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 [...]
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 [...]
ButcherBox is the first of many D2C plays in animal protein.
$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 [...]
With tech merging into the heartland and producers increasingly using technology, this sets up a perfect storm. These resulting trends should lead to good outcomes & new solutions in animal agriculture.
All startups are - by definition - an exploration, an exploration for the right product, the right business model, the right pricing model, the right market. In my mind there are two types of startups:
Zoetis is leading the way for strategic investment & acquisition of digital animal health solutions. How will competitors respond?
The world is moving fast. Universities seem to move…less fast. With universities making plans for education delivery in the upcoming academic year, it raises some interesting questions about enrollment, revenue, and sustainability of the current model. The question for universities is not how they will serve students this fall. It's how they will serve their [...]
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?
The D2C market will grow rapidly; will farmers or processors win this game?