap & Barrel doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

EF: Spice farmers growing biodynamically are faced with a difficult business proposition; they often have smaller yields, but the quality of the spices they grow is much higher. The commodity spice trade leaves farmers with very few options, and unfortunately rewards quantity over quality. By setting our partner farmers up to export their own crops directly, we’re creating an opportunity for a different business model, one that emphasizes quality and rewards a farmer’s skill and the specific biodiverse growing conditions on the farm. We also work with networks of foragers to source incredible wild spices, because of the uniqueness and intensity of their flavor. Our wild mountain cumin, harvested by shepherds in the high mountains of the Hindu Kush, is being used by some of the world’s best restaurants.

DG: What is the business case for products that promote a more biodiverse food system?

EF: Spices grown in biodiverse environments are better, not only because they’re grown more sustainably but because they taste better. By paying farmers more for higher quality crops, we’re able to build a business that treats farmers as partners rather than as commodity suppliers, and provides home cooks and professional chefs with beautiful spices.

DG: What are the greatest challenges and opportunities your organization faces for creating a more biodiverse system? What are you doing to overcome or capture them?

EF: Everything about setting up new direct supply chains from biodiverse farms around the world is challenging. The logistical systems and the FDA regulations, particularly around the Food Safety Modernization Act, are designed for older styles of sourcing, where products are commodified and supply chains are opaque. As a new kind of spice company, we don’t fit older molds where each company played a single, specific role in the supply chain. Adapting older systems to fit a newer model is challenging, but with the right partners and increased scale, we’re able to do it more easily with every new shipment.

DG: How do you handle the sourcing and scaling of biodiverse ingredients?

EF: When we launched Burlap & Barrel in February 2017, our first shipments were small enough to fit in a suitcase (literally), but these days we import several tons of spices at a time. We’ve found that spices grown biodynamically have more interesting and intense flavors, but the quantities that can be grown are necessarily smaller than would be produced in plantation-style agriculture.

Our partner cooperative in Zanzibar, for example, grows incredible black pepper in a tropical forest – cinnamon and clove trees, cardamom bushes, vanilla vines and black pepper all grow together, along with many other non-edible plants – in a highly biodiverse environment, but because of that environment, they can only grow fairly small quantities, especially of their very intense black pepper. According to conventional wisdom, the Zanzibar archipelago (and specifically the island of Pemba, where ours is grown) is not ideal for black pepper – the soil is too sandy, the landscape is too hilly and the is too weather too hot and dry for most of the year. The harsh environment actually makes for a very special black pepper fruit, with heady citrus aroma and lingering heat, but one that’s only available in tiny quantities. We bought our partner cooperative’s entire black pepper harvest last year, which only amounted to about 1100 lbs, not nearly enough to keep our enthusiastic customers happy.

Our solution lies in a supply chain that’s scaleable horizontally rather than vertically. Instead of depending on a small number of farmers to grow higher volumes, and invariably reduce the quality of what they grow, we prefer to work with more producers in more countries and highlight the unique characteristics of their spice crops. Embracing biodiversity means appreciating diversity of flavor: spices from different origins, harvested at different points in the season and dried using different techniques are all going to taste different, and we see that as an asset rather than an obstacle. We’re building new supply chains from scratch, rejecting the opaque, commoditized systems that were built on a colonial legacy to prioritize scale over uniqueness, profit over equity and consistency over intensity of flavor.

We work with with a network of logistics partners who are able to facilitate the shipment of our spices directly from our partner farms to our warehouse and then on to our customers. With their help, we’re able to send a truck up into the cloud forests of Guatemala to pick up a load of yellow cardamom, and keep track of dozens of sacks of cinnamon, cloves and black pepper as they fly around the world from Zanzibar to New York (with layovers in Nairobi and Qatar.) We set our partner farmers up to export their crops directly for the first time, which means helping them register with the FDA, making sure their food safety processes meet US standards and managing (and paying for) the logistics to bring their spices to market in the US.

DG: What are some of the most important things retailers, food manufacturers and other key parts of the food supply chain can do to support biodiversity?

EF: Retailers and manufacturers need to talk more about where their products come from. By sharing stories about ingredient sourcing, they’ll be able to convince consumers that biodiverse growing conditions will be better for them, better for farmers and better for the environments in which they’re grown. Our experience has been that our customers, whether they’re home cooks, professional chefs or food manufacturers, appreciate knowing more about where their spices come from and the biodynamic environments in which they were grown. That said, we’re a small company with limited reach, and we’re usually sharing those stories with people who already understand the importance of good growing conditions. We’d like to see larger companies with a broader reach and audiences who might not already be looking for

DG: If we get to a perfectly biodiverse food system, how would that change the typical selection of products we see in a grocery store?

EF: Unfortunately, one of the challenges of biodiverse agriculture is a higher financial cost than most companies and consumers are used to paying. Large food corporations are unwilling to reduce margins, and so higher costs are passed on to consumers. That translates into biodiverse foods being only available to wealthy people, which entrenches segregational systems in our food supply and reduces the scale at which biodiverse foods can be commercially viable. In a more biodiverse food system, we might see a smaller selection of products, but they’ll taste better and be more nutritionally dense. In a perfectly diverse food system, though, we wouldn’t see food costs go up for the consumer – we’d find ways to build savings in the system, or have large corporations accept lower profits.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry — either in foodservice or CPG — that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

EF: In general, we think very little about the supply chains behind our food. Joining a CSA or buying vegetables at a farmer’s market is a great first step, but those aren’t viable options for everyone, either because of geography, climate, cost or personal preference. The emphasis on local sourcing can only take us so far, especially in New York City, and unless consumers are willing to stop drinking coffee and eating avocados, we need to recognize the importance of building better supply chains for foods that can’t be grown locally.

Some crops, and the modern agricultural systems around them, simply don’t lend themselves to biodiverse cultivation. Wheat, corn, cotton and other staples are grown in monocropped systems to produce the volumes required, because of high market demand or because commodity prices are so low that farmers need to grow huge volumes to earn a living. The establishment of new structures is going to be take a very long time, but the process itself will be invaluable in establishing farming and food supply systems that are better for producers and consumers.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

EF: The first steps towards more diverse food systems will to communicate the importance of those new systems to consumers. We’re in the early stages of that process, when better ingredients are still significantly more expensive and only accessible to a certain economic class of home cooks. The case for cooking with better ingredients needs to be made now, so that demand (and production) increase so that prices can decrease. I hope that in the next couple of decades, we’ll know more about where the ingredients we eat come from, and as a result, we’ll appreciate those ingredients more.

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Ethan Frisch, co-founder of Burlap & Barrel

Ethan Frisch is a native New Yorker, entrepreneur and food systems activist. A former chef in New York and London, he was also the co-founder and Executive Chef of Guerrilla Ice Cream, an activist ice cream cart. As a humanitarian aid worker, he lived and worked in Afghanistan with the Aga Khan Foundation and managed logistics for Doctors Without Borders on the Syrian/Jordanian border.

He is honored to serve on the Board of Directors of the Bond Street Theatre (www.bondst.org), which uses theater to teach conflict resolution in areas of instability, and on the Advisory Boards of the student-led racial literacy organization Princeton CHOOSE and the Fragments Theater, a youth theater company in Palestine. He is also on the Organizing Committee of the Queens International Night Market.

The post How Burlap & Barrel is Rethinking The Spice Supply Chain appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 8, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. See the full list of participants and read about why biodiversity in food is important here. 

Applegate was founded with a mission to “Change The Meat We Eat.” Now, its launching a regenerative agriculture platform where all its products will come from animals raised on pasture. Through this platform, the company hopes to  build soil health, improve water quality and and increase biodiversity. It will use the Savory Institute’s Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) program to measure its efforts and will also work with Savory to support and train producers in regenerative agriculture practices.

Below, I speak with Gina Asoudegan, vice president of mission and innovation, about how Applegate is building a collaborative regenerative agriculture platform and how they will get their customers to care.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for Applegate? If so, how and why?

Gina Asoudegan: Applegate’s mission is Changing The Meat We Eat, which means we’re always in pursuit of better ways to produce meat. We view regenerative agriculture as one way to do that because of its focus on building soil, improving water quality and increasing biodiversity and how animals can – if raised right – play a vital role in that process.

DG: How does Applegate define and think about biodiversity? What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like? How do you measure biodiversity, and when will we know when we’ve arrived at a “good” level of biodiversity?

GA: At Applegate, we’re thinking about biodiversity within the context of regenerative agriculture, which is a holistic, systems approach to farming. It’s based on the idea that biodiversity in the food system involves not only plants and animals, but also the other ecosystems that support them, from the microbes in the soil to the people who ultimately eat the food produced from the system.

Applegate is launching a new regenerative agriculture platform where all the products come from animals raised on pasture using farming practices that measurably improve soil health, water quality and biodiversity.

To measure biodiversity on the farms, we’ll be using the Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) program developed by the Savory Institute. The EOV is the scientific methodology that measures and trends ecological outcomes on the land. EOV assesses key indicators of the health of the ecosystem — criteria such as soil health, biodiversity water cycle, mineral cycle, energy flow and community dynamics.

I don’t think anyone really knows what an ideal level of biodiversity looks like. The idea is to make continuous improvements, always striving for more diversity, which is the foundation of a healthy and resilient food system.

DG: What is the business case for products that promote a more biodiverse food system?

GA: Right now, there isn’t a business case for products that promote biodiversity. Mission driven companies, like Applegate, are moving in this direction because we believe it’s the right thing to do. We see regenerative agriculture and biodiversity as the next evolution in food and farming, and we intend to educate people about these ideas and drive demand for products produced this way.

The message is that sustainability is not enough. After decades of extractive practices like monocultures that degrade soil, we need to do more than just sustain. We need to build and regenerate by using farming practices that promote soil health and biodiversity.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

GA: The most important investment that needs to be made is support and training for producers. At Applegate we plan to work with the Savory Institute to train producers on regenerative agriculture practices.

DG: What are the greatest challenges and opportunities your organization faces for creating a more biodiverse system? What are you doing to overcome or capture them?

GA: Resistance to change, and the other side of the same coin – fear of the unknown – are always the challenges one faces as an early adopter of new ideas. The best way to get farmers onboard with an idea like regenerative agriculture is to demonstrate how it benefits them. One of the reasons Applegate is using the Savory Institute’s Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) program is that it allows us to prove to farmers that their regenerative practices are building soil, improving water quality and increasing biodiversity, all of which make their farms more resilient, productive and profitable.

DG: How are you or how do you plan to handle the sourcing and scaling of biodiverse ingredients?

GA: Collaboration is key to scaling pastured, regenerative livestock systems. For Applegate, that means working with retailers to commit to taking the product and finding outlets and/or partners to help utilize all the parts of the animal that we can’t use. Working this way helps mitigate risk for everyone in the supply web.

DG: Does your average customer care about biodiversity today? Why should they care? How do you (or will you) get them to care?

GA: The average consumer today is not aware that their food comes from monocultures or that the world is in the midst of a soil crisis, nor are those the messages that will change their purchasing behavior. But at Applegate, we’ve faced a similar challenge: educating consumers about the dangers of antibiotic resistance due to the abuse of antibiotics in animal agriculture.

What we learned: any talk about a food crisis has to be balanced with a message of hope. Hope stems from the confidence that we know how to SOLVE for these complex issues and our customers can participate in the solution through their purchasing decisions.

We see regenerative agriculture as a viable solution for building soil and biodiversity and we plan to educate our customers about the benefits of this kind of farming. We also plan to share with them the metrics of the Ecological Outcome Verification (EOV) program as proof of our efforts.

DG: What are some of the most important things retailers, food manufacturers and other key parts of the food supply chain can do to support biodiversity?

GA: The most important thing retailers, food manufacturers and other key parts of the food supply chain can do to support biodiversity is to be truly committed to it. Creating a biodiverse food system will require new ways of working together and involve new levels of collaboration and transparency. Ironically, supply chains will need to function more like a healthy, biodiverse ecosystem! In fact, people in the regenerative agriculture community have stopped using the term “supply chain” in favor of “supply web,” which better describes the interconnected, collaborative and resilient networks needed to create a biodiverse food system.

DG: How would a more biodiverse food system change the typical selection of products we see in a grocery store?

GA: As we achieve a more biodiverse food system, food in the grocery store will be sold and merchandized in a way that reflects the holistic ecosystem that produced it. Meat might be merchandized as the whole animal with primal cuts like steaks and chops alongside bacon, sausage, hams, bone broth, offal, pork rinds, guanciale, etc…. Terroir will also become important as meat will have regional and seasonal flavor nuances depending on what part of the country the animal was raised and what the animal ate throughout the year. As a result, we might see products like summer sausage and winter sausage where meat is blended with the herbs, fruits and nuts raised alongside the animals each season.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry — either in foodservice or CPG — that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

GA: I’d like to see more products in the food industry that are focused on flavor and the kind of nutrition you only get from food that comes from a biodiverse system with healthy soil that’s teeming with life. J.I Rodale said it best: Healthy Soil = Healthy Food = Healthy People.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

GA: I imagine we’re going to see the development of regionalized supply webs where food is raised, processed and shipped in closer proximity to the end customer. I also see a shift toward regenerative agriculture practices and toward growing food based on flavor, culinary quality and nutrition density, as opposed to its ability to withstand being shipped or stored for long periods of time. These kinds of food system shifts will have the added benefit of attracting a new generation of young farmers who are already interested in farming this way.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Gina Asoudegan, Vice President of Mission and Innovation at Applegate

Gina Asoudegan is Vice President of Mission and Innovation at Applegate where she develops the strategy for the company’s regenerative agriculture platform, creating products from meat raised on pasture using regenerative farming practices and building the supply chains to support them.

Gina started her career in food more than 25 years ago as a restauranteur, caterer and event planner in Philadelphia where she was an early adopter of the Farm-to-Table movement.

During her tenure at Applegate, Gina has worked closely with NGOs to raise awareness about the misuse of antibiotics in animals raised for food and its link to resistance in humans. She led the production and marketing of the documentary film, RESISTANCE, garnering global distribution for the film.

Gina is on the advisory boards of the Savory Institute, the Regenerative Supply Working Group, the Sustainable Food Lab and The National Young Farmers Coalition. She is also a member of the Esca Bona Innovation Cohort– A thought leadership group working on solutions to expand sustainable food supply chains.

The post How Applegate is Developing its Regenerative Agriculture Platform appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 8, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. See the full list of participants and read about why biodiversity in food is important here. 

Fast casual chain Dig Inn is committed to supporting more sustainable agricultural practices and healthier eating. Below Taylor Lanzet, director of supply and sustainability, and Larry Tse, farm manager, talk to me about how the restaurant uses its platform to support its 102 farm partners in experimenting with new crops and growing processes, as well as executing whole year, multi-crop plans. In addition to supporting minority-run and small-scale farms, it also runs a farm in Upstate New York to connect its chefs more deeply to produce where it’s grown.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for Dig Inn? If so, how and why?

Larry Tse: Dig Inn believes that to grow our business based on sustainable and healthy eating habits, we must also work to grow the environmental and economic sustainability of our farm partners and the agricultural industry as a whole. We know that by encouraging farmers to look holistically at their farms and practice more aggressive crop rotations, wildlife diversity protection, and reduced spray programs their operations can continue to thrive into the indefinite future. Creating systems that work in tune with nature, rather than fighting it, will lead to farms that are more resilient against the challenges that a changing climate will bring, such as inclement weather, fast-moving diseases, and increased pest pressure. If we can encourage our partners to implement more sustainable habits, we can create a supply chain with fewer interruptions and grow our partners’ businesses alongside our own.

DG: What is Dig Inn doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

LT: Our constantly changing menu supports our farm partners in executing whole year, multi-crop plans – instead of buying lettuce from a single farm year-round, our menu shifts with the seasons, allowing farmers to grow and retain business from us throughout the year.

On the Dig Inn Farm, we run a robust farmer training program that aims to teach our apprentices how to grow every single crop they might encounter on another farm. We create pollinator habitats by allowing older crops to flower rather than mow, and plan to work with the Natural Resources Conservation Service to plan out large scale pollinator habitats in the future. As an organic farm, we aim to limit the use of OMRI allowed broad-spectrum pesticide as much as possible via use of floating row covers and physical barriers like kaolin clay.

DG: What is the restaurant business case for biodiverse agriculture?

LT: The backbone of our business are our farm partners that keep us constantly supplied with fresh produce. By encouraging our producers to be more conscious of the holistic health of their farm systems, we are insulating our supply chain from interruptions due to disease, fertility, and growth issues that come from monocropping a field year on end. By growing different crops and new product that we can use on our menus, we are also increasing their operations financial sustainability, thereby continuously growing relationships with our farmers into the future.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

LT: We believe in building strong relationships with our growers while encouraging them to limit the use of pesticide/fungicide/herbicide applications, grow a more diverse array of crops, and increase land set aside for wild flower and pollinator habitats. By building a mutual trust between restaurants and partners, we assure our growers that by taking a risk in using new practices, we will still commit to buying the produce they send, even if they suffer from some damage or other issues that arise during the early stages of new systems. We need to be there for our producers when they take risks in a low-margin industry, and if that means shifting the food system away from only taking A-grade produce, then so be it.

DG: What are the greatest challenges and opportunities farmers face for creating a more biodiverse system? What are you doing to overcome or capture them?

LT: Many farmers want to try new systems that improve soil health or encourage biodiversity, but don’t know how to begin and are worried about investing in a new system in an industry where so much can go wrong. We believe that the obsession with perfect, blemish free produce is hurting farmers in considering how they want to implement new systems moving forward. If we can commit to buying produce that has blemishes while still paying our partners a fair wage, we believe they would be more comfortable trialing new systems that they may result in below-average graded produce that they could still find a market for.

DG: How might we get more restaurants to invest in biodiverse agriculture?

Taylor Lanzet: Restaurants need to work with farmers and suppliers to understand their challenges and support them financially and emotionally as they test new varieties and invest in new practices. They also need to support them by purchasing product that is cosmetically imperfect.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers, retailers, chefs and other key actors across the food supply chain can do to support biodiverse agriculture?

TL: Start planning with your farmers in the off season! Don’t just commit to varieties that they have grown year after year, but express excitement for new varieties or heirloom varieties that are native to a region. Ask your farmer what she is excited to grow and help her find a channel for that product.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry — either in foodservice or CPG — that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

TL: More fish! So many folks just eat the same species of fish – its a beautiful ocean out there and we need be more adventurous and celebrate more diverse species.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

LT: Ultimately, what will drive the agriculture industry forward to adopting more sustainable farming techniques are more conversations and dialogues between farmers from all across the industry spectrum. We should be bringing together conventional and organic, small-scale and large, biodynamic and agroforestry, and everyone in between to talk about how their systems benefit their operations and what we can borrow and learn from one another to change our industry as a whole.

TL: To make changes to the food system, we can’t just villainize large scale farming – that hasn’t gotten us as far as we want. We need to learn from these growers and industry partners to understand how we can influence and educate each other. Dig Inn’s mission is to rebuild the food system – and for that, we need to include everyone from farm workers to  fishermen to buyers to politicians.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Taylor Lanzet, Director of Supply & Sustainability

Taylor Lanzet is the Director of Supply & Sustainability of Dig Inn, a vegetable-forward, farm-to-counter restaurant group. Dig Inn offers an alternative to the industrial food system by cultivating a network of sustainable farmers and producers to bring tasty, healthful and mindfully sourced food to everyone. Taylor focuses on Dig Inn’s sourcing and sustainability initiatives within the supply chain — working directly with farmers to source underutilized vegetables, efforts to work with women and marginalized farmers, and new approaches to disrupt the bind between economic status and ability to eat good food. She also leads the Dig Farm project, working alongside the Dig Farmer, Taylor launched the company’s 12 acre farm in the Chester, NY. The farm compliments the supply chain allowing for more culinary innovation at Dig Inn and invests in the future of farming.

In addition to her work with Dig Inn, she was the Associate Producer to Heritage Radio Network’s Eating Matters podcast and regularly participates in conferences and panels on agricultural policy, social responsibility and sustainability. Prior to Dig Inn, Taylor graduated from Brown University (’15) with a B.A. in Environmental Studies. While at Brown, Taylor managed a food hub, recognized by the USDA and White House, which connects low-income Brown students, staff and faculty with healthy and local produce.

Twitter: @TayLanzet / Instagram: @taylanzet

Larry Tse, Farm Manager

Larry joined the Dig Inn team as  Farm Manager upon the company’s decision to lease land in Westchester, NY to cultivate a living and learning space for growing food. After studying agricultural policy at George Washington University in D.C., Larry began his career as a produce buyer for NYC’s Northern Spy, riding his bike to farmer’s markets around the city to source produce for the restaurant. He moved into farm management while working on two different small-scale farms in Pennsylvania, and then New York, before planting his roots at Dig Inn in January 2017.

Farmer Larry (as he’s known to our Dig Inn community) oversees both the people and plants on Dig’s farm, training new farmers and developing an apprentice program, being a good neighbor to our peers at the Chester Agricultural Center, and collaborating with Dig Inn’s supply team and chefs to ensure product is moved seamlessly from the farm to restaurants.

Instagram: @thelarbear

The post Dig Inn on Supporting Experimentation & New Growing Practices on Farms appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 8, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. See the full list of participants and read about why biodiversity in food is important here. 

Below, I speak with Gotham Greens CEO Viraj Puri about how the urban agriculture company uses closed loop hydroponic growing technology to limit agriculture’s use of land and water and reduce chemical use in our food production. By locating their farms in cities and by utilizing technology allows them to achieve yields that are up to 30 times more crop per acre than conventional agriculture (powered by 100 percent renewable electricity), Gotham Greens aims to reduce agriculture’s impact on natural ecosystems. The company is also working with Crop Trust and Tender greens to grow heritage seed varieties.

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Danielle Gould: How is biodiversity a priority for Gotham Greens?

Viraj Puri: We look at biodiversity in terms of preserving natural ecosystems and habitats by utilizing state-of-the-art technology to limit our use of natural resources. Agriculture is the largest consumer of land and fresh water on the planet. It is also the leading cause of global water pollution, so it’s important that all farmers and food producers take an honest look at how their farming practices effect the world’s limited and dwindling natural resources.

DG: How does Gotham Greens define and think about biodiversity? What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like? How do you measure biodiversity, and when will we know when we’ve arrived at a “good” level of biodiversity?

VP: Increasing biodiversity helps ensure that we have a more secure global food supply that is naturally resistant to climate change as well as pest pressures. Monocultures and the loss of biodiversity of crop varieties can lead to systemic collapse of entire sources of food supply and collapse of ecosystems. Modern, production agriculture can inherently be destructive to natural ecosystems and biodiversity.

An ideal biodiverse food system utilizes a range of production techniques that use fewer resources while being adapted to their unique geographic context. Gotham Greens’ commercial scale urban greenhouses utilize a closed loop growing technique centered around hydroponics. Since we grow hydroponically without the use of soil, we think of biodiversity in terms of preserving water and soil resources and reducing harmful chemical use in food production. Gotham Greens’ greenhouses are powered by 100 percent renewable electricity and yield up to 30 times more crop per acre than conventional agriculture. We do this while using 90 percent less water and eliminating agricultural runoff and the use of harmful chemicals. We’re typically growing dozens of plant varieties and we utilize carefully selected seeds that are non-GMO Verified. We also introduce beneficial insects and pollinators into our facilities to assist with integrative pest management so our products can be pesticide-free.

Our goal at Gotham Greens is to use the least amount of natural resources possible and to utilize clean farming practices. We believe the best level of biodiversity comes from leaving ecosystems and wildlife in their natural habits. Urban farming makes use of space that wouldn’t traditionally be used for agriculture such as former industrial sites, rooftops, backyards and parking lots. By growing highly perishable produce such as leafy greens and herbs in urban greenhouses, we’re able to eliminate the long-haul transportation that’s typically associated with these products. Theoretically this also creates an opportunity for rural farmers to encourage greater biodiversity in their crops by focusing on growing a more diverse array of products. It also allows former farmland to potentially return to its natural state.

DG: How do indoor agriculture companies think about biodiversity? What role might indoor ag play in promoting biodiversity?

VP: Climate change, population growth and urbanization are threatening biodiversity worldwide. Our goal for the agriculture industry is that more indoor growers will use technology to advocate for more efficient, clean farming practices that utilize far less natural resources while increasing transparency within the supply chain. Unlike other types of indoor farming, Gotham Greens’ urban greenhouses utilize natural sunlight, limiting our company’s energy consumption. Since launching in 2011, Gotham Greens has grown from a single urban rooftop greenhouse in Brooklyn, New York to a multi-region indoor farming leader and one of the largest hydroponic leafy greens producers in North America. As we’ve scaled up our business, we’ve also increased our commitment to using 100 percent renewable electricity to power all of our facilities.

DG: What is Gotham Greens doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

In additional to using sustainable growing practices, we are partnering with other like-minded companies like The Crop Trust who are committed to preserving the genetics of heritage seed varieties. Earlier this year I joined the founder of Tender Greens, Erik Oberholtzer, at the Crop Trust’s new Food Forever reception, supporting an initiative designed to educate people around the world about the importance of crop diversity for the long-term stability of the world’s food supply. According to The Crop Trust, 75 percent of the food we eat globally comes from 12 plants. In fact, 4 plants give us 60 percent of our global calorie intake, which is not sustainable and leaves our food system extremely vulnerable. We are working with The Crop Trust and Tender Greens to explore opportunities to grow heritage seed varieties in our greenhouses that can introduce more diversity within our food systems and make it available to consumers at fast casual restaurants like Tender Greens.

DG: What is the business case for biodiverse indoor agriculture?

VP: Consumer’s palates are changing and people are beginning to seek out more variation in the types of foods they’re eating. By growing more varieties, we are protecting a large genetic seed bank. Farmers and chefs can use this as a point of differentiation when promoting their products to consumers. Dan Barber’s recent launch of the Kogninut Squash is a great example of this.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

VP: Recent investments into agriculture are unprecedented. I believe that this is not a passing trend as people are always going to need food. This also means that there is endless opportunity for innovation. Without greater diversity in seed types of our crops, our global food supply becomes weakened . To safeguarding the natural diversity that we currently have, I believe it helps to estimate the financial value of ecosystems as “natural capital.” An example of this can be seen right here in NY. Over the last 20 years, New York has spent $2 billion protecting the natural watershed that supplies the city with clean water. It has worked so well that 90 percent of the water needs no further filtering. Building a water treatment plant instead would have cost $10 billion.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers, retailers, chefs and other key actors across the food supply chain can do to support biodiverse agriculture?

VP: Large scale commercialization of agriculture has led to monocultures and the loss of seed varieties. A balanced diet is derived from a diverse range of foods so eating `forgotten foods,’ or the traditional foods and crops that our ancestors once ate, could play an important role in the future of a more healthy and stable global food supply. Chefs have a unique opportunity to use their buying power to advocate for greater diversity in the foods they serve. Food manufacturers, have an opportunity to introduce consumers to obscure, delicious foods. A successful examples of this can be seen in the proliferation of foods like quinoa and chia seeds, which were brought to market and made mainstream by consumer brands.

DG: What is your vision for what a more biodiverse food system looks like in 10-15 years?

VP: I’d love to see a greater variety of genetics and biodiversity available to consumers at the supermarket. I also believe there needs to be a more diverse variety of ways that foods are being grown. In order for this to happen, we will need to safeguarding biodiversity and consider crop diversity as a global common good to build on for the future. Government regulations that support the sharing of seeds across borders will help facilitate this, as without an open exchange of seeds across borders, breeders will be unable to develop the type of seeds we’ll need in the future to stand up to climate change.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Viraj Puri, Co-founder & CEO of Gotham Greens

Viraj co-founded and serves as CEO of Gotham Greens, a worldwide pioneer in urban, indoor agriculture. Gotham Greens provides its diverse retail, restaurant, and institutional customers with reliable, year-round, local supply of produce and fresh food products produced under the highest standards of food safety and environmental sustainability. The company’s non-GMO, pesticide-free produce is grown using ecologically sustainable methods in technologically-sophisticated, 100% renewable electricity-powered, climate controlled urban greenhouses. Prior to Gotham Greens, Viraj developed and managed start-up enterprises in New York, India and Malawi, Africa focusing on sustainable agriculture, green building, renewable energy, and environmental design. His written work has appeared in several books and publications including, “100% Renewable — Energy Autonomy in Action” and the UN Academic Journal. He has received fellowships from the TED conference, Wild Gift, and the Environmental Leadership Program. Viraj is a LEED® Accredited Professional and received a B.A. from Colgate University. Under Viraj’s leadership, Gotham Greens has grown to employ over 160 employees and become one of the largest and most commercially successful urban agriculture companies in the world. Gotham Greens employs over 160 employees across 4 greenhouse facilities in NYC and Chicago totaling 170,000sf and is currently developing an additional 500,000sf of greenhouse in cities across the United States. Gotham Greens was named one of the ‘Coolest Businesses in America’ by Business Insider and was founded in 2009 in Brooklyn, New York. www.gothamgreens.com.

The post Gotham Greens on Using Hydroponics to Preserve Biodiversity appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

From January 7 – February 8, Food+Tech Connect and The Future Market are hosting Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability, an editorial series featuring interviews with over 45 leading food industry CEOs, executives, farmers, investors and researchers on the role of biodiversity in the food industry. See the full list of participants and read about why biodiversity in food is important here. 

Smart capital and innovation ecosystems that prize diversity are key to creating a regenerative, biodiverse future at scale. For Food System 6 (FS6), a non-profit accelerator that helps food and agriculture entrepreneurs and organizations accelerate their growth and impact, both genetic diversity among plants and animals and cultural diversity in the entrepreneurial ecosystem are critical to creating regenerative food systems.

Below I speak with Renske Lynde, co-founder and managing director, about the incubator’s holistic approach to supporting innovation among farmers, producers and entrepreneurs. True systems change, she argues, requires long term investment from investors, foundations and VCs. Current capital structures could scale biodiverse and regenerative agricultural systems, they just require more patience and greater investment in infrastructure and processing.

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Danielle Gould: Is biodiversity a priority for Food System 6? If so, how and why?

Renske Lynde: Biodiversity is the cornerstone of a healthy, thriving ecosystem; therefore addressing biodiversity is one of the fundamental facets of building a healthier food system for all, which is our core mission at Food System 6.

We take a view that all levels of biodiversity – genetic, species and ecosystem – are critical to the thriving, interconnected and complex system that makes life on earth possible. For us, creating a Sixth Food System is about ensuring that the planet can continue to sustain future generations and we believe that biodiversity moves beyond sustainability and, as such, is foundational to building regenerative systems.

DG: How does Food System 6 define and think about biodiversity?

RL: Biodiversity is a multifaceted issue within the FS6 program, as we focus our curriculum around the interconnectedness of each of the complex factors influencing the overall ecosystem. In an attempt to simplify an inherently complex issue, we can break the FS6 perspective into two distinct, yet deeply interrelated categories: genetic diversity amongst plants and animals and cultural biodiversity throughout the entrepreneur ecosystem.

The first issue – plant and animal biodiversity – is one that has been gaining traction across the food ecosystem recently. With the increased selection and hybridization of organisms for traits like stability and growth, much of the industrial food system has de-prioritized previously crucial elements like nutrient density. As our food’s ability to nourish us diminishes, larger quantities are needed to fulfill us, and more additives are necessary to supplement for flavor. Not to mention the increased use of chemicals and hormones necessary to maintain the health of an increasingly fragile genetic ecosystem. We have traded in traits like natural pest resistance and immunity for more commercially attractive attributes like growth rates and product size.

From monocropping to genetic modification selective breeding, we are jeopardizing our ability to have an adaptive and regenerative food system, even as we watch the world around us change drastically and with increasing speed. On the bright side, there is a growing trend in innovation to focus on this issue through the breeding and selection of heritage breed plants and animals. Companies like Emmer & Co, Row 7, Sfoglini and Heritage Foods are playing an important role in bringing the conversation of genetic diversity to the table.

Perhaps a more nuanced, but equally important aspect of this conversation, is that of diversity within the entrepreneurial landscape. The biodiversity of community is just as essential to healthy ecosystem growth as genetic diversity is to the long-term viability of agricultural crops. Core to our program is the understanding that economically, racially and culturally diverse ecosystems build richer and more robust environments for innovation. The research is continuing to show that diverse organizations have increased productivity and profit, broader networks and advanced consumer insights; additionally, diverse teams have been shown to iterate faster and smarter than their competition. There has also proven to be a strong connection between native communities worldwide (who tend to have a stronger connection to natural systems) and those that are actively focused on promoting biodiversity. Companies such as Tanka Bar, Native Harvest and Extensio are examples of solutions that address both sides of the equation by supporting marginalized communities and creating market opportunities for biodiverse, culturally relevant products.

DG: What is Food System 6 doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

RL: Farmers have long evolved crops to produce an amazing diversity of plants that are naturally pest resilient and capable of producing life-sustaining nutrition. It is our mission to surface and support those who are doing so in a holistic and systems-focused manner. Thus, the FS6 portfolio supports a culturally, racially and socially diverse selection of farmers, producers and entrepreneurs who are innovating around the ideas of regeneration in the food and agriculture ecosystem.

DG: What is the business case for products that promote a more biodiverse food system?

RL: The business case is simple: without biodiversity, we will see the extinction of our food system as we know it … and we are already seeing signs of the collapse. Monoculture production has become a global hazard for all and, as such, addressing biodiversity is much more about making a case for humanity’s survival than it is about food politics. As the climate warms and weather patterns become more severe, we will continue to see even greater crop damage and loss. Increasingly, we are seeing that companies have recognized that sustainability matters and that protecting and promoting biodiversity is a necessary next step in securing supply chains in a quickly changing world. However, the major players can (and need to) play a bigger role in reversing the damage caused by monoculture production by building diverse supply chains that mitigate against losses. We must adopt new models for business that take into consideration the true cost to the environment and its inhabitants.

As an example, investing in factory farming has become a value destructive decision because we know that poor animal welfare leads to an array of major supply chain problems like swine flu or fraud. By examining the opportunities to invest in solutions that promote species and production diversity, we can secure supply chain investments that may have a longer horizon but over time lead to value creation across the entire production and consumption value chain.

DG: What investments need to be made to create a more biodiverse food system?

RL: There is significant work happening in agroecology and wildlife conservation to create more biodiverse ecosystems. There are many Native American Tribes working to save diverse seeds and bring these indigenous products to the market. We are seeing new and safer technologies for seed breeding and hybridizations; agronomists are identifying wild seeds that are suitable for small and medium scale cultivation. Regenerative and biodynamic farming practices are becoming a part of large food companies land holdings – albeit on a very small scale. Heritage animal breeds are being revived as their benefit to habitat reconstruction and overall role in a healthy ecosystem and diet becomes better understood (more specifically, for their nutrient density and role they play in grassland reconstruction).

With all of these innovations in the ecosystem, we need to take a less reductionist and extractive approach to investing in, and creating new, ecosystem-based markets. For instance, quinoa – the beloved superfood from the Andes, has seen a sharp rise in demand over the last 20 years, leading farmers to abandon the nearly 3,000 varieties that farmers have developed over centuries of cultivation – in favor of a few to satisfy the export market. It is untenable farming practices like this that endanger the seeds and plants that are essential to life. Investments need to take a holistic view regarding the assets and resources that are required to enable biodiversity to flourish and we need to see more investment in the infrastructure and processing elements that will support biodiverse foods. One of the ways that this can happen is by focusing on and investing in right-sized innovation in the food and agriculture space, rather than furthering the practices that produce higher yields for a only a handful of crop species. This requires us to think about innovation beyond the emerging technologies that are sexy and exciting and to focus instead on building solutions that address the needs of small to medium scale production and regenerative applications.

DG: How might we reinvent capital structures or create incentives to create more investment in biodiversity?

We don’t necessarily need to reinvent capital – if leveraged in the right way, the current capital infrastructure can be used – we just need to start investing in some of the products and services that are in alignment with these objectives around biodiversity. Ultimately, what we need is for the gatekeepers of philanthropic capital to start leveraging their knowledge and networks in order to support and scale innovations that are building biodynamic and regenerative practices. If the traditional investors, foundations, and VCs could join forces, we could revitalize our capital infrastructure to support the complex needs and longer ROI cycles of regenerative agriculture. The philanthropic leaders who have been advocating for biodiversity should be supporting these companies and engaging in market-based solutions to scale them; the investor community should be revising their metrics of success in order to accommodate for the more holistic returns associated with regenerative investment opportunities.

From a policy perspective, we need an increase in the incentivizes and mechanisms that promote these kinds of shifts in production – as we have seen around the conversation of soil health in California. We need to expand policy dialogue, across the board, to include incentives that promote biodiversity.

DG: What are some of the most important things investors, food manufacturers, retailers and other key actors across the supply chain can do to support biodiversity?

RL: Players in the food space need to challenge the assumption that biodiverse production systems cannot scale or feed the world. We need to recognize the importance of diversity within the entrepreneur, investor, and farmer ecosystem and to interact with all stakeholders to advance change; where this is not possible, we need to support the kinds of intermediaries that function at the edges of the stakeholder ecosystem to help support innovation with these goals in mind.  Lastly, we need to stop investing in innovations that do not prioritize impact and transformation.

DG: Are there certain products you would like to see more of in the food industry — either in foodservice or CPG — that would help promote a more biodiverse agricultural system?

RL: The biggest step that we could take in the direction of a more biodiverse ecosystem would be to increase the diversity of all staple crops and bring back genetic diversity of grains. Adjacent to that, we need to promote the proliferation of heirloom varietals and animals and integrate them into products that the consumer will be able to find on the average grocery store shelf.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Renske Lynde, Co-founder and Managing Director of Food System 6

Renske Lynde has worked in the non-profit sector on food, agriculture and nutrition policy issues for nearly 20 years.  Her work has included grassroots education and community organizing, strategic campaign development, quantitative policy analysis, and legislative advocacy.  She began her career in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy working on behalf of small-scale sustainable agriculture producers and went on to build direct markets for Pennsylvania farmers in the Philadelphia marketplace. Renske subsequently directed Advocacy and Research for the San Francisco Food Bank working primarily on cross-sector partnerships to improve the federal food stamp and school lunch programs. She holds a BA degree from Boston University in Political Science and Psychology and a Masters in Public Policy from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy.

Renske is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Food System 6, a non-profit, impact-focused accelerator based in the Bay Area that supports mission-driven entrepreneurs who are transforming how we grow, produce and distribute food. FS6 runs a 4-month cohort program that is designed to meet the individual needs of each of the accepted portfolio companies accepted and currently has an active portfolio of 23 companies working all throughout the value chain from on-farm innovations to consumer products.

FS6 collaborates with a wide range of partners and supporters across philanthropy, the investment sector, and with companies such as Annie’s and Google. FS6 is working to elevate the concept of blended capital to scale impact in the food system and to develop innovative financing approaches for its entrepreneurs.

Renske is also an active impact investor and philanthropist in the food system, and a member of Toniic, an impact investing group.

The post Food System 6 on Scaling Food System Innovation appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This is a guest post by Michelle Burns, Senior Vice President of Global Coffee & Tea at Starbucks as part of Biodiversity: The Intersection of Taste & Sustainability.

As a point of Starbucks background, when we approach coffee, we do so from three lenses: quality, responsibility and innovation. As part of our focus on responsibility, we’ve developed ethical sourcing standards in partnership with Conservation International for more than 15 years. We call these our Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices. Currently, more than 99 percent of Starbucks coffee is ethically sourced according to these standards, and our goal is to get to 100 percent; the balance comes from new coffee origins we’re exploring.

Yes, we prioritize biodiversity in these standards. For C.A.F.E. Practices, third-party auditors examine many aspects of farm operations – criteria related to social responsibility, environmental leadership and economic accountability. As part of these criteria, farms need to follow numerous practices to help protect biodiversity and wildlife habitat. We ensure farms are not only following minimum standards, but also have access to tools and training to continually improve.

To illustrate areas promoted in the program and included in the third-party auditing process, several measures are checked that relate to biodiversity on farms and in coffee-growing regions:

• Bodies of water protected from degradation
• Irrigation tracked
• Surface erosion controlled, soil productivity maintained
• Diverse coffee shade canopy maintained
• Wildlife protected
• Land conserved (e.g. no tolerance for natural forest converted to agriculture since 2004)
• Pests and plant diseases controlled under ecological standards
• Long-term productivity measures taken (e.g. a pruning and renovation to help productivity, and extra points for working with a research institute)
• Water consumption minimized
• Wastewater impacts minimized
• Climate change risks and crop impacts tracked
• Waste managed properly
• Energy conserved

In the auditing, there are several further detailed statements under each of the topic areas above.

To help support farmers – whether they already meet C.A.F.E Practices standards to sell to Starbucks, or whether they’re striving to – we’ve established nine Farmer Support Centers in key coffee-growing regions. These offer agronomy research and development, technical support for farmers and other support for the communities in an open-source model both for farmers who sell to Starbucks and farmers who don’t.

We’ve also committed to provide 100 million healthy coffee trees to farmers, and in doing so, our intent is to help increase their quality and yields while also supporting the conservation of biodiversity; we can make existing lands more productive and not expand into forests. As is noted above in the C.A.F.E. Practice standards topics, we have zero tolerance for deforestation.

It’s no incidental statement that our success in sourcing, roasting and preparing coffee, especially for the long term, is directly linked to the success of the farmers who grow our coffee. This is why over the years we’ve worked – with the help and expertise of many partners – to help coffee farmers continually do better for the long term, again whether they sell to Starbucks or not. In total, we’ve invested more than $100 million in supporting coffee communities. We buy 3 percent of the world’s coffee, but we work to have our impact outweigh our buying power. When we help farmers improve their quality and productivity in a sustainable way – including helping foster biodiversity in their surroundings – it serves both us and them well in the long run.

In 2015 we worked together with Conservation International to conceive and launch the Sustainable Coffee Challenge. Today more than 100 international partners have joined, and we’re working together with a goal to make coffee the world’s first sustainable agricultural product. We’re also a supporter of World Coffee Research and its open, global work with us and others to accelerate and apply research and development on coffee farms. These collaborative efforts are encouraging, and there’s still much more to do.

Read all of the interviews here and learn more about Biodiversity at The Future Market.

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Michelle Burns, Senior Vice President of Global Coffee & Tea at Starbucks

Michelle Burns is senior vice president, Global Coffee & Tea at Starbucks. Promoted to this role in May 2018, Michelle is responsible for leading all things coffee and tea – both Core and Reserve – including strategy for growing, sourcing, buying, quality, sustainment and education. She will oversee programs that are grounded in our heritage, including Origin experiences, Farmer Support Centers, and the Visitor Center at Hacienda Alsacia.

A 23-year Starbucks partner, Michelle recently led the Branded Solutions team and has been a key member of the Starbucks Channel Development and Licensed Stores leadership teams. Prior to joining Starbucks in 1995, Michelle worked in sales and distribution in the Natural Foods Industry with Frontier Cooperative Herbs where she found her passion for coffee and was responsible for developing the natural and mass market channels for the coffee category in the U.K. and United States.

Michelle holds a B.A. from the University of Iowa. She serves on the board for FareStart, serves as a sponsor for the Starbucks Access Alliance Network, is actively involved in Google Food and Beverage Innovation Lab and is a longtime member of the Women’s Foodservice Forum.

After a great Starbucks journey living in many cities across the country, Michelle, her husband and two children all enjoy calling Seattle home. Her passions include family, travel and great food and wine. Michelle is a Starbucks Coffee Master and starts her day with coffee in a Starbucks store.

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