Episodit
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I interviewed Jerry Nelson, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. His research career has spanned climate change and food security, as well as agriculture policy, trade and development. He is one of the world’s greatest experts on the economics of food security in an era of climate change. What he has to say on this really matters. My three top takeaways from this week’s podcast were:
A very interesting idea by Jerry for uniting two very topical issues – AI and climate change. Regarding the next IPCC report, due out by 2029, Jerry made an interesting connection between the recent news that the world’s biggest AI developers have run out of internet, to train their models, with the great difficulty that IPCC authors are having, to read and curate all the world’s thousands of journal articles on climate change. He suggested the world’s academic journals throw open their doors – at present many are behind paywalls – to give AI access to these articles. In other words, to allow the AI models to get back on track with their training, in return for helping draft the next IPCC report! AI doing good!?Second, regarding another of his expert areas, on the climate resilience of the food system, I asked Jerry whether he was hopeful for new, more resilient crop varieties. He said there were advances in developing more drought-tolerant crops. But the problem is heat. Cereals that evolved in the Mediterranean just don’t perform well, once temperatures exceed around 31C. And many regions where these crops are grown today will exceed 31C. We also chatted about the possible role of biochar to sequester carbon in the soil, something Jerry is researching just now.And finally, when I asked Jerry about his reaction to a recent, stunning streak of global warming, with 10-straight, monthly records, through March, he said he was “scared”, partly because the relevant experts say they don’t know where the warming is coming from, implying climate change could be worse than expected, and partly because of the potential, direct consequences, for example for sea level rise.
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Here are my main learning notes from this podcast, an interview with Anna Rath, CEO of Vestaron, the peptide-based pesticide company:
Vestaron’s product focus is peptides, or short-chain proteins. Anna says that they have the same reliability and efficacy as chemical pesticides, but more precision targeting, and therefore safer use.Vestaron’s products are based off naturally occurring toxins such as spider and scorpion venom. That poses a challenge for product manufacture. Spiders inject venom, but clearly injection is not an option for commercial products. So, Vestaron has developed oral products, which, when mixed with another substance, can reach the target nervous system through the stomach wall.The pairing of its active ingredient with a “gut disruptor”, which is specific to different types of insects, enables its peptide to kill a target insect, while sparing non-target, beneficial insects, pollinators and wider wildlife. Neither the gut disruptor nor the active toxin is harmful to vertebrates, including people, Anna says.Vestaron sees its competitors as chemical insecticides, because the company can compete with their high efficacy in insect kill. It sees most microbe-based biological controls as in a different category, with a lower efficacy, at least in the insecticide market.In the U.S., Vestaron’s peptides are classed as an emerging technology, by the EPA, and as such can access an expedited regulatory path, but still have to prove their safety to the same standard as chemical pesticides.Partly because of a potentially slimmer regulatory approval process, Anna says that Vestaron can develop a new product in six to seven years, spending around $20 million, compared with around $350 million and 11 to 14 years for a traditional chemical insecticide product.The company’s first product is already approved for use in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, while the company is working towards entry into the EU market, which it expects by 2025 or 2026, if not sooner through expedited processes.The company’s first product is a broad-spectrum insecticide, which kills moth and butterfly larvae by ingestion, as well as a contact product killing small, soft-bodied insects like aphids.Anna draws parallels with a shift in the pharmaceutical industry, about 40 years ago, which she sees now coming to the agricultural chemical industry.That shift is away from what Anna terms “small molecule discovery”, namely broad-spectrum chemicals that it turns out run into problems with wider side effects, in agriculture’s case on the environment, or in pharma’s case on human health. Over the past several decades, pharma has shifted to large-molecule, protein-based human health solutions, such as antibody and enzyme-based remedies, which are more specific in how they bind to target molecules, and so have fewer unwanted side effects.Anna sees Vestaron as being able to disrupt the chemical pesticide market in the same way as Genentech or Amgen disrupted the pharmaceutical market, as the first company bringing protein-based solutions to the chemical pesticide industry.
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Puuttuva jakso?
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Here are some of my main learning points from this podcast, with Guy Elitzur, CEO of EcoPhage, a company which is enlisting viruses to fight bacteria that cause diseases in crops:
Bacteriophages are bacteria-eating viruses. These viruses were discovered in the nineteenth century, but have only really been studied more intensively in the past couple of decades.Guy’s company has licensed the same technology, from Israel’s Weizmann Institute, as licensed by the Nasdaq-listed BiomX, a pharmacological company looking to tackle bacterial diseases in humans. In that sense, this makes an interesting example where the agriculture sector is applying existing human remedies to crop diseases, in a push to reduce environmental impact.Bacterial diseases in crops are across the board, including in row crops, and fruit and vegetables. Guy’s company is starting with control of bacterial diseases in tomatoes.Regulation looms large behind the drivers for this company. To date, bacterial diseases in crops are mostly treated with antibiotics or copper-based chemical products. Regarding antibiotics, bacterial resistance is leading regulators to reduce or ban their use. Meanwhile, copper is toxic. So, farmers are under pressure to find something new.Regulatory pressure to find safer solutions also confer practical commercial benefits. Chemicals manufacturers face a real burden to prove that their products are safe, which biocontrol developers can avoid through certain waivers. Guy says that his company can develop a new product in 12 to 18 months, versus 10 to 15 years for a chemical solution, partly for this reason, and partly because they are starting with a virus which already destroys bacteria, and so is halfway there, instead of designing from scratch a chemical to do this.The company’s process starts with sourcing virus bacteriophages from the natural environment, and then screening these for potency. The company will combine good candidates in cocktails, to make them collectively tougher to crack, in terms of bacterial resistance.Guy says that trials suggest his product, integrated into current farming practice, confers tens of percentage point benefits, in yield and other core attributes. He says that will also be 10-15% more expensive, a cost offset by the superior performance. He expects to start commercialising the product for tomatoes at the beginning of 2025.He expects the competitive landscape to become more intense, from just a handful of bacteriophage companies in the agriculture space today.
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Here’s some of my main learning points from this podcast, with Charles Miller, director of strategic alliances and development at Solynta:
Solynta is the first company able to hybridise potatoes. Hybrid breeding is used extensively in many crops, such as maize/ corn, tomatoes, sunflowers. The idea is to cross two in-bred, so-called elite lines each with highly desirable traits, to achieve what is known as hybrid vigour, achieving highly targeted improvements by combining both sets of attractive traits in a single line.To explain Solynta’s breakthrough, an initial requirement to achieve hybrid breeding is first to make plants able to self-pollinate, by finding and switching off a so-called self-incompatibility gene. You can then create two separate, in-bred lines of male and female plants. The hybrid step then involves artificially cross pollinating those two in-bred lines. Solynta’s breakthrough was to find this incompatibility gene in potatoes.There are a couple of key advantages of using hybrids in potatoes:First, your seed product is then a true seed, as opposed to a potato tuber. Using seed potatoes, or tubers, has been the favoured approach to breeding potatoes – to clone and then plant potato tubers of a particular variety. The trouble with that approach is that potatoes are very bulky, and tubers can spread disease, from the parent plant and the soil. If you can market a variety using true seed instead, then suddenly you save a lot of fuel in haulage, as well as storage space, and a cleaner product. Solynta estimates the seed weight comparison, when sowing a field of potatoes, is 2.5 tonnes per hectare of tubers, versus 25 grams of true seed.Second, it should be easier and quicker to improve particular characteristics or traits, because of the targeted nature of the in-breeding /hybrid breeding process, where many desirable traits involve multiple genes, and so require significant, multigenic, breeding precision, for example using genetic marking to identify the right genes, and using introgression – for example targeting particular wild potato genes – to incorporate these into a new elite in-bred line.Charles says that the company is now transitioning from being a technical company to a commercial company, as it seeks to exploit the breakthrough it has made, and that it should take only two to four years to go from an idea to a final hybrid in most cases, versus a decade of so under the previous, centuries-old techniques.Regarding specific traits, the first target is late blight resistance – quite sensibly, as by far the biggest cause of economic damage to potato yields, and also the biggest financial cost in terms of crop protection chemicals. Charles puts the latter in the EU alone at more than €500 million annually. He says Solynta has gone from blight resistant concept to product in two years, and the company is now testing that product. “The results are quite promising.”
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Here are some of my learning points from this podcast, with Ponsi Trivisvavet, CEO of Inari, the seed design company.
The goal of the company is to design seeds for crop varieties that consume fewer resources, such as land, water and chemical inputs. The focus crops are corn, soybeans and wheat.Inari’s three specific target products at present are, first, to increase yields significantly, without an increase in use of nitrogen. Further down the pipeline are goals to reduce nitrogen use without sacrificing yield, and to reduce water use.Inari aims to achieve these goals by targeting changes to the “architecture” of the plant, such as the number of seed per pod, or pods per node, and increase the individual seed weight – and all three of these, at the same time, to increase yield.The company has two technology platforms: predictive design, and gene editingPredictive design is the process of understanding the full complexity of crop genomes, their genetic maps, which are more complex than human genomes.The idea of predictive design is to narrow down what changes to the crop genome may lead to particular changes in crop performance. Inari’s predictive design engine uses ML and human interpretation to understand how genes interact with each other, digitally “in silico”, as well as at the plant cell level, and at the plant level.Gene editing is the process of then altering the genome, to favour particular traits, for example using the gene editing tool, Crispr. Gene editing is distinguished from genetic modification (GM) in that it involves changing the existing DNA of the species – whether inserting, removing or tuning this DNA – in contrast to GM which involves introducing new DNA from another species.Regarding products, Inari is most progressed in a goal to increase yield, and specifically in soybeans, by 20%, followed by goals to increase yield in wheat and corn, by 15% and 10% respectively. Further down the pipe, it wants to reduce nitrogen and water use by 40%.Ponsi said she couldn’t disclose how far the company had gone to date, in quantified increases in yield. She stated that the company has already seen evidence of progress in each of the levers to increase yield in soybean plants, namely more seeds per pod, more pods per node, and higher grain weight.Ponsi said that traditional crop breeding historically took 10 years to develop a product, and genetic modification took roughly 16 years, while Inari expects a two to five year time-frame to develop a product.Inari recently produced a white paper, at Davos, calculating the combined ecosystem benefits of its products, through 2042, in terms of GHGs, nitrogen run-off and farm profitability, to show how companies can be net nature positive, available here, and a detailed overview of its gene editing platform, here.
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Here are some of my learning points from this podcast, with Nadav Bocher, CEO and co-founder of Greeneye, the precision spraying company:
Greeneye’s mission is to transform the present, broadcast approach to spraying herbicides –where farmers spray an entire field, regardless of weed incidence.Greeneye wants to spray only actual weeds, using AI-enabled cameras first to detect weeds, and then turn individual spray nozzles on and off accordingly. The company estimates that actual weed infestation in an average U.S. Mid-West field is around 10%, indicating the scale of possible savings.The system comprises, on a 36m spray boom, some 12 graphics processing units (GPUs), and 24 cameras. Once a GPU detects and classifies a weed, it triggers the nozzle to spray, all in real time. The typical system will comprise a dual mode, allowing simultaneous broadcast spraying of a residual pre-emergence product (used to control weeds preventatively), and spot spraying of weeds with a leaf contact product.Nadav says identifying grass weeds in some cereal crops is complex, such as grass weeds in a grass-based crop such as wheat – “That’s tough, we’re not there yet.”The company’s focus today is detecting grass and broad-leaved weeds in three key crops, soy, corn and cotton.Nadav says its algorithms have been tested in multiple fields in multiple countries, giving it the ability to differentiate the crop from weeds, the key task, rather than worry about actually identifying weed species.The company’s system is retrofitted on to any existing sprayer, a different approach to some of Greeneye’s competitors, who are teaming up with equipment manufacturers to sell an entire new sprayer.Nadav says their full retrofit cost is about $200-250k, and expects an 18-month payback on that investment. There, he is assuming a $33/acre/year herbicide saving, and a 4,000 acre arable operation – so to be clear this speed of payback is only achieved on a fairly large operation.Nadav says Greeneye is now going into its second season of rolling out commercially in the U.S. Mid-West. He expects to sell "dozens" of actual systems this year, moving from a “spraying as a service” model in 2022.
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Here are some of my learning points from this podcast:
Agmatix is trying to consolidate agronomic field trial data, through digitalisation, to make this data more available, to agricultural researchers, agronomists and farmers.Agmatix has two main activities. First, the digitalisation of agricultural R&D, focusing on agronomic insights and especially field trial data, and second, interpreting and applying those data, to develop prescriptions for agronomists to share with farmers.Both activities rely heavily on the use of smart algorithms, under the company’s Axiom platform.Regarding the digitalisation of field trials, Agmatix has first had to standardise crop research data, including agricultural taxonomy, such as crop names (corn or maize?), as well as units of measurement (bushels or tonnes?); and research protocols and methods, such as soil depth in soil sampling trials.With its standardised approach in place, it has gone on to digitalise more than 50 million field trials to date, covering more than 150 crops.Research groups and agricultural companies can use this digitalised platform to organise their own field trials, using the standardised format to share results more easily, for example in collaborative projects. Agmatix says it has developed an open platform for plant nutrition, with various partners, based on more than 2,000 sources of field trials. The link is here: https://cropnutrientdata.net/The second main activity of the company is to translate these insights from aggregated field trials into digital prescriptions, via its Crop Advisor decision support tool for agronomists.Agmatix can use its ingested field trial data to develop models, to understand for example the risk factors governing eruption of a particular disease, which agronomists can then use in their work with farmers.The standardised field trial data can help agronomists to deliver prescriptions according to local circumstances and practices, for example how to balance chemical inputs and farm practice to deliver a particular yield in a particular way, for example with the smallest carbon footprint.By working with agronomists and farmers, Agmatix can also ground-truth its algorithms, and so improve their accuracy.
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Here are some key points from this podcast interview with James Lloyd-Jones, CEO of the Jones Food Company (JFC):
The main differences between a vertical farm and a high-tech greenhouse are – no glass; multiple layers; and a more controlled environment, which allows a higher output per sqm of growing area.James is about to launch his new “JFC2” farm, which will add to an existing farm at Scunthorpe, and R&D facility in Bristol. The new farm structure is a 15,000 sqm factory. The farm is presently being commissioned, and will start operation on May 1.“It’s a beast. It’s a monster.” It will be the biggest vertical farm in Britain, built as a single unit.The growing area is 35m wide, comprising six planting corridors, each 80m long. It is 10m high, stacked in 15 levels.James expects the farm to produce just over 1,000 tonnes of leafy greens per year. He sees total UK national annual demand at very roughly 50,000 tonnes, for leafy greens, implying that his new farm alone will cater for at least 2% of total national demand.Energy costs are higher, but they’re also more predictable than a greenhouse. Being indoors without natural light, the lighting and HVAC are the same throughout the season, allowing the operator to predict future margins, and lock these in with long-run forward energy contracts. James says this ability to lock in energy supply contracts, and have a more stable growing environment, may make vertical farming more resilient to energy price volatility, for example during last year’s surge in gas prices.Regarding capital costs, by building much of their own technology, under a design, build and operate model, JFC has been able to cut capex more quickly. At their first farm, capex was £1.5k per sqm. Now they’re at £1k, and aiming for less than £900, for automated systems, a level broadly competing with a smart greenhouse.Operating costs are in descending order: power (HVAC and lighting); labour; and distribution. They have been able to reduce these, for example by going fully automated; packing on site; and through economies of scale, building larger units.Vertical farming is already competitive with imports of smaller, more perishable plants, such as salads and herbs, which JFC have been selling for several years into the UK market.JFC’s carbon footprint is slightly higher than Egyptian field agriculture, one benchmark competitor for herbs. James sees some fairly straightforward ways to cut their footprint, including using local renewable power, and optimising plant growing space.Being local to demand centres, unlike imports, it might be expected that vertical farms would benefit from a renewed focus on food security. James says JFC did see some greater interest after Brexit and Covid, while disruptions from climate change are a demand driver, to keep food shelves stocked, year-round, with local produce.The company’s next steps, after a week’s holiday for James, will include domestic UK and international expansion.And the next big thing in the market at large? The most exciting thing, he says, is “realism” – away from recent hype. And … berries!
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This week, we heard from a senior European Union policymaker involved in one of the biggest drivers of change in the agriculture sector today, namely pesticide regulation.
I spoke with Klaus Berend, head of the EU’s pesticide unit, in the EU’s health and food safety directorate.
What I wanted to understand was just how big the pressure is on chemical pesticides; over what time frame the portfolio of pesticides available to farmers will fall; any news on specific product bans, including very widely used active ingredients such as glyphosate (aka Roundup); and finally how the EU is working to make chemicals bans square with food security.
Some of the main points of interest that emerged from this podcast were:
Today, there are 453 approved active ingredients (AIs) approved across the EU. About 10 are revoked annually. At the same time, around 10 new AIs are approved for the first time. In other words, at present, the overall number is roughly unchanged from year to year.However, the composition of those pesticides is changing dramatically. Already, 170 of these 453 approved AIs fall into the category of non-chemical AIs. These so-called “low hazard” pesticides include microorganisms used to combat pests, as well as natural plant extracts, pheromones and other low-risk substances. They have increased from less than 40 such approved non-chemical AIs in 2012.As Klaus says - "Slowly, over time, the number of synthetic chemical substances will probably go down further, while the number of biological control tools will increase. In the long term, it will be the biological solutions that will dominate.” That seems to me a clear statement supporting further growth in the biological pesticide market globally.It is the more toxic, and perhaps for farmers more effective, chemical pesticides, that are disappearing first. That’s because the technology around measuring the toxicology of chemicals has improved, meaning more now fall on the wrong side of the definition of harm to humans or the environment, for example as carcinogens.The two main European agencies that form an expert opinionon pesticides, in a 10-year review cycle, are the European Chemicals Agency (which measures hazard) and the European Food Safety Authority (which measures risk).Klaus could not speculate on the outcome of presently ongoing reviews. Glyphosate - perhaps the world's commonest herbicide - has passed its ECHA review (i.e. with an unchanged hazard finding). EFSA will release its long-awaited corresponding risk opinion for glyphosate in July 2023, with no extreme changes announced yet in the meantime. However, the review of one of the most common fungicides, tebuconazole, does follow on the heels of bans for closely related triazoles, such as epoxiconazole.Klaus stated that the principles of Integrated Pest Management were not fully implemented across the EU, and that was hindering support for crop yields and food security, as chemical pesticides are gradually banned.
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One of the most talked about technologies to reduce the environmental impact of conventional agriculture is so-called precision agriculture or precision-ag. Precision-ag means using GPS-enabled sensors, including drone-mounted cameras, to generate spatial data, which can help tell farmers what is happening across a farm or field in real space and time. In theory, these insights can then be used to vary an application of chemical fertiliser or pesticide across a field, according to where these are needed most, for example, to stop the practice of just spraying everything, or to save money.
I talked to Tyler Nigon, principal scientist at the U.S. precision-ag company, Sentera, which specialises in drone image processing. One of Sentera’s main areas of business today is to use drone images to help crop breeders select out-performing plants. But I also wanted to get into what exactly is precision agriculture; how it can improve the sustainability of farming; and when it will go mainstream.
Key observations from the podcast included:
Two main types of drone-mounted sensor include RGB (red green blue) and multi-spectral sensorsRBG is higher resolution, meaning it has the potential to identify weeds from crop plants, and so determine precise herbicide applications, to use less herbicide. This is a big area of investment right now. But it’s not there yet.Multi-spectral sensors are lower resolution. By measuring the energy reflected off plants, they can help determine plant health and nitrogen uptake. The technology is already there for a drone image to show nitrogen uptake by crops, say in pounds or kilos of N per acre or ha. But the all-important next step is difficult - to use these data to pin-point which parts of a field need more or less N application going forwards. This is still more of an art than a science.As a result – there is not yet solid evidence of a big return on investment in precision-ag in production agriculture, and so, it hasn’t yet gone mainstream.To date, big users have included crop breeders, in small-plot, research trials, who are now very advanced in use of the technology.Mainstream precision-ag may have to wait until regulation requires farmers to adopt the technology, or until there’s a very clear return on investment. “One of these two things have to happen.”
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So far, on this podcast, we’ve discussed issues including digitalisation, soil carbon and alternative proteins. This week, I wanted to broaden out, and discuss the whole range of technologies connected with a low-environmental-impact transition in global agriculture.
I interviewed two global research strategists at Rabobank’s food and agribusiness division, Cyrille Filott and Cindy van Rijswick, with a downstream and upstream focus respectively.
Rabobank is a Dutch cooperative bank. It is the biggest lender to farmers in its home market, the Netherlands, but has a large market share in food and agribusiness across the value chain in multiple other jurisdictions including the United States and Australia, from farmers to food retailers, both in lending and in equity investing.
Rabobank is prioritising not one but five transitions in agriculture: supporting regen ag; restoring nature; diversifying our protein supply; reducing food waste; and improving farmer livelihoods in developing countries. The underlying driver is the bank’s membership of the net zero banking alliance, under the science-based targets initiative.
Key observations from this podcast include:
About 70% of the total supply chain CO2 emissions of food companies come from farmland or packaging. Retailers will thus drive change on farmland, to reach net zero targets under the science-based targets initiative - “They will push it into the supply chain, changes will have to happen at the farm-level.”Precision agriculture robotics, including automated weeding systems, are now emerging at the field level, and can significantly drive down herbicide use.System change within conventional agriculture is also growing, including trends to increase biodiversity, such as strip cultivation, changing crops and re-wilding.Vertical farming (local indoor enterprises) has sustainability issues around very high electricity use, notwithstanding a small land footprint and low chemical and water use.Gene editing and other crop breeding approaches are longer term bets, not least because breeders are still heavily focused on yield and consumer traits, over sustainability.Meat substitutes have “hit a snag” on texture and flavour, at the consumer level - “There was a lot of hype, a lot of money was spent on marketing. But the products are just not good enough right now.” The analysts quoted falling sales at some companies (Beyond Meat total sales fell in the three and nine months to October 2022, year on year).The B2B (business to business, as opposed to selling direct to consumers) market for alternative proteins is a bigger opportunity right now, such as the market for butter substitutes. Once again, this is partly driven by food companies signed up for net zero targets. “There is a climate element to it.”There is year on year growth in sustainable inputs such as biocides and biostimulants, to substitute for chemical pesticides and fertilisers, especially in controlled environment agriculture, but also at the field level in certain countries like Brazil. “Farmers have to see that it is working before they believe it and buy it.”Rabobank incentivises a cleaner food system by offering sustainability linked loans, and information outreach to clients on sustainability topics.
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In this episode, I talked with Fotis Fotiadis, founder and CEO of the insect protein manufacturer, Better Origin. The company produces feed for poultry from the larvae of black soldier flies, in its AI-automated shipping containers.
Like the alternative protein space more generally, the insect protein sector has exploded over the last two years, as witnessed by the hundreds of millions of dollars of VC financing for start-up companies, like Better Origin, as a sustainable transition in agriculture rises up the policy, investor and corporate agendas, driven by concern around damage to nature, and climate change.
First of all, I asked Fotis about the driving mission behind Better Origin. The company has just published what he called a white paper on how insects can help transform all organic food waste into useful biomass - “Only humans have created a system that is linear, and takes wasted or surplus food and throws it away. In nature, the whole thing is circular. If we can crack that, the opportunities are absolutely massive. Right now, close to $500 billion, if not more, of value is attributed to wasted product, and that’s what we’re targeting.”
We spoke about the company’s approach today. Better Origin is already carrying out the “bioconversion” of insect larvae into chicken feed, on poultry farms. They turn food waste into usable biomass, in shipping containers, where the larvae bulk up around 5,000-fold in just under two weeks. The poultry farmer can then feed these live larvae on-farm, directly to chickens.
And we talked about the company’s next steps. Better Origin wants to get into the business of processing larvae off-farm, for pet food and aquaculture. This would still follow a distributed approach, via warehouses near sources of food waste, such as supermarkets. These units might each process around 15,000 tonnes of food waste per year.
We talked costs – Fotis acknowledged that insect protein would be more expensive than soya, on a kilo for kilo basis, for years to come, as straight animal feed. But this missed the point, he says, as insect protein would comprise perhaps only 5-10% of the diet, and deliver an overall net financial benefit to the farmer through reduced animal stress, higher productivity, lower mortality and less feed input. Supermarkets get a brand benefit from marketing environmentally friendly eggs, plus less waste.
Regarding land intensity, Fotis estimates that he can produce the same amount of protein on 1sqm as soy would require over 1,500 sqm.
Better Origin’s xmas party was three times bigger this year than last. This breakneck growth is “exciting, but also very difficult to deal with", he says.
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In this fifth episode of my podcast, Agriculture Reinvented, I talk with Ben Goldsmith, investor, environmentalist, enthusiastic re-wilder, and farmer, about his investments, in and outside agriculture, the future of farming, and one of his favourite themes, re-wilding.
Regarding innovation, Ben expects "precision fermentation" to replace a whole bunch of animal protein commodities, such as protein powders which are presently extracted from milk or eggs, for use in processed foods, and that could equally be derived from fermentation, with consumers unable to spot the difference. For Ben, the drivers include not only lower cost, but displacing the “worst, cheapest end of industrial farming”, for example in the U.S. and China.
He is very supportive of the prospects for regenerative agriculture: the precision application of chemicals enabled by a combination of satellite imagery, drones and soil sensors, as well as no-till practices, to boost farm business profit margins and protect the soil.
As a previous DEFRA director, regarding post-Brexit, UK agricultural policy, he thinks that only demonstrated environmental actions can justify continued payments to farmers and other landowners, where he sees the new English Environmental Land Management scheme, ELMs, as a pioneer, likely to be copied globally, including in the EU and U.S., as he thinks “farm support is highly vulnerable, the idea of area-based payments for farmers is a concept that won’t survive”.
Ben is most excited about what he calls farmer-centred re-wilding, and especially the role of native breeds of big grazing cattle, which he calls a silver bullet to revitalise nature, and especially wood pastures, in more remote landscapes, keeping farmers in business, supported by the taxpayer, while increasing jobs in conservation. In the most remote landscapes of all, with local community support, he imagines a whole food chain of native species reintroduced in Scotland and the wilder English uplands and wetlands, from wild ox to beaver and bison to wolves, for a “genuinely wild future”, in million-acre rewilding projects. He sees such farmer-centred re-wilding as a way to maintain farm communities, instead of sheep farming for example, which he says “is not working”.
And he described one new investment fund that he is advising on, to “create new wild places in Britain”, producing “mid-single digit yields” by buying corporate-owned, low productivity land, to generate revenues from biodiversity and carbon offsetting, nature tourism and environmental payments under Britain’s new farm policy.
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In this podcast, I discuss the alternative protein space with Geoff Bryant, Chief Technology Officer at microbe fermentation company, Calysta.
Alternative proteins are all about sourcing protein with less impact on livestock, people and the planet. These alternatives include insect-based protein, plant-based protein, cellular protein made in a lab from animal cells, and microbe-based protein, Calysta’s own speciality.
It was a good time to catch up with Geoff. This week, the company is commissioning its first commercial-scale production unit, at Chongqing in China, a unit it turned on three weeks ago. The unit will produce up to 1,000 kg of biomass per hour, or 700 kg of crude protein, from methane-eating bacteria. Geoff says that level of output will make it the world’s biggest plant microbe fermentation plant. The company is planning to commission a second, similarly sized unit on the same site in China before the end of the year.
Geoff tries to express that protein production in livestock units, by comparing with the crude protein production of a single beef cow, at 50kg per beast. He estimates the two fermentation units will produce up to the equivalent of 14 cows each per hour, or a quarter of a million cows per year together, all on a site the size of a football pitch.
The company’s initial target market is fish farming. Geoff acknowledges cost challenges, versus premium fish meal and soy. But he says cost reductions will come with scale, as well as operational cost reductions, from running their new plant, adding to this with a second fermenting unit.
At the moment, natural gas is the input, half of which, by weight, the company’s bacteria will convert directly into protein. Other inputs include oxygen; a source of nitrogen; metal salts such as potassium and calcium, and acids. They don’t use sugar – important when you consider that this means they aren’t consuming food to produce protein, unlike many conventional meat supply chains today.
We discussed scale issues, given the size of the $1-2 trillion livestock market that alternative protein companies are seeking to address. Even achieving just 10% of that industry would be a massive challenge, requiring a “ridiculous amount of fermentation capacity and number of new industrial plants”, he says, but a worthwhile target.
Geoff is optimistic that bacteria fermentation can tap into the buildout of renewables, where one problem for variable renewables is storage. He hopes that bacteria fermentation can tap into surplus renewables, for example when solar power is un-needed in the middle of the day, to produce renewable methane, and convert this directly into protein for people. “The success of renewable energy will be the success of our food system too."
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This week’s episode is about the U.S. organic agriculture market and industry. In this episode, I talked to Ryan Koory, Vice President of Economics at the U.S. organic agriculture analytics firm, Mercaris.
Organic agriculture is a long-established but minority segment of the global food industry. In this episode I wanted to understand recent market trends, focusing on the U.S. grains and oilseeds market – both compared with conventional markets, and considering market havoc since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – both massive grain producers.
As a non-expert, I found it very interesting to hear how U.S. organic market data infrastructure isn’t there yet, compared with conventional agriculture. For example, the latest official USDA data for organic acreage is 2019/2020. Similarly, trade data are limited to a handful of organic commodities, according to the assignment of trade codes – for example organic corn and organic wheat, but little else.
Next, we talked about prices. It turns out that organic and conventional agricultural commodities are so decoupled that it doesn’t make sense to talk about the price difference between them – ie the organic premium - from a market perspective of drivers. Nevertheless, for sure, there is a big premium. Let’s say for U.S. organic milling wheat, which is selling for $19-24/bushel, versus what appears to be around $8/ bushel for conventional wheat.
Regarding the growth in U.S. organic acreage – Ryan reckoned this is growing, around 3% on average year on year, but there’s more to simply the price difference that is driving that. And there are risks, related to hedging tools, crop insurance and the three-year transition.
Finally, we touched on some more blue-sky issues, first, around the prospect for other sustainable food labels, for example connected with regen agriculture, and second, the place of the organic label in a world increasingly preoccupied with low-carbon production and net zero.
Enjoy!
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In this episode, I talked to Prof Pete Smith, one of the world’s renowned academics on soil carbon sequestration.
In this podcast, Pete gets into the details around soil carbon – what it is, how to measure it, and whether it’s all it’s cracked up to be, as a solution to climate change.
Pete tells us that the science is settled on the agricultural practices that increase soil carbon. But he explains why it’s “not quite there yet”, as an investable asset, and why the big opportunity will be in arable soil, not grasslands. He also explains the big commercial opportunity that he sees for start-up companies trying to crack the biggest “game-changer” problem in soil carbon today – which is how to measure carbon levels in the soil quickly, cheaply, at scale.
Finally, Pete talks us through the benefits of regen agriculture, including practices like min till, cover crops and diverse rotations, explaining why he's in favour of England’s prospective Environmental Land Management scheme.
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In this first episode of my new podcast, Agriculture Reinvented, we explore what digitalisation and big data have to offer agriculture, in conversation with Richard Tiffin, Chief Scientific Officer at the UK agri-food data company, Agrimetrics.
Richard first described in big picture terms what it is that data can bring to farming. So he describes how we can access a whole lot more data than ever before, across whole fields, farms, landscapes, regions and countries, for example using satellite technology. Advances in new analytical methods, such as AI and ML, can then get to work to analyse those data, sift out noise, and help make new advances in understanding.
We then went on to discuss applications in a farm setting. Richard gave the eg of new pressures on farms not able to apply pesticides in a prophylactic way, both because of new consumer sensibilities, and because of worries about pesticide resistance. Big datasets, coupled with AI and ML, can provide an EWS that a wind-borne pest is prevalent in the local landscape, or likely to appear. You can then combine that knowledge with an understanding of soil type, watercourses, legal requirement and weather, for farmers then actively to manage that outbreak, if necessary.
We talked around issues around adoption: Richard described how digitalisation technologies have to make it easy for non-tech-savvy farmers to supply data, almost without realising it. And we discussed briefly the need to attract new, digitally skilled developers into the industry. And we explored whether there were examples of hype in the application of digitalisation and AI, in the field of agriculture, example making excessive claims, say in the field of robotics.
But, before all of that, I asked Richard to explain the core visions that fired up the founding of his company, eight years ago. It turns out there were two “realisations”, as he called them. It turns out Richard was inspired by a desire to avoid a 2008-style financial crisis, in the food system, and a need to overcome fragmentation in the food sector, to speed up adoption of digital technologies.
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