Enabling technologies for the animal protein value chain
10 weeks into writing the weekly Prime Future newsletter, I've been wrestling with the where-are-we-going-with-this questions like, who am I really writing for and why? The bleeding-edge livestock producer? The soon-to-be founder? The seasoned entrepreneur? The investor considering the space? The biz dev lead sourcing M&A targets? For the last 3 months I’ve been quarantining [...]
The livestock & poultry industry has spent decades driving cost out of animal production systems to increase profit. And we’ve done it well. Really well. More pounds per animal. Less feed per pound of gain. Least cost feed formulation. Increased efficiency. And yet, we see record high number of farm bankruptcies, near record low farm income, [...]
Kerryann Kocher, Principal at Rock Road Consulting, recently presented this content to highlight the need for innovation in animal agriculture and ways the industry and entrepreneurs can foster adoption of new technologies. This is a summary of her presentation. Rock Road Consulting has tracked a total of 166 startups with offerings across Animal Ag Tech. [...]
Robotics are poised to transform farming, why not meat processing?
Hypothesis: Direct to Consumer (D2C) business models will be a high growth sales channel for all meat & poultry companies within 5 years. And to capitalize on the D2C trend, packers must get serious about building capability…soon. For those who might say this market is still too small for packers to pay attention yet, remember [...]
The D2C market will grow rapidly; will farmers or processors win this game?
ButcherBox is the first of many D2C plays in animal protein.
“For startups, 2010 - 2020 was about disrupting, 2020 - 2030 will be about augmenting. Its saying here’s what you as incumbents do well, here’s what we as tech startups do well, here’s how we combine the two to provide a better customer experience.” This is a quote from a financial technology (fintech) founder talking about [...]
In 2018, Amazon quietly began piloting a new store format, Amazon Go. The premise was this: a shopper walks into the store, scans their Amazon Go app to be allowed through the turnstile, selects items off store shelves, and then walks out of the store. Seconds later, the shopper receives an email with receipt. That’s [...]
$16.9B in venture funding went to agtech companies in 2018. Sensors, robotics, machine learning, CRISPR, plant based <anything>, wearable tech for livestock, and so on. A ton of activity in row crops, a lot of activity in dairy, some interesting plays in livestock…but what about the meat sector? What about that massively critical phase from [...]