Betting on the Next Harvest: Why Agtech’s Moment May Finally Have Arrived
May 27, 2025
For the first time, agricultural innovation may align with both the economics of venture capital and the urgency of supply disruption
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May 27, 2025
For the first time, agricultural innovation may align with both the economics of venture capital and the urgency of supply disruption
April 25, 2025
Exiting a company is a milestone—but for mission-driven founders, it’s also a chance to rethink how they create change.
March 1, 2022
Gene-recombinant biotechnologies aim to produce key animal proteins at a fraction of the cost of conventional animal husbandry. The implications for research, medicine, food systems, and the climate could be huge. But can these emergent technologies scale quickly enough to spur system-wide change?
October 12, 2021
Seaweed is the collective noun for a group of at least 10,000 species of macroalgae, and new species are being discovered each year. Although seaweeds have been consumed for millennia, they’re increasingly (and rightly) viewed as a hero ingredient. With only half a dozen species cultivated at scale right now, seaweed’s potential for the alt-protein industry is only just starting to unfold.
September 21, 2021
Every now and again a young person comes along whose intellect and wisdom seem to defy their age. Over the past year, we’ve had the privilege of working closely with one such individual. If you haven’t yet heard of her, you probably soon will. Meet cellular agriculture’s rising star, Avery Parkinson.
September 14, 2021
Much attention has been given to the innovators producing plant- and cell-based alternatives to traditionally animal-based foods, but less recognized are the ones developing serums and mixes in which those proteins can grow. Some of the most creative are using ancient and simple components—including algae and mycelia—to make the foundations for animal protein alternatives.
September 7, 2021
Japan is forging a unique development path for cellular agriculture — one in which no one is left behind and anyone interested can get involved in helping create an open, inclusive future for the technology. This is the story of the Shojinmeat Project and how a citizen science experiment came to have big impact on national policy.
September 1, 2021
Brave New Meat podcast host Doug Grant talks with Michael Aucoin, CEO of alternative protein investment firm Eat Beyond Global Holdings. As a publicly traded stock on the Canadian Securities Exchange, Eat Beyond (CSE: EATS) is currently one of the only options available offering retail investors early exposure to emerging alt protein startups and technologies.
August 11, 2021
“Many other industries use a linear model — take, make, use, and dispose — which is clearly unsustainable. Once a supply chain is established,” says New Harvest Research Fellow Dawne Skinner, “it is essentially locked in because it is too costly to reconfigure. Given that the cell-based industry is nascent, we are in the stage of initiating a new supply chain. My research aims to figure out how we can start this supply chain off on the right foot.”
August 10, 2021
Though opportunity in this space is abundant, government regulators have not yet caught up to the pace of new product innovation. Given the significant implications that new regulations and guidance can have for the alternative protein industry, it is important to ensure that the end results are inclusive and comprehensive.
July 6, 2021
Rarely do retail investors have the opportunity to gain exposure and access to a new technology this early. That’s partly because Agronomics — which bills itself as “a thematic investment play into the clean meat sector” — is one of the only publicly traded options available to those who see the potential in cultivated meat.
June 16, 2021
Though perhaps not thought of as immediately as startup magnets like Silicon Valley, Singapore, or Israel, it would be a mistake to overlook the innovation culture of Canada — the outlook for cellular agriculture there is highly optimistic.
March 24, 2021
How do you feed 10 billion people? The university that helped turn California’s wine industry from afterthought into economic juggernaut has set its sights on cultivated meat.
March 16, 2021
There is no shortage of intelligent and passionate people who want to get involved in cellular agriculture, but there are few resources directing them to the various pathways into the field. In order to solve this problem, Cellular Agriculture Australia has developed an online resource called “Pathways into Cellular Agriculture.”
February 24, 2021
Over the next two years, many cultivated meat startups will bring products to market leading to acquisitions and IPOs as the industry matures. Looking toward this future, it’s worth considering how valuable these companies could be.
February 8, 2021
UK-based startup CellulaREvolution has announced new funding to accelerate development of their technology which promises to solve key scalability challenges in cell-based meat production.
February 1, 2021
Investor and author Jim Mellon talks one-on-one with Doug Grant, host of the Brave New Meat podcast, to discuss his new book, Moo’s Law, and the investment opportunity in cultivated meat.
January 20, 2021
The confluence of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, the rapid development of new food technologies and the rising global demand for protein mean that we are on the cusp of a huge and profitable investment wave into new forms of agriculture. The greatest beneficiaries of this investment wave will be cultured and plant-based foods.
January 12, 2021
What I’ve learned through my first eleven Brave New Meat podcast interviews with founders and investors in the cultivated meat industry
December 29, 2020
Cultivated ground meat has the potential to unravel the business model of the beef industry.
July 28, 2020
As global demand for protein grows steadily, our sources of animal protein must diversify to keep up. And Australia is well placed to become an international powerhouse for an emerging research field that could transform the way we produce and eat meat: cellular agriculture.
July 20, 2020
A recently founded startup from Australia has developed a novel edible scaffold for cultivated meat production, addressing one of the key challenges facing the cellular agriculture industry. Perth-based Cass Materials has harnessed the natural fermentation processes discovered in the production of nata de coco — a coconut jelly commonly used in desserts in the Philippines — to manufacture a nanocellulose fiber matrix within which meat cells can adhere and grow.
July 15, 2020
In 2040, one third of the meat on our plates could be grown outside of animals, drastically reducing the leading sources of CO2 emissions and water pollution, while answering the question of how to feed a global population of nine billion. Cellular agriculture companies such as Memphis Meats, BlueNalu, and Mosa Meat are racing to bring their products to market, but they are still missing a key ingredient: affordable culture media available in large quantities. Brussels-based startup Tiamat Sciences believes their technology platform could become the best option to bridge that gap.
June 23, 2020
On December 29, 2017, just two days before New Year’s Eve, Josh Tetrick, the CEO of JUST, and his golden retriever, Elie, boarded a nonstop KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight in San Francisco that would take him halfway around the world to Amsterdam, where he hoped to make the first commercial sale of cell-cultured meat. This article is an excerpt from BILLION DOLLAR BURGER: Inside Big Tech’s Race for the Future of Food by Chase Purdy, with permission from Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2020 by Chase Purdy.
June 3, 2020
While most grocery stores now stock a seemingly endless variety of dairy alternatives derived from nuts, seeds, or grains, what most consumers don’t yet know is that a new kind of real milk—created not by cows but scientists—will likely be joining them on the shelves very soon.
April 7, 2020
In an eponymous book published in 1968, Stanford University Professor Paul R. Ehrlich noted that the rate of population growth would outpace agricultural production, leading to widespread famine and subsequent suffering in the 1970s and 1980s. Many now look back at that prediction and shame it as another example of fear-mongering about a Malthusian catastrophe that has been often repeated throughout history but never come to pass. This post comes from my upcoming book, Cultivated Abundance, which will be published by New Degree Press in July 2020.