During 2019, iSelect, The VanTrump Report and The Yield Lab Institute are sponsoring a series of weekly webinars featuring the best in agriculture innovation. Agrifood Conversations is all about driving innovation and each month will highlight a specific theme, from biologicals to vertical farms, featuring new and exciting companies at the forefront of the industry. Learn about new trends in ag, connect with industry leaders and discover new solutions.
All webinar registrants receive a free short-term subscription to The Van Trump Report and an emailed recording for the webinar.
Meet the Scientists Who Are Creating the Cleanest, Most Sustainable Meat on the Planet | Nov. 14 3 PM CT
Just because it’s generally considered healthier than other protein sources, fish is often seen as a sustainable way to feed the world’s growing population. But the fact is, due to overfishing and overconsumption, all 17 of the world’s major fishing areas have reached or exceeded their natural limits. Plus, one-third of the world’s fish catch is fed directly to livestock. Learn how one company is working to correct this imbalance at “Meet the Scientists Who Are Creating the Cleanest, Most Sustainable Meat on the Planet,” a webinar to be held at 3pm CT on November 14th featuring Justin Kolbeck, co-founder and CEO of Wild Type.
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AgriFood Conversations: Meet the Scientists Who Are Creating the Cleanest, Most Sustainable Meat on the Planet
Wild Type is developing a platform to allow any meat to be cultured in the lab, multiplying basic animal cells and using well-defined procedures to effectively culture meat. Rather than focus on any one type of protein, the company’s technology can be …
AgriFood Conversations: Meat That’s Better for Us, the Animals and the Planet
Using state-of-the-art cell culture techniques, Higher Steaks is growing high-quality meats using just small samples of animal cells, feeding them a rich and animal-free growth media. The meats created using this technology do not require the use any a …
How Manure Might Just Save the Planet
Waste, fertilizer, feces. Manure is one substance that is available all over the world in mass quantities. But it’s also one that, to-date, has not yet been fully leveraged. A number of different innovators are working to change that, developing new ma …
AgriFood Conversations: From Waste to Water: Creating Clean Water and Bioenergy from Wastewater and More
Digested Organics is working to reduce the cost and environmental impact of waste disposal through onsite waste treatment and bio-energy production. It is focused on the conversion of organic wastes such as manure, digestate, food & beverage manufa …
Biomass Controls: Innovation for Global Sanitation
Biomass Controls was founded in 2015 as part of the BMGF Re-Invented Toilet Challenge, and its patents are based on protecting the environment and returning nutrients to the soil. The company has employees in India, Spain, Switzerland, Germany and the …
CHONEX: Nutrient Recycling for More Efficient, More Sustainable Farming
CHONEX is a nutrient recycling company founded to help make agriculture and animal production more sustainable. The egg and poultry industry produces byproducts rich in nutrients for recycling. Using a process built and refined in nature, Chonex conver …
CowPots: A Better, More Sustainable Pot for Gardeners and Growers
CowPots uses composted cow manure to create 100% biodegradable, renewable and recycled plant pots for both home and commercial use. As an alternative to plastic pots, CowPots quickly decompose once planted, enriching the soil and breaking down complete …
SoMax: Turning Organic Waste into Energy, Clean Water and More
SoMax BioEnergy uses organic waste as a resource for sustainable development and resilient waste management in agriculture, manufacturing and sanitation. The company diverts agricultural, food, septic, green and other organic wastes from landfills and …
Afineur: Creating the Next Generation of Food Ingredients from Fermentation By-Products
Afineur is designing microbiomes, selecting and team-up microbes for their ability to naturally improve food nutritional value, taste, and texture through fermentation. Its technology platform uses the latest advances in biotechnology and food science …
Induction Food Systems: Scalable Electric Heating Systems to Solve Industrial-Scale Problems
Induction Food Systems helps food and beverage manufacturers improve efficiency and expand production with on-demand precision heating equipment. The company’s technology uses electromagnetic energy to create the first scalable, precise, and efficient …
Plasma Nutrition: Optimizing Ingredients for Enhanced Bioavailability
Plasma Nutrition’s ioProtein® is a high quality, bioavailability enhanced protein powered by the company’s patent-pending technology. Designed to deliver optimal nutrition and maximum physical results with great taste, Plasma Nutrition call it the next …
Vestaron: Crop Protection, Without Synthetic Pesticides
Vestaron is dedicated to improving the safety, efficacy and sustainability of crop protection by ending our reliance on conventional synthetic pesticides with biological peptides that are safer for humans, birds, fish, pollinators and the environment. …
Plastomics: Designing Better Crops to Help Farmers Feed the World
The products created during the first phase of the biotech revolution helped growers produce more food than ever before with less environmental impact. However, those engineering technologies were developed more than 20 years ago and can no longer keep …
Agrynex: Enzyme Immobilization for Sustainable Crop Protection
Agrynex is developing enzyme-based crop protection products that deploy a naturally occurring antimicrobial enzyme system to protect seeds where and when it counts. They are currently applying their patent protected technology to seed disinfection solu …
AgroSpheres: Crop Protection That’s Greener, Cleaner and More Effective
AgroSphere is revolutionizing crop protection through a new, environmentally-friendly delivery platform called AgriCell. The system is designed to provide better protection of active ingredients, more finely tuned controlled release and superior pest t …
RootWave: Using Electricity to Control Weeds
The RootWave solution uses electricity to boil weeds from the inside out, from the root upwards, effectively killing the plant in a clean, organic manner without the use of any chemicals. It’s a sustainable, no-till and effective solution that works in …
Edete: Improving Pollination by Doing it Better Than Bees
Edete Precision Agriculture Technologies is solving the world’s ever-growing pollination challenge by developing and manufacturing an efficient, automated fruit orchard pollination system and providing optimized pollination services to companies and gr …
HiveGenie: A Complete Beehive Monitoring System for Beekeepers
HiveGenie is bringing the power of technology to help address the worldwide challenges of bee death and colony collapse. Its monitoring system includes real-time census data, vital signs collection (including temperature, humidity, luminosity and weig …
The Bee Corp: Empowering Growers and Beekeepers with Big Data Insights into Beehive Health
The Bee Corp. applies data analytics to beehives to help growers with pollination. It developed a baseline statistical model of a healthy hive in 2017, and has since expanded expanded to new models to determine hive strength for pollination. Its goal i …
PlantResponse: Bringing Science to the Service of Agriculture
PlantResponse Biotech is a plant biotechnology company specializing in plant-innate immunity, drought and stress tolerance, and nutrient use efficiency. The company utilizes its expertise in the science of plants to understand key crop challenges and d …
Kula Bio: An Innovative Approach to Nitrogen Fertilizers
Kula Bio is developing sustainable, biological solutions for modern agriculture. It supercharges natural nitrogen-fixing microbes with renewable energy in order to deliver reliable, low-cost organic biofertilizers. By rewiring the energy flow from sun …
Biovante: Proven Formulas for Better Seed, Soil and Plant Health
No two farms are alike. Climates are different, soil compositions are different, even production goals are different. That’s why, for farmers looking to augment the biological and nutritional needs of their crops, there is no one-size-fits-all solution …
Holganix: Plant Probiotics That Grow Strong Crops, from the Ground Up
Food demand is on track to double by 2050, demand for organic food is growing significantly faster than the acreage to produce it, and yet the world has lost a third of all arable land in the last 40 years due to erosion and pollution damage. Farmers t …
De-commoditization of Agriculture
De-commoditization of Agriculture Featuring:Travis Potter, Tractor Soda; Kellee James, CEO, Mercaris; Shari Rogge-Fidler, CEO, Family Farms Group Moderator: Rob Trice, Founder & Partner, Better Food Ventures How do I differentiate myself? Contract …
The Future of Food and Health
The Future of Food and Health This week’s AgriFood Conversations, The Future of Food and Health, is from the Davos on the Delta conference. Davos on the Delta sits at the crossroads of dramatic change in agriculture, food, and health — where the most i …
Food Fight!
Is Congress to blame for our health problems? For most Americans, the likely answer is yes, but not for the reasons you may think. In the late ‘70s, Congress began exploring the links between diet and health, due to significant issues with heart healt …
AgTech Disruption
Wang, Polaroid, Kodak. AOL, Yahoo, GE. So many brands that dominated in previous generations are no longer here, and the consolidation isn’t over yet. The legacy, monolithic industry structure begs for disruption. Are the ag giants next? If consumers r …
Tillable: Airbnb for Farmland is Here
There are two sides to the farmland equation: landowners and those that lease from them. But, for both parties, speed is of the essence. Tenant farmers need to secure land well in advance to prepare for the yearly growing season, while landowners need …
FarmTogether: Crowdfunding Come to Farmland Investing
FarmTogether is an online marketplace for farmland investing – connecting interested investors with institutional-quality, U.S. farmland investments. Through its platform, investors can invest in opportunities directly online through a private, secure …
FarmlandFinder: The Easiest Way to Find Land for Sale
At any given moment, there are more than 8,000 pieces of income producing land up for auction across the U.S. Midwest, creating a maze of listings, brokers and sales channels for investors looking to bid on or buy this land. This is not only challengin …
AgriFood Conversations: The Future of AgTech According to Women
According to some estimates, women make up roughly 30% of U.S. farmers and ag industry professionals, and yet they remain a little-known voice in the national conversation about the future of ag and the food systems. That’s changing, however, in large …
Inari: Creating Personalized Seeds for Farmers
Inari is building what it calls the world’s first “Seed Foundry,” a technique that starts by inputting every detail about a grower’s local environment and determining the genetic traits that would best help a crop succeed there. Then, the company break …
ImpactVision: Preventing Food Supply Chain Waste With Consistent, Premium Products
Every year in the United States as much as 30-40% of the food supply is thrown out, accounting for some 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food. Often this is due to spoilage or damage during the harvesting and production process, but it’s im …
Trace Genomics: Leveraging DNA to Unlock the Power of Soil
Each tablespoon of soil contains millions of organisms that tell a story about the environment it’s providing for crops. For this reason, soil is the foundation that supports every farm on the planet. Everything else — from seed, to water, to fertiliz …
Agree Market: Creating a Global Marketplace for Agriculture Trading
Agriculture is, by its very nature, a local industry. Crops are grown in the field, sold to nearby wholesalers, and then progress through a supply chain of middlemen and other vendors. What farmers need, then is direct access to the worldwide market. L …
FarmLead: Buy & Sell Grains with Ease
What farmers think of as “marketing” is often completely different from marketing in any other industry. Without the proper tools to engage the grain market directly, from a marketing standpoint, there isn’t any marketing going on at all. There are maj …
Mercaris: Bringing Market Intelligence to Sustainable Agriculture
Agriculture, food and their related industries are, simply put, a massive market. They contributed a combined $1.05 trillion to U.S. GDP in 2016, a 5.7% share, with farms alone accounting for 1% of total GDP. Within the agriculture and food space, sale …
New West Genetics: Genetics, Breeding and Production Solutions for High-Quality Hemp
Building on its experience breeding plants like rice and canola, New West Genetics is now using its proprietary methods and knowledge base to improve the genetics and growing processes of Cannabis sativa, initially starting with hemp and eventually exp …
Tiger Fiber Hemp: American Hemp from American Farmers
The United States is at the dawn of one of the largest agricultural revolutions our country has ever experienced. The legalization of industrial hemp presents an opportunity to radically transform the landscape of agriculture, manufacturing, and retail …
Sana Packaging: Hemp-Based Packaging Solutions for the Cannabis Industry
Sana Packaging is creating hemp-based packaging for the cannabis industry because it views hemp as the ideal industrial crop. It is both sustainable and regenerative, requiring less water than other industrial crops and none of the pesticides. About 50 …
enEvolv: Hacking Evolution for Speed, Diversity and Savings
Biology has solutions for all the world’s problems. From carbon emissions, to food shortages, to pandemic diseases, researchers are working to harness the power of the natural world to make human lives better. Learn how one company is harnessing the po …
Performance Livestock Analytics: Big Data Comes to the Livestock Industry
Performance Livestock Analytics aims to help livestock producers become more sustainable and profitable, with precision ag applications that combine today’s cloud-based technologies with on-farm information, bringing big data solutions to the livestock …
Agrivida: What’s Really in Your Feed? Enzymes for Healthier, Greener Livestock
Agrivida’s platform produces enzymes inside kernels of corn, offering a natural, convenient, and profitable way to introduce beneficial enzymes such as phytase and glucanase into livestock feed by simply replacing a small amount of corn with Agrivida’s …
Beta Hatch: Creating Better Food for Our Food From Insects
Beta Hatch’s insect-rearing technology converts mealworms and their waste into high-value proteins, oils, and nutrients for agriculture. As of right now, 30% of all crop production goes to feed livestock and feed makes up 50% of the cost of our meat. B …
Osmo Systems: Water Quality Sensors That Are Made for the Pond
The aquaculture industry is far bigger than most people realize, already supplying over half of the world’s seafood. And that’s on track to increase, as demand continues to rise despite the fact that supply is falling. More than 90% of wild fish stocks …
VakSea: Proven Immune-Boosting Proteins for Aquaculture
VakSea seeks to protect high-value fish and shrimp species from disease. Its first product is an immune-boosting protein to protect Whiteleg Shrimp against White Spot Disease caused by White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV). VakSea’s products are the first i …
Nanopore Diagnostics: Microbe Testing That’s Cheap, Easy and Portable
Nanopore Diagnostics is developing the iNDxer, a testing platform that will put microbiology testing into the pocket of the end user, saving time and money. Testing that once took days and highly trained professionals will instead be produced rapidly b …
P&P Optica: A New ‘Eye in the Sky’ to Prevent Food Contamination
Traditional food processing systems have a major flaw: scale. What works with human workers and on limited order sizes falls apart when you’re dealing with massive amounts of food and millions of pieces of food per shift. Human food inspectors simply c …
Equinom: Breeding the Plant Proteins of Tomorrow
According to the United Nations, the global population is on track to reach 9.5 billion by 2050, up nearly 50% from 2000. That’s a lot of new mouths to feed, and in addition to this increased demand for food increased incomes and urbanization mean that …
Victory Hemp Foods: Will Hemp be America’s Next Commodity Row Crop?
Hemp used to be everywhere. George Washington famously grew it on his Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, as did fellow founding father Thomas Jefferson, and the plant’s fibers were widely celebrated for their exceptional strength and durability. That cha …
Arvegenix: A Productive Winter Cover Crop That Pays
A cover crop is a crop that’s planted primarily in the offseason to manage soil erosion, soil fertility, soil quality, water, weeds, pests, diseases and other long-term farm concerns. Once that work is done, though, these crops are typically plowed und …
TerViva: Transforming Distressed Farmland for New Uses Through Pongamia
The world’s arable land base continues to shrink every year at an alarming rate, falling by 40 million acres in the past 40 years in the U.S. alone. At the same time, the global population is growing rapidly, causing demand for food and fuel to soar. A …
Nutrivert: Postbiotics and the Promise of Non-Antibiotic Growth Promotion
According to some predictions, antibiotic-resistant bacteria will kill 10 million people and cause tremendous economic loss by 2050. A primary driver of selection for antibiotic-resistant bacteria is overuse of antibiotics in livestock, where the consu …
EIO Diagnostics: New Agtech Tools to Diagnose Udder Diseases in Dairy Animals
Using a technique known as multispectral imaging, the EIO Diagnostics solution allows farmers to spot udder abnormalities as they form. Being able to identify a Staphylococcus aureus infection, even when a standard SCC test is showing levels below 200, …
ApisProtect: Helping Beekeepers Prevent Losses and Increase Productivity in Their Hives
Only in beekeeping could annual losses of 33% or more be considered an improvement, but that’s the reality of working with bees. Unlike typical farmers, keepers are essentially wranglers of natural colonies, at the whims of whatever the bees want to do …
Mercaris: Bringing Market Intelligence to Sustainable Agriculture
The market for sustainable agriculture — including organics and non-GMO — is at a critical point. While some resources are in place to educate consumers, address public policy, and support scientific research on sustainable agricultural crops, far le …
