This is a guest post by Kelsey Formost, Director of Content Strategy at Tagger Media.

Food+Tech Connect and S2G Ventures are partnering to host Reimagining Retail, a series of conversations exploring how this unprecedented moment in time will shape food retail over the next five years. 

Without the ability to drive product trial through in-store demos and sampling, brands have been forced to rely even more heavily on digital means to drive customer discovery. 

While influencer marketing was already a pretty commonplace tactic for brands, in 2020 it became even more essential for brands to work with trusted content creators across social platforms to drive discovery of their products. 

Social media has always been ingrained in our daily lives, but according to a recent study, 72% of social media users report spending significantly more time per day on social media. Before covid, the average American was consuming an average of 3.5 hours of social media time per day. After covid, that number has nearly doubled to six hours a day, on average.

Beyond increasing screen time, Covid accelerated our comfort with using social media as a means of discovering and purchasing new products. In fact, because of a surge in on-platform shopping, we’re predicting that all major social platforms will be adjusting their algorithms to boost product discovery and eCommerce in 2021.

Tagger Media, the influencer marketing platform I work for, helps connect brands with the most valuable content creators for their campaigns so they can get their products in front of the right audiences. Over the last year, we found that brands who increased their investment in influencer marketing were able to more seamlessly transition into a pandemic economy and social landscape. By partnering with influencers and meeting consumers where they already were, brands were able to stay top of mind with their existing customer base and drive discovery for new leads. 

In advance of the Reimagining Discovery Conversation on January 21, we wanted to share some of the key learnings from 2020 to help brands increase their ROI by leveraging influencer partnerships and staying ahead of upcoming industry trends.

Learning #1: Consumers are increasingly looking to influencers for recommendations and deals

Data shows consumers are purposefully seeking the opinions and recommendations of influencers before they make a purchasing decision. Influencer Marketing Hub reports that 91 percent of millennials trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from friends and family. A survey by BrightLocal shows 95 percent of consumers aged 18-34 seek out online reviews before making a purchase, reading an average of 10 reviews before they feel they’re able to trust a brand.

Not only are consumers seeking out the opinions of online creators, they’re actively looking for discount codes and product links from influencers they trust. When it comes time for a consumer to purchase, they often return to the source of discovery – in this case, the influencer – to complete that “last click” step and add the product to their cart.

Recent data shows that long-term partnerships performed best for brands in 2020 which allowed brand campaigns to build momentum with a dialed-in audience. Repetition builds recognition, recognition builds trust, and trust creates sales. 

Most marketers are aware of the statistic that a viewer needs to be exposed to something an average of seven times before they opt in. Investing in a long term influencer partnership ensures you’re getting your product in front of the right audiences (on the right platform) enough times to drive real-life purchasing decisions. 

Learning #2: Social media algorithms are changing to reflect new spending habits

In order to maximize success with influencer marketing, it’s important to consider upcoming algorithm changes that might affect your campaign reach and engagement. Last year brought a massive increase in consumer comfort with online shopping which led every major social media platform to create new opportunities to incorporate eCommerce into their user experience.

We expect that consumers’ social media shopping behavior will be even more heavily weighted in upcoming algorithm updates, ensuring that users are served influencer content that more specifically aligns with their past purchases.

We’ve already seen these changes taking effect. With their accelerated launch of Shops back in May, Facebook made it clear that their priority is eCommerce. Instagram’s much-publicized addition of a “shopping” tab to the home screen announced similar intentions. With eCommerce so well-blended into the social media experience, the algorithms will inevitably adjust to track consumer shopping behavior to better inform the platform what kinds of content and ads to serve.

Influencer Marketing Case Studies for Food Brands

Now let’s dive into specific examples of how a few food brands we work with that were able to leverage influencer marketing to drive discovery and growth, even during a global pandemic.

Using our technology, these brands were able to hone in on specific audiences that were pre-disposed to respond positively to their products. With access to accurate, real-time social data, companies are able to streamline and scale their influencer discovery process, partnering with the top creators for their specific goals.

Poppi @drinkpoppi  

Pre-biotic soda brand Poppi is an excellent example of a brand that was able to immediately increase awareness and reach after partnering with influencers. This graph shows Poppi’s social health before and after running an influencer campaign. Before, Poppi was averaging a potential reach of around 10,000. After the influencer campaign, Poppi saw a reach of over 1.5 million. That’s a growth percentage of 15,000%.

Four Sigmatic @foursigmatic

Four Sigmatic is a wellness company that touts the benefits of “the world’s most nutrient-dense ingredients” with the world. You can see in this graph how their reach and engagement spiked in direct relation to their sponsored mentions. This means that when Four Sigmatic invested in sponsored influencer content, they saw a huge spike in conversations being held about them in the online community.

Tate’s Bake Shop @tatesbakeshop

Lastly, let’s take a look at how user-generated influencer content can drive engagement for food brands on social media. Tate’s Bake Shop has partnered with nano and micro-influencers to drive huge engagement numbers, with engagement rates of up to 5 percent – that’s more than double the industry average. When brands partner with influencers, they’re getting more than just well-done content, they’re getting direct interaction with that influencer’s audience, upping their own engagement rate in the process.

Driving Discovery with Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing provides brands with higher value leads at a lower cost per lead, produces a higher ROI that any other form of marketing, takes the cost of content creation out of the brand’s pocket, and helps work around ad blockers. But one of the most valuable results of influencer marketing is its ability to drive real-life purchasing decisions, encouraging consumer discovery off-platform.

When an individual follows an influencer, they are part of a curated community. When a brand is able to tap into that community via influencer marketing, they also tap into that influencer’s hard-earned trust. When an influencer shares a positive recommendation with their dialed-in audience, that audience is more likely to be open to ordering products they have yet to physically try, simply because those products are recommended by someone they trust.

In a digitized world, influencer marketing provides a high ROI that not only drives sales, but accelerates discovery among new audiences allowing food brands to scale in a pandemic economy.

Join us on January 21 for a conversation with Vanessa Pham, Co-Founder of Omsom,  Jeremiah McElwee, Chief Merchandising Officer of Thrive Market, Katie Marston, Chief Marketing Officer at Once Upon a Farm, and Kelsey Formost, Director of Content Strategy at Tagger Media, to discuss how leading food brands and retailers are increasing customer discovery, acquisition and loyalty in this new normal. 

Join us for future Redesigning Retail conversations here. 

Kelsey Formost, Director of Content Strategy at Tagger Media

Kelsey Formost is the Director of Content Strategy for leading influencer marketing platform, Tagger Media. Her work and expertise in the digital content and influencer marketing space has been featured by Business Insider, Refinery29, Glamour, and more. This year, Kelsey was named a ‘Rising Star’ by industry leader Talking Influence on their ‘Influencer Top 50’, a curated list of the Top 50 global individuals in influencer marketing. Kelsey is also an experienced speaker, presenting at high profile events such as HubSpot’s Inbound2020 conference and SXSW 2021.

The post How Food Brands Are Using Influencer Marketing to Drive Discovery & Acquisition appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

We’re at the beginning of a new food revolution. COVID-19 has shone a light on the vulnerabilities across our food system and created an imperative to reimagine what is possible. In the face of the pandemic, eaters have begun demanding greater diversity, transparency, health, safety, convenience and accessibility in our food supply. This new reality is changing the relationship between retailers, brands and eaters, while also accelerating innovation and the adoption of technology across every part of the value chain.  

We are thrilled to be partnering with S2G Ventures to bring the best and brightest minds together to understand how this unprecedented moment in time might shape food retail over the next five years. Using S2G’s recently released The Future of Food: Through the Lens of Retail Report as a framework, we will be hosting a 4-part interactive conversation series exploring how innovations in commerce, content and community will transform the industry. Our goal is to create a platform for discussion and collaboration, a place for people from diverse backgrounds from farm to fork to come together to explore how we might create a more resilient, equitable, diverse, delicious, healthful and climate smart future.

How to Participate

We’re creating a platform for discussion and collaboration, a place for people from diverse backgrounds from farm to fork to come together to explore how we might create a more resilient, equitable, diverse, delicious, healthful and climate-smart future.

You can attend individual sessions or purchase an all access pass, which gives you access to our dedicated community Slack channel where you will be able to connect with others to discuss how to navigate the evolving grocery retail world.

All of our conversations are highly interactive and include 45 minutes of live Q&A with our speakers via Zoom.

Virtual Conversations

Walter Robb & S2G Ventures on The Future of Retail | December 10, 2020 |  2-3:30p ET [Free Event]

Join Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market and executive in residence at S2G Ventures, Audre Kapacinskas, vice president at S2G Ventures, and Danielle Gould, founder of Food+Tech Connect, for a conversation about how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system grounded in trust that better connects consumers to their food.

View the full video from the discussion here.

Content: Reimagining Discovery | January 21, 2021 | 12:00-1:30p ET

In response to the panic buying of March 2020, retailers began to rethink what they put on their shelves. They prioritized the essentials, and larger, established brands over smaller, emerging ones. In a pandemic era grocery store, demos and other tried and true in store marketing techniques no longer work, which has further hurt emerging brands. Today, brands are being forced to rethink how they find and attract customers. This conversation will explore the various new approaches emerging brands are taking for customer acquisition and discovery.

Speakers:

• Vanessa Pham, Co-Founder at Omsom
• Jeremiah McElwee, Chief Merchandising Officer at Thrive Market
• Katie Marston, Chief Marketing Officer at Once Upon a Farm
• Kelsey Formost, Director of Content Strategy at Tagger Media
• Tonya Bakritzes, SVP of Marketing at S2G Ventures

Community: Reimagining Grocery To Better Serve All Stakeholders | February 4, 2021 | 12:00-1:30p ET

The US’s top 20 grocery stores represent over 70% of the retail market. They are gatekeepers of our food supply chain and have had profound impacts on what food is produced and by whom, as well as the health and wellbeing of their staff and communities. This discussion will explore how retailers might better support all of their stakeholders (ie their customers / neighborhood, employees, brands, farmers, etc.) needs around transparency, equity, diversity, health and sustainability. We’ll also look at the ways digitization and digital storytelling are changing retailers’ responsibility to and their relationship with their stakeholders.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Errol Schweizer, Host of The Checkout Podcast, Co-Founder, Board Member For Natural Products Retail and CPG, Writer at Forbes.com and Former Whole Foods VP of Grocery
• Sam Polk, CEO at Everytable
• Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Key Leader at Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• Greg Asbed, Co-Founder at Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• Jessica Murphy, Business Development Manager at S2G Ventures

Commerce: Reimagining Grocery For Resilience | February 18, 2021 | 12:00-1:30p ET

The pandemic has expanded how and where we shop. Conventional grocery retail initially struggled to meet the demand shock caused by pantry loading. Consequently, many consumers turned to online grocers, meal-kits, farm e-commerce sites and other delivery services that were once seen as niche. In this discussion, we will examine how some of these food retailers have pivoted business models or adapted supply chains to enable them to be more resilient and better serve their customers’ needs around convenience. We will also examine what may have staying power as conventional retailers invest in omni-channel and smart fulfillment strategies to solve the last mile.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Jody Kalmbach, Group Vice President, Product Experience at The Kroger Co.
• Birgit Cameron, Head of Patagonia Provisions
• Rob Twyman, Executive Vice President at Whole Foods Market
• Moderated by Walter Robb, EIR at S2G Ventures

The post Introducing The Reimagining Food Retail Conversation Series appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Source: S2G Ventures’ The Future of Food: Through The Lens of Retail

This is a guest post by Audre Kapacinskas, Vice President at S2G Ventures

Food+Tech Connect and S2G Ventures are partnering to host Reimagining Retail, a series of conversations exploring how this unprecedented moment in time will shape food retail over the next five years. 

Why Now? How the Pandemic of 2020 is reshaping grocery retail, why today is different and what it will change about how and what we eat. 

The pandemic of 2020 is shining the brightest of lights on our present day food system and exposing both its resiliency and vulnerabilities. No industry touches more aspects of our lives than food – it employs 11 percent of our population, represents 10 percent of household expenditures, underpins our social fabric and directly relates to the health of our communities and planet. Over the last 100 years, we have developed a massive food supply chain that is efficiently humming in the background of our everyday lives – delivering food consistently, cheaply and without question. Over the last year, cracks emerged across our food system and showcased some of the tradeoffs we have made over the last century — efficiency at the cost of resiliency; scale at the expense of variety; price at the expense of value; globalization at the expense of our local communities. 

At the same time, Covid-19 accelerated trends that had been percolating for years – expanding digital footprints, refining e-commerce offerings, exploring automation opportunities. As Covid-19 persists and retailers continue to forge ahead, the pandemic is separating the leaders from the laggards. New technologies and behaviors are becoming engrained and we are crossing a chasm from which the industry will not return unchanged. 

Taking online grocery shopping as an example, the last 30 years have seen a slow evolution. Peapod was founded in 1989 – despite requiring customers to physically download software, the company had enough buzz to go public in 1996 but ultimately closed its digital doors in February of 2020 (ironically). Webvan received its first order in 1999, spent $1 billion building distribution centers in 2000 and closed in 2001. Instacart was founded several years later and offered a more accessible, hybrid model for consumers and retailers that connected physical and digital. Despite these fits and starts, online grocery sales remained low – 3-5 percent of total grocery in the US. As Covid-19 persists, it is influencing behavior and offering a real opportunity to make online grocery shopping a meaningful part of our food system – projections estimate that 1 in every 5 grocery dollars will be spent online in 2025. Today’s emerging digital models are underestimated in their ability to change how, what and why we eat what we eat.

While we have built a massive supply chain, when we compare the capital that has flowed into other sectors like pharma or technology, food pales in comparison. For decades, the food industry has been underinvested, under appreciated and under digitized. Today, we have the opportunity to reimagine it taking into account technology advances, consumer preferences and impact to our economy, planet and health. We are at a distinct moment in time where critical infrastructure is coming together, technology costs have decreased and consumers are open to behavior change. Internet usage reached critical mass in 2000 in the US; the iPhone was launched in 2007; falling sensor costs are driving the proliferation of personal and IoT devices which in turn are contributing to the exponential rise of data – we have 44X the amount of data today than we did a decade prior. As we think forward to the next 100 years of food and retailing, there is opportunity to reimagine sourcing and verification, go-to-market channels and market places and ultimately who controls access to the market and the products that will win in the next century. 

The increasing role of technology in retail transcends the growth of e-commerce during the pandemic. It will impact not only where consumers buy, but how and why they buy. It is within this context that we at S2G Ventures see opportunity to build a better food system by integrating content, community and commerce, which we outline in full in our Future of Retail Report. By leveraging cutting edge technologies with stakeholder-focused business models, we have an opportunity to build a 21st century food system grounded in trust that better connects consumers to their food.

Commerce: How emerging sales channels and new operational approaches are enabling 21st century business models and building a more resilient food supply chain.

In the early days of the pandemic, vulnerabilities across our food system emerged – from early stock-outs, to stories of infected workers to euthanized pigs. As consumers, we were confronted with the limitations  of supply chains built for affordability, consistency, efficiency and safety. Using the meat industry as an anecdote, in the last 45 years the number of meat plants has been cut in half; in the US three pork processors control nearly two thirds of the pork processing capacity and four beef processors control nearly three fourths of beef processing. In some ways, consumers benefited from the greater access to cheap, safe, abundant food that this vast system enabled. According to ERS, “the average share of disposable personal income spent on food by Americans fell from 17.0% in 1960 to a historical low of 9.5% in 2019.” In other ways consumers became increasingly disconnected from food producers and more exposed to highly processed and less nutrient dense foods. This supply chain made sense for grocery retailers who also faced consolidation and were often competing on price. In 1996 the 20 largest grocery retailers represented 42 percent of the market; in 2018 they represented over 70 percent. 

While today’s grocery retailers have more power than ever, the industry is concurrently becoming more complex as lines between physical and digital blur, new capabilities and organizational structures are required and relationships between consumers, sellers and producers evolve. Just as the television networks began to be disintermediated in the early 2000’s, the food system is beginning to experience a shift. Consumers are engaging across a variety of platforms and expectations are carrying over from other industries. If Netflix can serve-up content that is tailored to my tastes and preferences, why can’t the food providers in my life do the same? 

Customer expectations around convenience and personalization are forcing retailers to do more, carry more, manage more as they compete with a new set of players. As complexity in grocery retail increases, retailers are digitizing their operations and investing in robotics, automation and smart fulfillment to improve the economics of personalization and convenience. The omni-channel evolution is changing the supply chain and even organizational structures – overhauling existing divisions between “digital” and “store” teams to create a unified approach both internally with their teams and externally with their customers. In some instances, the physical world is mimicking the digital as stores are being reconfigured to reflect online organization and digital footprints.

In addition to increasing organizational complexity, there are also supply chain shocks to manage. In 2019 there were 337 food safety recalls in the US. This highlights an opportunity for retailers to add value and resiliency by moving up the value chain. To enable transparency across our supply chain, we need better data and interoperability. The FDA is actively working on refining industry standards and many retailers have taken it upon themselves to work with their suppliers to put these systems in place. As concerns around sustainability, climate change and resource availability mount, there is another path to explore resilience: controlled environment agriculture (CEA) or “indoor ag.” A number of partnership models have arisen between retailers and CEA farms, ranging from hub and spoke organic models to operational improvements to bring down the cost of indoor produce to hyper-local agriculture. These new approaches to food production reduce freight cost, better balance supply and demand, improve sustainability and can even repurpose under-utilized real estate. Technology advances have made this opportunity more real than ever before. Advances in LED lighting systems, IoT capabilities, seed breeding platforms, to name a few, continue to make the economics of indoor agriculture compelling. With more controlled systems, there is opportunity to introduce more variety, more nuance that could not withstand the traditional supply chain. Through initiatives like better data from growers and indoor agriculture, retailers can shape not only what food is on a shelf, but how and where it is produced. This is reimagining the fresh perimeter and unlocking a more nutritious, sustainable and transparent food system for 21st century consumers.

The competitive landscape is evolving quickly for food retail. Traditionally, grocers competed with grocers. In the last decade we saw dollar stores (e.g. Dollar General) and general merchandisers (e.g. Target) establish greater footholds in food retail as a means to drive store traffic. During COVID, the food retail space grew increasingly noisy. Restaurants, farmers and brands were forced to seek new sales channels as restrictions, SKU rationalizations and tightening supply chains disrupted previous paths to market. New sales platforms and technologies offered flexibility and matched consumers with their desired food supply – from restaurants becoming local markets to brands selling through social media platforms. The consumer is no longer limited to what is available at their local supermarket; they are expecting more and have never had easier access to products that fit their needs and wants. This enables much more nuance in demand and supply – from locally produced food, to methodologies of production, to subscription-based convenience and nutrition for toddlers, to managing health conditions, to supporting local economies. Niches that previously fought for a spot on a retail shelf, are forging their own path to their customer.

The last mile continues to challenge economics. To enable convenience, new capabilities are required to shift massive infrastructure into more flexible deployments. A recent analysis by Bain laid out various sample scenarios: traditional grocers doing their own picking in store experienced -15 percent margins; those picking from a warehouse experienced -8 percent, 3rd party services improved margins to -5 percent. Ultimately, to get to profitability, automation and micro-fulfillment are necessary. By proactively laying the groundwork from the bottom up of a distribution model that takes last mile delivery into account, the economics begin to look more reasonable long-term but require significant capital upfront to invest in automation. 

Target has been a leader in the digital arena, making digital a priority for the company. As CEO Brian Cornell stated in 2017: “We’re investing in our business with a long-term view of years and decades, not months and quarters. We’re putting digital first and evolving our stores, digital channels and supply chain to work together as a smart network that delivers on everything guests love about Target.” Target’s conviction around this strategy has been paying off: in Q2 2020 it reported a 24 percent surge in sales (their largest increase, ever) and 195 percent growth in digital. This paired with partnership strategies with players like Ulta Beauty to reimagine space and expand serviceable footprints both digitally and physically are positioning the retailer well. While the economics of last mile delivery are being sorted out, hybrid offerings like click-and-collect are providing convenience to consumers while maintaining economics for retailers. Kroger was playing catch-up in the e-commerce space early in the pandemic, but has successfully accelerated a number of programs. Kroger’s buy online, pick-up in store (“BOPIS”) program is currently offered across 2,100 locations; this has contributed to the 127 percent increase in e-commerce sales in Q2 2020. To enable this model, Kroger is leaning into a partnership with Ocado to enable automated micro-fulfillment and improve margins for click-and-collect and delivery. Tomorrow’s supply chain will be built from the ground-up, with last mile delivery and automation being core considerations. These changing dynamics offer new partnership opportunities around technical capabilities (robotics; data; AI) and financing (CAPEX). 

Join us on December 10 for a conversation with Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, Audre Kapacinskas, Vice President at S2G Ventures, and Danielle Gould, founder of Food+Tech Connect, to discuss how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system. RSVP here.

Content: How reimagining product discovery can unlock opportunities for true product differentiation across taste, nutrition and function.

How do your parents decide what food to buy? While brands have more ways than ever to reach their customers, the way retailers enable product discovery is not so different from the first self-service grocery store 104 years ago. Shelf placement, in-store promotions and branded packaging were pillars of product discovery and key to the success of products in a pre-pandemic grocery store. There have been improvements to this discovery model, for instance, Whole Foods offering a community experience in-store by highlighting local / regional products and a “third place” to gather, but the model has remained largely unchanged for the better part of a century. 

Today, we see two models at play. First, a legacy model that focuses on scale and volume. This top-down approach gives the broker and buyer control and positions the retailer as gatekeeper of shelf placement, which in turn determines brand exposure to consumers. The second model takes a bottoms-up approach and focuses on user needs and product attributes (verified organic, gluten free, etc). As the world continues to increase in complexity, centralized decision making will reach its limits. Keeping up with shifting preferences will require an open-source approach to curating products – retailers will need to think differently about category management, relationships with brands (including their own private label) and community engagement.

As consumers do more online, retailers must reimagine product discovery from the ground up, using data to better tailor products for consumer needs. Without granular data retailers will be unable to compete with digital platforms that understand user needs, wants and can begin to anticipate them. Amazon has written the playbook on this in other industries and is increasingly interested in the food space through its new grocery formats and delivery services. Data is critical because it enables the sales channel to add value to their consumers by reducing noise and surfacing content that is relevant to them in the moment. For those in the business of food manufacturing (branded or private label), it also offers an innovation path. As data about products and consumers improves, we will be able to better match attributes with needs. Companies like Thrive Market and Good Eggs are exploring new models that are built from the ground-up – aggregating data about ingredients, production methods, holistic product specifications –  and can offer nuance, discovery and specificity that traditional models cannot. There is a long way to go to scale these concepts for the mass market, but they offer a glimpse into an attribute-based system where a dad looking for peanut-free snacks is not reviewing the nutritional labels of 15 boxes, but rather can review a curated set of products based on his needs. These models are also more brand-friendly, offering them better data and discoverability.

The concept of retailer as gatekeeper is changing. As more digitally native brands launch and leverage new selling platforms (e.g social media channels and e-commerce sites), brands can understand their consumers at a level of granularity nearly impossible in-store. This will enable brands to emerge that are laser focused not only on selling their products to consumers, but on understanding their motivations and iterating on new products based on the data they collect. Whether it’s a busy mom trying to find snacks for her child with an allergy or a baby boomer managing a recent diagnosis of osteoporosis or a Gen Z looking to vote with their pocketbook around sustainability. As the grocery channel becomes digitized, there is an opportunity to move beyond the ‘buyer’ model in which a single individual determines what is made available to consumers, but rather an open source approach which can cater to the preferences of various communities and curate products based on function, authenticity and needs. This model is unlocked when we have a bottoms-up understanding of our products and our supply chain. In this new digital context, authenticity has never been more important. And for investors, it will be the brands who are able to develop these kinds of relationships with their customers that will be the most compelling investment opportunities. 

Another, longer wavelength variable to consider is the impact of biometric data being more widely available to consumers. Today, 21 percent of Americans use a smartwatch or fitness tracker. As this number expands, the intersection between food and wellness becomes more concrete at a personal level. The ability to pair personal biometric data (e.g. your blood pressure is 140 today, 10 percent higher than last week) with information coming online about ingredients and products will enable people to make more personalized decisions about what food they buy and why. Personal and IoT devices unlock new forms of engagement that enable the collapse of physical and digital worlds and offer bi-directional digital interactions between consumers, producers and retailers. This will create a feedback loop of information sharing that can unlock new discovery processes and product innovation.

As material science, genomics, food production and other technologies advance and we dig deeper into a treasure trove of better flavors and nutrition, we stand at the precipice of high throughput product innovation and true differentiation. We see some of this happening already – partnerships between retailers and heirloom seed breeders; cancer treatments paired with specifically bred plants; natural blue dyes that are price competitive with synthetic colorants; tomatoes that don’t taste like cardboard; more nuanced strains of cannabis. We have been living in the world of black and white television and we are about to go to HD Color. Just as the online world has gotten noisier, the food world is begging to experience the same, and it is the role of the retailer to help their customers navigate the 21st century food system. Retailers are poised to play a critical role in understanding customer needs, tailoring products that suit them and conveniently making them available. 

Community: Tomorrow’s business models recognize the ecosystem we are part of and are built on trust across customers, employees, suppliers, local communities and shareholders.

As we move deeper into an era where sales channels are more fluid and consumers have the opportunity to discover products and purchase them through a variety of means, customer engagement is more important than ever. Millennials and Gen Z, a demographic of 150 million, are overtaking Baby Boomers in their purchasing power and their values are poised to have an impact on the trajectory of business. According to a recent Deloitte study, 80 percent of millennials and seventy percent of Gen Z said they will make an extra effort to buy products and services from smaller, local businesses to help them stay in business post-pandemic. Sixty percent of respondents plan to buy more from large businesses that “have taken care of their workforces and positively affected society during the pandemic.” Tomorrow’s consumers are looking to spend their money with organizations they trust.

According to Edelman’s ‘Trust Barometer,’ ethics are 3 times more likely to drive trust in business rather than competence. In this context, engagement across a variety of stakeholders is more important than ever. In 2019 Business Roundtable redefined its statement on the Purpose of a Corporation – showcasing how engagement across all shareholders is imperative to long-term success. Key tenants to building a community include delivering value to customers, investing in employees, dealing ethically with suppliers, supporting local communities and generating long-term value for shareholders. Humana’s Bold Goal of improving the health of the communities they serve by 20 percent by 2020 is an example of supporting local communities.

“By taking a broader, more complete view of corporate purpose, boards can focus on creating long-term value, better serving everyone – investors, employees, communities, suppliers and customers,” said Bill McNabb, former CEO of Vanguard. Retailers are in a unique position; having been a cornerstone to local communities they already occupy a trusted position among their customers. While trust exists it cannot be taken for granted, it needs to be earned on a daily basis. Whether it’s the products a retailer chooses to carry, how they maintain the health and wellness of their employees, support of community organizations, or enabling the health and wellness of the customers they serve. In an era that is going to have more information and optionality than ever better, being a trusted participant in your community is critical.

In the march toward low-cost production, we lost sight of some of the upstream and downstream impacts of our food system. Today’s burgeoning consumer class is increasingly paying attention to those considerations. Given advances in technology, data, food production methodologies and e-commerce platforms, there is an opportunity to improve our food system, to think holistically about the communities we are serving and drive long-term sustained results for business. 

Looking Ahead: A 21st century food system grounded in trust

As 2020 draws to a close and we set our sights on a new year, we stand at the crossroads of what was, is and will be. New technologies are shortening the space between consumer and producer and as Gen Z and Millennials gain economic power and vote with their pocketbook, trust is more important than ever in what, how and why we buy what we buy.

Commerce

• Physical and digital worlds are blending together; integrated teams and systems focused on the holistic customer journey are key to providing consistency, flexibility and trust.
• Retailers are moving from gatekeeper to tailor; as digital sales channels become more common retailers can differentiate and add value to consumers by leveraging data and curating products.
• Food producers, brands and food service providers have an opportunity to sell in new ways to their consumers and benefit from better data and direct user feedback.

Content

• Online product discovery needs to be improved.
• Health and wellness are top-of-mind for many – as more functional ingredients come online, truly differentiated branded and private label products can build trust with consumers.
• Data is laying the foundation for tomorrow – having a data strategy is more important than ever.
• Complexity is increasing – in order to keep up, you need to decentralize and partner.

Community

• Trust is the currency of the 21st century food system. This needs to be earned through data, verification, consistency, transparency and authenticity.
• Long-term resiliency and value will be achieved through broad stakeholder engagement with customers, employees, the local community, and shareholders. 
• Values have never been more important – as Millennials and Gen Z gain economic clout, they are looking to align their spending power with their values. 

Channel digitization, advances in automation, new approaches to food production, the proliferation of data, new customer engagement models and the evolution of societal norms provide an opportunity to revisit some of the tradeoffs we made in the past century. Food is unique in its ubiquity. Everyone eats, and as the food supply chain evolves, we have an opportunity to build a system based on trust that is good for the health and wellness of consumers, producers, local economies and the planet.

Join us on December 10 for a conversation with Walter Robb, former co-CEO of Whole Foods Market, and Audre Kapacinskas, VP of S2G to discuss how retailers might leverage cutting edge technologies and stakeholder-focused business models to build a 21st century food system. RSVP here.

Join us for future Redesigning Retail conversations here. 

Download S2G’s The Future of Food: Through The Lens of Retail Report here.

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Audre Kapacinskas, Vice President at S2G Ventures

Audre Kapacinskas is a Vice President at S2G Ventures, where she focuses on unlocking value for S2G, its portfolio companies and strategic partners. Throughout her career, Audre has worked at the intersection of technology, strategy and operations to incubate new ideas and drive growth across organizations.  Prior to S2G, Audre was a Director of Sales and Corporate Strategy at a predictive analytics start-up delivering artificial intelligence and IoT solutions to the Industrial sector. She started her career at a boutique strategy consulting firm working with private equity firms and corporate clients with growth acceleration, value assessments and investment diligence. Audre is a Fulbright Scholar, holds an Honours BA from the University of Toronto and an MA from Vilnius University.

The post S2G Ventures on The Future of Food Retail appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

This is a guest post by Jomaree Pinkard, Co-Founder & CEO of Hella Cocktail Co.

Check out our Food & Ag Anti-Racism Resources.

Dear Colleagues,

As a Black Man in business, I have to be extremely careful in both professional and public settings. When I’m trying to make a point, I often have to decide whether I should be direct or performative in my delivery — because my decision, to be honest, can come across as too assertive or even intimidating in the workplace. There is an unwritten rule for black professionals that asks us to speak in a language that others might find more appealing to their sensibilities. In many settings I’ve often had to minimize thoughts to remain poised or what others might deem as “on point,” because my passion in presentation can be mistaken for aggression. If I am too assertive, I can pay the price — and that price can be all too real.

I grew up hearing that I would always need to work twice as hard to get half as much, and keeping these ideas to myself has been over time half the battle. Until today.

For many professionals of color, this sentiment — of minimizing what we know to be real about our lives in business — will ring true. But we also recognize that we can use this moment of societal inflection as an opportunity to actually pivot in business; we can redirect the course for black and brown talent, stories, and industry. We can disrupt how systems have been designed to keep black people in place, silenced, and positioned to avoid risk.

As a black man who grew up in an under-resourced neighborhood in the heart of New York City, I inherently faced nothing but risk and uncertainty daily. I know intimately how challenging it is to break the color barrier in school and at work, when and how I have to prove my worth — and carve out a path toward accessing socio-economic change. In order to find success, black professionals like myself have to put much more on the line to succeed by risking our opportunity to speak, our chance to present, our ability to grow, and our reputations all at once. However, in order to make progress, we must take risks, so here I am putting it all on the line one more time.

I want to state clearly that the system is not failing the status quo — the system is maintaining the exact operation it was designed to uphold. Black people have been maligned in American business for centuries, only given the opportunity to toil and labor, or tend to lower-wage jobs while industry grows more complex and advances. Still, and rarely are Black Americans able to find themselves the business owner. When asked if “my success in the food and beverage industry is the result of drive, hard work, and timing,” I answer “yes” to all three — however, I also recognize that several opportunities have come my way as a result of intentional and deliberate system navigation — challenging the status quo and finding a way in — despite being pushed out, omitted or overlooked, the color of my skin notwithstanding.

Now, in reflection as a successful black entrepreneur and business owner, I recognize that my life, my health, my education and the opportunities that have been afforded me as a result of schooling at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and The Wharton School of Business are not examples of triumph, but are holes in the system that was designed to hold me back. My success is its failure. American business and industry weren’t designed for me or my family to be healthy or supported, to be highly educated, or to establish an entrepreneurial career with Hella Cocktail Co. The system wasn’t designed for me to raise my family in a flourishing neighborhood, or to support and invest in other black business owners’ dreams and ambitions. It has actually been designed to hold us back, and only now because we are at this juncture in history — might we realize that we have an opportunity, or rather a duty to upend this appalling process.

So the questions I have been pondering and propose to you — the questions the system-owners are now being posed and have to reckon with are these: Will you continue to support a system that is designed to force others to fail? Or will you help to dismantle and redesign it to allow for black and brown people to enter in business unhindered? Will you assist in creating opportunities for black people to develop sustainable business models, create jobs, support families and livelihoods, and invest in black business owners — their dreams and ambitions?

If you are willing and haven’t already begun to explore concrete action items, here are four discrete practices you must do to ensure your platform or business is prepared to support black lives mattering.

Practice #1: Listen, Acknowledge Trauma, & Self-Educate

“The goal isn’t perfection, it’s presence!” “The first step is to show up.” ~ Ashtin Berry

There is no perfect playbook for standing face-to-face with inequity, injustice, and oppression while running a business or an organization. Talking about race, racial violence, racism, and the Black Lives Matter movement is the first step. Embracing the complex history of our country is necessary for us to better understand, heal, and change. There are many resources that can help you better explore the dynamics and the voices at play. Educate yourself on American history — the issues of people of color, women, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ communities, religious minorities, and other marginalized groups, and understand the compounding effects from challenges faced by individuals and communities who inhabit intersectional identities.

There is a shared trauma that impacts communities, our nation, and everyone’s bottom line. For an example of a business in action, Ben & Jerry’s has done its homework throughout the years while actively participating and taking strong social and political stances. As a leader in today’s world, you are grappling with complex change on many levels while trying to understand human dynamics that can feel untranslatable, conflicting, and often painful to your employees and your customers. We must each dismantle and rebuild the entire system together, or choose to do the work independently, and bring back that new knowledge to our companies to invite change.

Practice #2: Investigate Your Internal Impact

“Equity begins with representation.”

Grocery retailers demand door over door metrics, food and alcohol distributors demand minimum case per week turnover, bars and restaurants fiercely rely on the average cover per seat, and investors don’t even place their bets until they are able to verify any of this historical data to measure traction before investment. Somehow these metrics have been omitted when it comes to diversity and inclusion beyond gender. Our companies and organizations feel the impact of the world around us, whether it is apparent to each individual within our ranks or not. It is necessary for us to respond to the challenges of American history, as well as the current climate, and redesign systems and environments where our employees can not only survive — but thrive.

Large multinational spirit companies need to realize that it’s in their best interest to prioritize a culture that is not only equitable and inclusive — but also responsive to the pressing needs of the communities served with their business. From the busser to the boardroom, it is absolutely paramount that fine dining establishments and large restaurant chains seek opportunities to reflect the diversity of the communities served on all levels. Bon Appetit and Epicurious accepted the resignation of their former editor-in-chief, and admitted to being complicit in ‘tokeniz[ing] many BIPOC staffers and contributors” to make their brands appear more diverse; the company also acknowledged its effort in “dismantling the toxic, top-down culture” by “prioritizing people of color for the editor-in-chief candidate pool…and resolving any pay inequities that are found across all departments.”

Starting with the application and vetting process, and working with those that hold the door open or closed, companies must put themselves in a position to seek out and discover talent that has been left behind or that the organization hasn’t yet had the network to discover. The time to hold your company responsible for this task is now.

Practice #3. Scrutinize Your Community Impact

“Donate AND be active in the life span of your contribution.”

Statistics show that 91 percent of consumers believe brands should do more than make a profit; they should address social or environmental concerns, too. While it is intrinsically the right thing to do, this is also the precise reason why during the current pandemic companies have donated everything from free virtual meeting platforms and wifi for schools to contactless free food and beverage delivery. Communities support business because there is an implicit social contract that the community will patronize your establishment in exchange for you offering the best goods or services — with the condition that you continue to represent the best interest of the community.

But what happens after the special event or ribbon-cutting ceremony is over? Charitable donations to organizations such as Color for Change, The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Black Lives Matter, and The National Museum of African American History and Culture, among many others, are undoubtedly and immensely important. However, the reality is that we in the black community are hesitant to believe in these monetary postures because we know these are often one-time donations to clear consciences, and only uphold the status quo in moving forward.

Like all other business initiatives and investments your organization makes, community-directed donations need to be looked at through the lens of a business investment similar to launching a new product, or vertical or brick and mortar location, rather than a bottom-line optimizing tax write-off. In the past week, retailers Target, Walmart, Kroger, and H-E-B and spirits producers Pernod Ricard along with Diageo have begun to either donate or set up internal funds to address racial inequalities and injustice. We are hopeful that these social impact-driven funds won’t simply lean in the direction of one-time investments but will create self-sustainable business practices that facilitate growth of reinvestments in the community.

Practice #4. Provide Access and Investment

“Donations are icing on the cake. The CAKE is what’s most important!”

In the U.S. hospitality industry, 60 percent of the sector is made up of people of color, yet black and brown hospitality professionals occupy less than 7 percent of managerial roles. On the small business front of the food & beverage industry, many venture capital firms are onto their 2nd, 3rd, or 4th venture funds — which means they are only interested in companies that are already hitting the $10 million-plus revenue run rates to deliver on meaningful rates of return. What this really means is that there is truly no small business investing present. Overall, the venture industry’s track record on accessibility when it comes to diversity and race fares even worse: only 3 percent of investment partners and 1 percent of founders of venture capital-backed firms are black.

Each of these sub-segments of the industry has a systemic problem that starts at who is hired for entry-level positions and extends to the investors who serve as limited partners to venture funds. The reality for black talent in business is that barriers to participation emerge in every part of the marketplace: the requirements of an elite or private education, family lineage, pedigree, or upbringing are more important than a stellar resume or previous experience. This has always been the case.

While you must continue to donate to organizations that align with your values, now and more importantly, the primary method to change the systemic barriers to access for black professionals is to invest in black-owned and black-led businesses throughout the industry’s value chain with transparency and accountability. Although they are primarily tech investors, Softbank’s newly announced ‘The Opportunity Growth Fund’ to the tune of $100 million states that they will “only invest in companies led by founders and entrepreneurs of color,” meanwhile, Andreessen Horowitz’ The Talent x Opportunity Fund (TxO)’ for underserved communities “are now looking for black, women, minority founders to invest in.” These moves are more in line with the direction the food and beverage industry should follow.

5 Strategies to Move Your Food, Beverage & Hospitality Industry Business to Equity

Once you’ve built in the basics in your practice, you have set the stage. Next, there are the 5 strategies your business can set in motion so that you are part of the movement, and not just responding to the moment:

1. Build a Continuous Diversity Evaluation Process: Being proactive in fighting racism and bias means creating structures and systems within our own ranks to ensure the voices of all members of our workforce are heard and that the needs of our employees are met. Avoid systematic jargon that checks off the diversity-box. If it sounds like “we will provide anti-racism/bias training” or “we will bring in a third party to help conduct company-wide diversity workshops,” you haven’t finished listening. The system — including how you evaluate and dismantle systemic barriers to participation in your business — needs to be built into the company and reassessed with frequency. It is not a person, it is a process.

2. Commit to Accountability: I propose that all organizations who are now publicly saying that Black Lives Matter demand a similar commitment to holding themselves and their peers accountable by being more transparent about where they are in terms of the diversity of their teams and portfolios, benchmarking themselves against their peers, explaining their strategy, adopting KPIs and milestones, and then sharing their progress in an open and transparent manner. From entry-level merchandisers and restaurant servers to the editor-in-chief and board seats; be accountable with respect to how you operate as a business and seek out opportunities to reflect the diversity of the community. Commit to equity on all levels.

3. Invest Your Donation: Investments create ownership, ladders for progress, and accountability throughout an organization’s entire value chain. Like all other business initiatives organizations make, donations need to be looked at through the lens of a business investment rather than a charitable contribution. Those steps include but are not limited to: cultural and historical research, consumer insights and how they impact your community, the alignment of team values, concept development, idea testing and fit, measurement of successes and failures, and, most importantly, reinvestment. Investments are sustainable and have growth metrics around them. You know the drill.

4. Update Your Investment Thesis: Your investment thesis is an inaccurate overestimation of how rational your investments are. In fact, the thesis is mostly built on the basis of the group’s collective trust. That lack of trust is why investments in black-owned businesses are so low, and why access is non-existent. I challenge VCs and strategic funds to alter their investment thesis, and then invest. Think outside the box.

5. Pledge 15% to a Timeline: Black people in the U.S. make up nearly 15 percent of the population. Commit to investment proportions that align with the population over a 1, 2, and 5-year time horizon.

• Media & Trade: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of your coverage to black talent and businesses,
• Retail: Take the 15% pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of retail shelf space to black-owned businesses,
• Hospitality: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of bar and restaurant menu placement to black-owned businesses,
• Beer, Wine & Spirits: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of your portfolio of investment, innovation and distribution network to black-owned businesses,
• Venture/Strategic Investors: Take a pledge to allocate a minimum of 15 percent of your investment portfolio to fund food, beverage, and hospitality entrepreneurial ventures to black-owned businesses.

In your process, you will make mistakes. It is better to move forward with the intention to dismantle and change the status quo than to stand still and wonder why things are imperfect and unbalanced. That is my charge as well.

While it is true that as a Black Man in business I have been extremely careful in both professional and public settings, I have also opened many of the proverbially closed doors and sat in many of the least desirable seats. My daily journey of attempting to gain access to menu and shelf space, capital, and networks has been difficult; but my story of continuing to navigate a flawed system is still hopeful, despite exhaustion and loneliness.

This isn’t about me alone though, by any means. Nope! It’s about those who don’t have the access, who may not have had the opportunity for higher education, or who may never make enough connections to get into the room where decisions happen. For those of us who have: it is time to listen, learn, and acknowledge the centuries-old trauma of systemic inequity endured by black individuals and communities. It is time to redesign a system that truly values the health, education, careers, and ambitions of black people. It is time to disrupt the old system and immediately commit to more equitable actions: invest money, commit to coverage, pledge space, support black-owned, and reward risk. It’s time to use this moment of inflection as an opportunity to redirect the course for black lives — which have always mattered.

Sincerely,

Jomaree Pinkard | CEO & Co-Founder, Hella Cocktail Co.

This post originally appeared on Medium.

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Jomaree Pinkard’s career journey has taken him from helping to develop and implement The Salvation Army’s September 11 World Trade Center Recovery Program to consulting for the NFL. In 2012, he became the Co-Founder and CEO of a minority-owned craft cocktail company, Hella Cocktail Co. In eight years, he and his partners have grown a hobby into a nationally distributed premium-quality food manufacturer producing a line of nonalcoholic cocktail mixers, bitters, and newest innovation Bitters & Sodas that make it easier and more accessible to craft delicious drinks at home or behind the bar. Jomaree is a graduate of the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce and also earned his MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

IG: @jomareepinkard

The post 5 Steps to Move Your Food, Beverage or Hospitality Business to Equity appeared first on Food+Tech Connect.

Elly Truesdell

This is a guest post by Elly Truesdell, Partner at Almanac Insights

On the evening of March 2nd, the natural foods industry got a preview of its future. Natural Products Expo West,  the industry’s biggest event of the year and one of the key opportunities for emerging brands to connect with retail buyers, was cancelled in light of COVID-19, a day before it was set to begin. What felt like a major blow to brands at the time, now seems small in what’s been lost, and under much larger threat, just eight weeks later. After years of losing market share, America’s biggest food companies are reporting record earnings, cashing in on panic buying and consumer uncertainty. This comeback puts intense pressure on the natural foods industry to prove and clarify its value as we enter a new economic reality; the country’s health depends on it.

The last decade has been nothing short of a natural foods renaissance, and a heyday for the industry’s consumer packaged goods (CPG). An estimated 200,000 new food and beverage products have been introduced in the past decade, according to the USDA. And more than $17 billion in annual U.S. CPG industry sales have shifted from large players to small ones since 2013. These numbers express the hope of the last decade: better goods, better health. I put great trust in this movement to transform America’s food system, my career was built on its rise.

As Local Forager and Global Director of Innovation for Whole Foods Market, I scouted the up and comers, and I launched emerging brands across the retailer’s 500 stores for nearly a decade. I witnessed and helped build a better food movement, born with purpose. Entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to upend traditional, legacy brands that produced cheap and often nutrient-poor foods. These new companies pushed consumers to compare ingredients, nutritional panels and production standards to those of their larger forbearers.

The first wave of disruption focused on the “artisanal,” with an emphasis on craft and quality of production. Whole product categories – cold brew coffee, Greek and Icelandic yogurt, bean to bar chocolate – were born. The next, much bigger wave focused on a set of “alternatives.” The market for plant-based and allergen-free products took the industry by storm, as brands like Beyond Meat and Califia Farms replicated and replaced dietary staples, free-from cows. And trending icons – Siete, RxBar, Spindrift – started to define how a set of Americans eat, snack and sip.

While the number of new brands flooded the market, so did the investment dollars. Over $1.45 billion was invested into natural food and beverage startups in 2018, a near ten-fold increase from 2010. Almost in correlation, health promises became increasingly questionable, and a whole new language of symbols and buzzwords was developed to explain their benefits (non-GMO, cruelty-free, good for heart health). Innovation across all food categories exploded with this newfound money and interest. Each diet trend – paleo, keto, Whole30, low carb – churned out stables of products for their followers and fans. What started as a movement committed to organics, simple ingredients and producing cleaner goods, tipped in the direction of lifestyle marketing and promotional puff.

Even after a decade that saw a proliferation of new products and functional foods, America’s health is worse than ever. The rate of adult obesity continues to increase, up to 42.4 percent from 35.7 percent in 2010. And according to the USDA, only 10 percent of Americans are meeting the daily recommendation for fruits and vegetables. Our supply chains haven’t caught up either. Seventeen out of 20 top food retailers are not adequately meeting the increased consumer demand for organic food, according to an evaluation by Friends of the Earth. And as a point of scale, the acreage of organic produce in the U.S. is still less than one percent of the country’s total.

COVID-19 is now exposing what we should have seen all along: the natural foods industry has yet to meet its tremendous promise and must do better. A movement that began with substance – offering new and better products for personal and environmental health – has lost its way. It has become more popular to innovate for the sake of innovating, rather than solving problems for the everyday consumer. The onslaught of “better for you” brands has, in many ways, obscured the movement’s true value and size of its gains.

As we enter a new economic normal, America is being forced to re-examine how we eat and how we spend our money. To assess what we truly value. These decisions come just as America’s biggest food companies are attempting to reassert their dominance in our fridges and pantries. In April, Nestle reported its biggest quarterly sales growth in over five years, and Campbell’s – makers of Campbell’s soup and Pepperidge Farm cookies – posted a surprise earnings increase of 10.77 percent for the quarter.

This sudden shift puts even more pressure on the best food brands to show what’s behind their labels. The easiest way to cut costs and deceive taste buds is to add emulsifiers, natural and artificial flavors, gums, and other preservatives – Big Food’s traditional playbook. The brands that have rejected those short cuts, mastering flavor and ingredient integrity at scale, are providing a better service to our lives and long term health; no easy task.

Brands with purpose and worth, now more than ever, must find a way into more households, prove their merit and become indispensable. They must reach past their standard set of consumers, beyond disposable incomes, and broaden their distribution. Over 95 percent of shoppers in the United States say they seek healthy food options, yet only 28 percent say it’s easy to find these products, according to a report from the International Food Information Council (IFIC). And in terms of access, America’s two largest Dollar Stores – Dollar General and Dollar Tree – sell more food than Whole Foods nationally.

Amid the devastation of this pandemic, there is hope for a better food future. What’s been percolating even before the crisis is some incredible progress in food innovation: companies providing access, connection, transparency and new forms of distribution. I’m encouraged by businesses going beyond consumer brands, investing upstream in infrastructure and flexible manufacturing. The best brands still to be built are those that embrace and respect the land, growers, and processors that support them.

While still early, the latest wave of progress toward transparency holds incredible power – putting equal pressure on big and small food companies to take responsibility and be held accountable for America’s health. In fact, we’re all accountable. Investors, retailers, growers and buyers have a commitment to improve the system, invest in its foundation, and inspire change. America’s food industry is positioned for its next transformation, and the solutions brought today, the most important yet.

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Elly Truesdell is a Partner at Almanac Insights, a venture capital fund investing in consumer food and technology. She built her career over a decade at Whole Foods Market, as Global Director of Local Brands and Product Innovation.

The post Grocery Wars: A Natural Foods Reckoning 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. 

Wholesome Wave enables underserved eaters to make healthier food choices by increasing affordable access to locally and regionally grown fruits and vegetables. Now, the team behind Wholesome Wave is launching Wholesome Crave, a for-profit, socially responsible soup company created to directly benefit Wholesome Wave.

Below, I speak with founder and James Beard Award winning chef Michel Nischan about how he and Wholesome Crave think about biodiversity. As Millennials and Gen-Z look for more global and flavor-driven food experiences, he argues, we need supply chains and foods that better meet their needs, which also happens to support biodiversity.

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Danielle Gould: Why is biodiversity a priority for Wholesome Wave and Wholesome Crave?

Michel Nischan: Wholesome Wave focuses solely on making produce available to food insecure families. Wholesome Crave will be prioritizing biodiversity in the food supply chain once we’re up and running. We will continue working to expand market demand for an array of biodiverse ingredients to be able to offer exciting and stimulating flavor profiles, cultural appeal and to differentiate Crave from existing offerings.

DG: How does Wholesome Wave and Wholesome Crave define and think about biodiversity?

MN: Crave looks at biodiversity as an essential component in creating a new reality in a supply chain currently very limited in any meaningful diversity. We know that by pleasing our eaters and offering them greater diversity, the resulting demand at scale could have positive environmental and human health impacts.

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

MN: Biodiversity equals flavor excitement. With Millennials and Gen-Z highly interested in and spending money on a wide variety of ethnic cuisines, the supply chain needs to step-up in ways that can address this expansive market demand. Planting biodiverse crops, and marketing them appropriately/accordingly, would provide quite a competitive advantage, considering how so much of the current supply chain is held by “old-school – big-food” companies.

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

MN: Agricultural land leases need to go well beyond the current norm of year-to-year. Harvesting equipment for multiple varietals of legumes, grains and specialty crops. Ag technology to respond to changes in climate linking to varietals that grow well in draught, heavier rain patterns, etc.

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

MN: The current food supply chain is set up more for efficiency than diversity. Market demand will be the answer here, as well as logistics tech that can introduce producers directly to the end user. There is plenty of supply chain infrastructure to support wheat, but Teff cannot be run through the same infrastructure, other than the transportation element.

DG: Does your average consumer care about biodiversity today? No, but that is changing. Why should they care?

MN: With the rapidly growing number of eaters (who are already craving diverse flavor) expressing their values regarding the environment, labor practices, sustainability and so on, biodiversity is a consistent solution. How do you (or will you) get them to care? By delivering exceptional flavor coupled with using digital communication to demonstrate the end benefit to under-served communities, directly to the eater.

DG: What are some of the most important things food manufacturers can do to support biodiversity? Retailers? Other key parts of the food supply chain?

MN: Vary the ingredients they use in their products. Onions, carrots and celery can be found in 70 percent of a full portfolio of a soup company’s product list.

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?

MN: Asian, site-specific Central American, fermented, ancient grains and legumes.

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

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Credit:Tom Hopkins

Michel Nischan, Chef, Author and Food Equity Advocate Founder & CEO, Wholesome Wave & Wholesome Crave

Michel Nischan is a four-time James Beard Award winning chef with over 30 years of leadership advocating for a more healthful, sustainable food system. He is Founder and CEO of Wholesome Wave, Co-Founder of the James Beard Foundation’s Chefs Action Network, as well as Founder and Partner with the late actor Paul Newman of the former Dressing Room Restaurant. Nischan, whose parents were farmers, began his career at 19, cooking breakfast at a truck stop. He quickly realized that the ingredients coming in the back door fell far short of the farm-fresh harvests he’d grown up on, and began a life-long career championing the farm-to-table concept, decades before it had a name.

Nischan was instrumental in securing $100M for Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive (FINI) grants for the food equity field in the 2014 Federal Farm Bill, expanding affordable access to locally grown fruits and vegetables. He’s also the author of three cookbooks on sustainable food systems and social equity through food. A lifetime Ashoka fellow, he serves as a director on the board of the Jacques Pepin Foundation and on the advisory boards of Chef’s Collaborative, Modern Farmer, Good Food Media Network and The National Young Farmers Coalition. The James Beard Foundation honored Nischan as the 2015 Humanitarian of The Year. To learn more about Chef Nischan, follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and visit www.chefnischan.com To learn more about Wholesome Wave visit, follow us on Twitter and Instagram or visit www.wholesomewave.org

The post Millennial & Gen-Z Eating Behaviors Will Shift Supply Chains, Says Michel Nischan 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. 

There are over 30,000 edible plants, but we only consume around 150 of them. Believe in Bambara is one company that wants to change that. The business-to-business (B2B) supplier is dedicated to introducing the bambara groundnut, a sub-Saharan grain legume, to the U.S. plant-based protein market. Bambara is a climate-smart, drought-tolerant and versatile plant-based protein that also help to fix nitrogen in the soil. The company partners with a women’s cooperative of smallholder farmers, so it also support local economic development. Below, I speak with co-founder Tamara Cohen about why and how her startup is bringing the bambara to the US.

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

Tamara Cohen: Biodiversity drives everything we do at Believe in Bambara, because our work is built on the belief that food manufacturers should have easy access to climate-smart, ecologically-sound ingredients. The bambara bean has all the prized attributes crop scientists have been trying to emulate through genetic modification. This realization led us to pursue the opportunity to provide an underutilized and more sustainable alternative to the commodity crops and dominant plant-based proteins currently available on the market. Our commitment to diversifying food ingredients is informed by science that there exists in nature lesser-known species that may be more efficient and more effective than the few food crops we’ve come to rely on.

DG: How does Believe in Bambara define and think about biodiversity?

TC: As an ingredients supplier, when we consider biodiversity we are focused on agricultural practices that give back to the land in order to promote growth of other species. We absolutely reject the idea that crops should be cultivated as part of a monoculture. Biodiversity includes taking into account all of the ecosystem’s species, especially those cultivated for consumption, and considering how they can work together to promote soil fertility and pollination.

DG: What is Believe in Bambara doing or planning to do to promote biodiversity?

TC: To implement our beliefs, we have partnered with a cooperative of smallholder women farmers in West Africa that practice sustainable and regenerative agricultural practices, such as intercropping and crop rotations. None of these practices are new to these farmers. They’ve been using the bambara bean in their crop rotations as a nitrogen-fixing crop for decades as part of their holistic regenerative agricultural practices. As we expand our operations, we will seek opportunity to work with cooperatives in regions that have a more acute need for sustainable agricultural development, due to limited resources or unfavorable conditions. Bambara thrives in areas where most other food crops would not take root, so we are excited about the possibility  of regenerating non-arable land through its cultivation.

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

TC: There has to be a two-fold strategy in investments in biodiverse food systems to allow companies, like ours, that are working on promoting underutilized crops to rapidly expand and scale our supply chain. First, without economies of scale we won’t be able to compete in the market with commodity crops such as wheat, corn and soy. Margins in food are small, and, unfortunately, a lot of companies are looking for a supplier that can help them keep their expenses as low as possible. This ties into the second part of the strategy: farm subsidies. It’s widely known that farmers have been cashing in on food crops thanks to generous government subsidies. Eliminating the subsidies on these commodity crops would level the playing field and allowing these crops to compete with prices that are more reflective of the cost of production. A food system that ceases to invest in and reward industrial, monoculture farming would be increasingly beneficial to biodiversity.

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?

TC: One of the biggest challenges is consumer education, which is why this interview series is so important, because it’s raising an issue that many people, even within the industry, haven’t contemplated. Without consumer demand for more biodiverse plant-based proteins it will be difficult for us and other companies working to diversify the food supply. Despite being a B2B supplier, we are actively working to tackle this challenge by putting ourselves in front of consumers at trade shows and events to introduce them to bambara in an interactive way, where they can see, feel and taste the ingredients and also learn about why it can be so beneficial for climate-smart and regenerative agriculture. We think of these encounters as something like a science fair, which makes each visit fun for us and the attendee. We’re also grateful to have wonderful partners that share our values and are working on their own to raise the profile of bambara through education, research and advocacy.

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

TC: We have partnered with an established women’s cooperative of smallholder farmers for our sourcing of the bambara beans. This partnership has been great because they have the ability to rapidly scale thanks to their presence in dozens of rural communities in Ghana and their existing familiarity with the crop. As demand increases we plan to expand our sourcing to include other regions in Sub-Saharan Africa with the same opportunity, organized smallholder cooperatives and an acute need for sustainable agricultural development.

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?

TC: The visibility that consumer-facing companies have is unparalleled, and they have the ability to introduce the terminology to the zeitgeist. Incorporating the ingredients is not enough, they have to talk about it, elevate it and educate consumers about why biodiversity is so important. Consumers have now become accustomed to learning about a product through key icons, such as those that denote that an item is vegan, gluten-free, fair-trade or organic. Maybe a next step can be a icon that highlights that a product or dish promotes biodiversity?

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

TC: The exhibit The Future Market put on the Fancy Food Show was a great example of what we can expect to see in the future, with familiar products made of underutilized and biodiverse ingredients. Unless we have a radical change in the types of food that people consume, I believe the products available won’t necessarily change drastically. What will change, though, will be the ingredients used to produce them. These will be ingredients that are chosen because of their environmental and social impact, rather than the bottom line for the manufacturer. I am confident though that as these ingredients come to scale their pricing will become competitive with the commodities we’re so used to seeing on our shelves.

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?

TC: It’s really encouraging to see how many brands are now going into regions that have been previously neglected by the business community to source ingredients, while simultaneously providing a vehicle for economic development for the local farmers. Two major examples of this being companies like Yolele and Kuli Kuli that have brought fonio and moringa to the US market, respectively. Our company is obviously following in those same footsteps, as we believe that we may be able to identify crops in these areas that have previously been underutilized. I believe that we’re only hitting the tip of the iceberg, and there are likely hundreds if not thousands more food crops that have not yet been identified by parties that have the resources to bring them to market.

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

TC: I would love to be able to pull up to a fast-food restaurant window and be able to access these ingredients, rather than having to shop at a specialty market or high-end restaurant. There are a lot of necessary innovations that will have to be adopted simultaneously in order to meet the needs of the growing global population. In the future, long-haul transit of food ingredients should be reserved to those products that have an extremely long shelf life, like grains and pulses, while regional markets will should specialize in the native species that will be consumed fresh, such as herbs, fruits, and vegetables.

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

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Tamara Cohen, Co-Founder of Believe in Bambara

Tamara Cohen is a co-founder of Believe in Bambara, where she leads efforts to introduce the bambara bean (vigna subterranea) to the US and world market. Believe in Bambara was conceived by Tamara and her co-founder, Holly Tassi while completing their undergraduate degree  at Syracuse University.

Prior to Believe in Bambara, Tamara spent four years at a New York tech firm where she specialized in business-to-business sales and account management for the digital publishing industry. Previously, Tamara was based in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where she worked with Kav La’Oved – Worker’s Hotline advocating for the rights of the increasingly vulnerable populations of migrant workers in Israel. She also worked at the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE) coordinating research papers on the education of peace and tolerance in various Middle Eastern school curriculum.

Tamara has a MA in Global Migration and Policy from Tel Aviv University and a BS in Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises from Syracuse University. She is also an active member of various community organizations, such as IfNotNow, the Park Slope Food Coop, and The Wing.

The post Believe in Bambara on Its Climate-Smart, Plant-Based Protein 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.

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. 

Building a supply chain for under utilized crops is complicated. It takes building trust with farmers, distribution infrastructure and consumer demand, all while navigating crop cycles, consistency, cost and fair trade practices. Below, I speak with Casey Emmett, director of strategic sales at Health Warrior (recently acquire by PepsiCo), about how the chia brand built its initial supply chain for the crop, which at the time was under utilized.

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

Casey Emmett: It is. For starters, a more biodiverse food source is the best shot we have at long, happy lives.

Consider your gut: the diversity and balance of organisms in our microbiomes directly affects just about everything about us, including our sleep, our relationships and the diseases we might suffer over the courses of our lives.

Our microbiomes are, of course, directly impacted by what we eat, a decision we get to make several times per day. No pressure! Michael Pollan said it best in In Defense of Food: “You are what you eat eats too,” and we should assume this applies all the way down the food chain.

That is, not only does the quality of our lives depend heavily upon our food, and the quality of our food depend heavily upon its source — the more pristine the water, the mightier and more delicious the fish (and kelp!); the healthier the soil, the more robust the carrot. It is also worth remembering that there is more life below ground than above it, and we consumers have an enormous impact on what happens down there, if only based on what foods we plant (and then eat).

It’s a two-way street: the better we eat, the better the soil; the better the soil, the better we eat. There’s a kaleidoscope of bugs, bacteria, fungi, dirt, water, and other organisms below ground and, like our guts, it seems the more diverse and balanced the better. A healthy soil, among a multitude of benefits, stores carbon and prevents erosion. And as very wise chef Dan Barber wrote in The Third Plate, soil minerals happen to be “the building blocks of human nutrition.”

You are what you eat eats, too. The healthier the soil, the happier the gut, the longer the healthspan.

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

CE: We work to put the most nutrient-dense, delicious plants as the primary ingredient in truly good food products. As we grow, so does the opportunity to improve existing products, get even more creative and agile with respect to new ones, and amplify that real food message many times over.

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

CE: The agronomic work for under utilized crops takes time to scale. If you sell chia seeds nationwide after they were forgotten for 500 years, it’s a delicate dance between distribution and crop cycles.

For each ingredient we need to be confident in the following, at a minimum:

1. Food Safety

2. Consistent Quality (texture, taste, nutrition)

3. Reasonable Cost

4. Fair Trade Practices

More broadly, from a supply chain and brand perspective, is this a truly good-for-you ingredient that we can build on?

In April 2012, we were busy selling to ten stores out of the back of my Jeep (and my brother Shane’s hallway) when Whole Foods Market asked us to launch our new Chia Bar nationally — in every store in every region – by September.

More experienced companies might have wilted. Thankfully, we had no idea what we were doing! We made our best guess as to inventory requirements for the coming year, and then set about building strong partnerships with great suppliers.

The chia plant, though hardy, traditionally grows within 15 degrees of the equator, i.e. Central America and Australia, and it has a long maturation period (the good stuff is 4-5 months from planting to harvest).

If we were to be in-store in September we’d need to deliver in August, and manufacture in July. Which meant three months to secure enough high-quality chia supply to actually make the bars to launch. Remember: good chia seeds need to 4-5 months to mature. So to begin, we needed to get existing supply on a boat ASAP, and then, if Whole Foods shoppers actually bought the bars — an enormous “if” at the time — grow quite a bit more to last the year.

The growers needed two things to dedicate resources to the emerging trend: 1) a market (a promise to tell the story of chia seeds with a real investment of time & money), and 2) financial commitment. We needed to commit to buy a significant amount of chia seeds

The boom in chia’s popularity coincided with (was caused by?) Health Warrior’s national launch, and the following year, every food company wanted to use chia as an ingredient. There simply was not enough chia to go around. Thankfully, we had already established great partners, both supply chain and financial.

This is a common issue in the industry (see: The Great Oat Milk Shortage of 2018). All those avocados and oat milk have to come from somewhere! And a brand riding or driving an ingredient trend (ala chia) can fall victim to its own success.

Yet another reason we consumers should diversify what we eat: it may give the incredible, unknown ingredient’s supply chain the time it needs to mature.

Today, after years of running the gauntlet, with an enormous amount of help, Health Warrior has thrived, and this is our discipline. We apply it to every product we have, and we’re poised to replicate it with other emerging hero ingredients.

DG: How does Health Warrior 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?

CE: There are about 300,000 edible plant species on earth (FAO estimates vary between 30,000 and 300,000). Our modern food system only utilizes about 200, of which 60 percent are corn, soy, wheat and potato. Among those excluded are some of the most delicious, nutritious and downright interesting foods on earth. We should eat them.

Broadly speaking, we will know we’ve arrived at a “good” level of biodiversity when the major disease factors (75 percent of all disease) that we know to be directly impacted by diet are in decline: heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

We’ll be able to see it, too, when our communities look a little wilder and better integrated with a region’s natural systems. The Billion Oyster Project in New York is one of many good starts toward that end.

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

CE: A more biodiverse food system provides more interesting and delicious foods, and without it, the food system itself is not viable in the long run.

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

CE: So many! I’m a zealot, of course, but I believe the world we should be working toward is one in which all of our plates at every meal are crowded with absolutely delicious, complete foods, and all innovation and investment should be directed toward that goal.

We can make it easier for farmers to transition to organic (better education, financial support, health and crop insurance). As consumers, we can eat regionally and seasonally, where possible, and our schools, grocery stores and restaurants (even national chains) should serve us thus. We can help consumers discern complete food from not (better marketing). And we can account for all those resources we’ve taken for granted, like the air, forest, water and soil.

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

CE: Our core consumer cares, but we have a long way to go. In a bubble, the following is obvious: the best foods are complete foods like the mighty sweet potato. Simple, versatile and knock-your-socks-off delicious, simply prepared.

For the general public this story has not stuck for a variety of reasons, primary among them consumers do not see in their busy lives many truly good food companies, much less food companies sharing the good news: Complete food is not only the more delicious, satisfying, longterm investment, working to prevent all the major disease factors hobbling we humans today. It is also an everyday performance advantage. Good food leaves us cleaner, lighter, stronger today.

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?

CE: As an industry we should encourage the consumption of a greater diversity of plant species, plain and simple. If only we merchandise nutrient-dense whole foods — mostly plants — over heavily processed food, the world will change for the better.

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?

CE: More legumes and fermented veggies, please!

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

CE: A truly biodiverse food system requires a more diverse workforce in every region at every level, from farmers to chefs to CEOs, so I would love to see more women and people of color in the industry; many more plants; better access to markets for farmers; safe, beautiful, and fully compostable packaging for all products; restored soil, forests, and waterways in every region of the United States; and generally, a greater variety and availability of complete foods that are good for the entire chain, from the soil (or ocean) to the gut.

DG: Anything else you want to share?

CE: Recommended reading:

• “Lentil Underground,” Liz Carlisle
• “The Third Plate,” Dan Barber
• “American Catch,” Paul Greenberg
• “The Race of our Lives Revisited,” Jeremy Grantham, Aug 2018
• “The Sustainable Economy,” by Yvon Chouinard, Jib Ellison, and Rick Ridgeway, HBR, October 2011
• “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” Michael Pollan

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

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Casey Emmett, Director of Strategic Sales for Health Warrior

Casey Emmett is Director of Strategic Sales for Health Warrior, helping retailers at all levels invest in truly good packaged food.

Casey has built his career on the notion that we can do better by ourselves and our communities on a lot of fronts. He had the honor to work on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, helped to organize a stem cell research conference, and coordinated (among many other good people) relief for the famine in Somalia in 2011. For the past 8 years he’s worked to build Health Warrior from scratch.

Casey holds a BA in Religious Studies from Colgate University.

The post How Health Warrior Built Its Chia 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. 

Around the globe, cultivation of local crops is increasingly being lost to the monocropping of non-native commercial ones. Yolélé Foods wants to change this by creating market demand for traditional West African crops. Its first product is fonio, a West African ancient grain that is highly nutritious, featuring high amounts of amino acids like methionine and cysteine. Fonio is also one of the fastest growing crops on the planet — maturing in as little as 8 weeks — and can thrive in poor soil and with limited water. A cross between couscous and quinoa, restaurants like Tender Greens are already putting the grain on its menu.

Below, co-founder and CEO Philp Teverow talks to me about how the company is working with farmers and creating a processing and distribution platform that will help West Africa become an agricultural export region.

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

Philip Teverow: Biodiversity is at the core of our business. Climate change is making it harder to subsist for the 80 percent of West Africans who make their living from farming. One reason is a reliance on non-native commercial crops that have been imposed on the region, like cotton and maize, which tend to come with a monocrop approach. We believe that the region can be an agricultural export powerhouse and regain food sovereignty by focusing on traditional crops like fonio, the ancient African grain that is our initial ingredient platform.

DG: How does Yolélé define and think about biodiversity? What does an ideal biodiverse food system look like?

PT: For us biodiversity means a wide variety of species, adapted to different conditions. We think that the arid Sahel region of Africa would be highly productive if its agricultural systems took into account current and projected meteorological conditions, and the human capital that is so abundant there. In West Africa, capital is not available, and there are tons of people trying to make a living in agriculture. Monocropping might make financial sense for individual farmers in any given year, but it’s not an option for smallholders farming by hand, often without even draft animals. The only system that can work in those conditions is one that uses rotation and intercropping of well adapted local crops that work in concert with one another in the absence of chemicals and technology. A good level of biodiversity is the one that can yield enough to live on and also generate cash to spend on quality of life improvements, year after year, while enriching the soil to make it even more productive in the long run.

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

PT: First of all, we’re creating demand for traditional crops so that it makes financial sense for farmers to devote more acreage to them than they would without the prospect of making money. Second, we are building processing capacity, the absence of which has prevented these crops from having commercial viability until now.

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

PT: That’s a tough one! The business case requires a long view – what kind of systems can keep on providing results beyond the next few quarters or years? What kind of systems can work for the next generation, when climate change’s effects mean today’s practices will no longer apply? For us, the business case relies on people who choose to spend their grocery dollars on products they see as contributing to a solution rather than those contributing to the problem.

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

PT: Market building (education, product development, sales, promotion) and processing capacity. In West Africa, infrastructure for efficient logistics.

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?

PT: Challenges include agricultural productivity, processing performance and nutritional strength of ancestral species; processing capacity and efficiency of those species; capital to address those issues. We are engaging in crop trials to improve the crops; partnering with food processors and food processing equipment manufacturers to build efficient, scalable systems; and raising capital to pay for those activities.

The greatest opportunity for us is to provide a replicable processing platform/model that allows West Africa to be an agricultural export region.

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?

PT: How about a Biodiverse tag on the self, just like gluten-free? How about a group of manufacturers getting together on a campaign to explain in very simply terms the importance of consumer choices around biodiversity? How about distributor-led Biodiverse sets?

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?

PT: My first thought was that there would be whole lot less wheat, rice and maize. But that’s not really so. There’s plenty of room for biodiversity within each of those crops. It’s really complicated in the baking industry, whose equipment and processes have been built around flour with specific performance parameters provided only by a few strains of wheat. But we’re nothing if not ingenious as a species. I think we can come up with efficient ways to adjust formulas and processes to accommodate varying degrees of protein.

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?

PT: Fonio!!!!

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

PT: The aerial view over Africa’s Sahel region today it looks brown. We want that view to be a patchwork of green fields growing multiple crops for local consumption and for cash for a better life.

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

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Philip Teverow , co-founder & CEO of Yolélé
Philip Teverow is the co-founder & CEO of Yolélé, a revolutionary African food brand that is building a vertically integrated supply chain for traditional African crops, focusing initially on the ancient grain fonio. He has been developing and launching natural and specialty food brands and products across multiple categories for decades, including 13 years at Dean & Deluca, where he imported quinoa to the US in 1980’s.

The post Why Yolélé Foods is Bringing West African Ancient Grain Fonio to the U.S. 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. 

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.

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