Food & Agriculture
Why the Fly-Over States are Worth More than a Downward Glance
Intuitively we all know innovation is deflationary. Today, you probably wouldn’t spend more than $100 on a terabyte of digital storage. Not that long ago, some companies were fitting entire floors of office buildings and spending a million dollars or more to get that same...
Food is Health: How to Access Uncorrelated Growth in 2020
“Food is Health” has driven the iSelect investment process since our start in 2014. Americans spend more than $1.5T each year on food and almost $2T on diet-related illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, obesity and type 2 diabetes.1
We’re Focused on Companies Solving This Problem...
Where Does Health Start? In the Ground
Healthy soil is literally the foundation for a healthy food system and is a leading indicator for many key metrics around sustainability and ecological health. As a result, soil health is inextricably linked to plant, animal, human and global health.
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Investing at the Nexus of Food and Health
Almost three years ago, iSelect strategically refocused its investment thesis on identifying the synergies between food and healthcare. At the time, food and healthcare were two completely independent, siloed verticals. But, the fact is, the more that we understand about disease and the better that...
Propagate Ventures: Planting New Revenue Streams for Farmers
As a company dedicated to regenerative agroforestry solutions, Propagate Ventures works with farmers and land managers to design and install tree-crop systems that work in tandem with existing farm operations. Its fruit, nut, and timber tree systems complement...
What the Borden Bankruptcy Tells Us About the Future of Food
As a sailor, I learned a long time ago, it is always darkest before the dawn. Borden is bankrupt. And the dawn is coming.
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System C: The Convergence of Food and Health
We're here to talk about food system innovation. When we first started this conference, we talked about agtech, and as investors we also focus on healthcare and the convergence of healthcare and agriculture. Innovation is now being discussed as food system innovation. And, so we've...
Creating a Food System That Works (for Everyone)
Innovation is what drives prices down. That's why we have TVs and computers that are both incredibly powerful and affordable, and why we have healthcare that is incredibly unaffordable.
If food prices had risen at the same rate over the last 20 years that...
Why Bioavailability is Becoming the Next Buzzword in Agriculture
iSelect hosts a Deep Dive webinar on a novel innovation topic on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 9 a.m. central. Our most recent session focused on bioavailability. By improving the bioavailability of the food we eat and our bodies'...
Is Nutrient Reuse the Future of Sanitation?
What if the waste products we throw away every day could do more for us? What if it were possible to take organic waste, such as food scraps, and recycle it into fuel and fertilizer? We recently sat down...
Recycling Nutrients for More Sustainable Agriculture and Animal Production
When it comes to sustainability in agriculture, there’s more to chicken waste than you might think. We recently sat down with Michael Lynch, CEO of Chonex, a nutrient recycling company focused on poultry manure, to talk about the technology his company is developing and how...
Induction Food Systems: Industrial Heating That’s Precise, Efficient and On-Demand
Induction Food Systems helps food and beverage manufacturers improve efficiency and expand production with on-demand precision heating equipment. The company has harnessed electromagnetic energy to create the first scalable, precise, and efficient in-line heating solution for a wide range of...
Nutritious, Natural Sugars: A Conversation with Bonumose Founder Ed Rogers
iSelect managing director Mark McCall recently participated in a panel discussion at the Family Office Impact Summit at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Hosted by Gitterman Wealth Management, Family Office Insights and 5th Element Group, the event was a private gathering of 250...
How Digital Product Development is Reshaping the Food We Eat
iSelect hosts a Deep Dive webinar on a novel innovation topic on the first and third Wednesdays of each month at 9 a.m. central. Our most recent session focused on how many food producers are now using digital technology to stay ahead of the curve...
AgroSpheres: A New Approach to Pesticide Application that is Controlled, Targeted and Optimized
AgroSpheres is an agriculture technology startup in Virginia that is revolutionizing crop protection through environmentally friendly delivery platforms.
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What’s the Future of Nutrition? Addiction
The modern world has a serious problem with sugar.
The average American consumes more than 129 pounds of the stuff each year, according to the USDA, more than double what we ate two generations ago. And, unlike in previous decades when most sweeteners came...
It’s 2019, Where’s the Exit?
Once your big idea has come to life as a successful start-up, what’s next?
How do you achieve a steady ascent that makes your small company and your investors happy?
Getting the exit right can mean everything for a start-up— but what does that look...
How The Bee Corp is Empowering Growers and Beekeepers
CEO of agtech company The Bee Corp, Ellie Symes, is serious about bees. Her technology takes the uncertainty out of pollination, allowing growers to make time-sensitive decisions sooner and eliminating guesswork with objective performance metrics. In this Q...
How Shifting Spending to Healthy Foods Could Prevent Chronic Illness
The burden of chronic health issues is massive: 90% of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care expenditures are for people with chronic and mental illness, according to the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP).
Even though in the...
Travis Potter: Farming to Make Your Price
Travis Potter farms to make a price and, in turn, make profit in unusual ways. From his organic Tractor Soda to growing avocados in the Dakotas, Travis finds profitability in places that most farmers wouldn't think to consider. Travis shares his philosophy for making a...
Automating the Harvest, One Strawberry at a Time
First, let’s clear one thing up: the strawberry is not, in fact, a berry.
It’s what botanists call an “aggregate accessory fruit,” meaning that the flesh of the fruit is derived from the receptacle that holds the ovaries. And those seeds all over the outside?...
What the Latest Round of Food Contamination Recalls Say About Ag Innovation
It’s happened again. Last month, the United States Department of Agriculture announced a nationwide recall of more than 12 million pounds of raw beef due to new concerns over possible salmonella contamination.
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Microsoft is Coming for Agriculture. Is That a Good Thing?
Here’s a headline I didn’t expect to see: “Microsoft Bringing AI to Ag.” From the author of that headline in Farm Journal: “Standing before a crowd of farmers at the 2018 Farm Journal AgTech Expo, keynote speaker Josh Henretig voiced what he believed a lot...
Food 2.0: Genetic Engineering Our Way to the High-Performing Crops of Tomorrow
It all started with the lowly tomato.
One of the original North American food crops, Europeans first started cultivating tomatoes with the help of Native Americans in the 17th century. As a food source for the settlers, tomatoes were healthy, plentiful...
Bonumose: U.S. Patent to be Issued for “Enzymatic Production of D-Tagatose”
On September 21, 2018, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued Bonumose LLC a Notice of Allowance on its patent application for “Enzymatic Production of D-Tagatose.” The USPTO’s action recognizes the importance of Bonumose’s unique process for producing high-yields of low-cost tagatose from starch.
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Food Insecurity Is the Biggest Threat to Life On Earth, Except That it Isn’t
Are we running out of food?
The short answer is yes. As of 2016, there were roughly 815 million undernourished people in the world. Beyond that, several billion suffer levels of serious micronutrient malnourishment.
But the United...
MIT OpenAg Is the Future of Agriculture. Here’s How We’re Helping
The MIT Media Lab is reimagining the food supply. It’s called the Open Agriculture Initiative (OpenAg) and it is staffed by a team of researchers that has been working since 2014 to create healthier, more engaging, and more inventive future food systems.
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Why It Matters That We’re Talking About Gender Discrimination in Agriculture
Agrilyst CEO Allison Kopf has something to say.
After several years in agriculture, she’s seen the impact that gender discrimination can have on women in the industry, leaving them feeling overlooked, marginalized and left out, particularly when it comes to conference...
Agrifood Conversations, a New Agriculture Innovation Webinar Series
iSelect Fund, The Van Trump Report and The Yield Lab Institute are pleased to announce the launch of a new weekly webinar series entitled Agrifood Conversations featuring the best in agricultural innovation. With in-depth presentations from some of the leading companies and entrepreneurs in the...
Agrilyst: Developing New Tools to Help Indoor Farmers Thrive
Based in Brooklyn, NY, Agrilyst’s SaaS-based platform provides indoor farmers with data-driven insights to make more profitable production decisions, optimizing labor cost efficiency and improving crop yield. With Agrilyst, indoor growers create seeding plans, schedule harvests, assign tasks, manage climate and nutrient density, and forecast...
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