Enabling technologies for the animal protein value chain
This week Tyson Foods named Dean Banks as its next Chief Executive Officer. Dean Banks was named president of Tyson Foods last December, but the media references his experience as a “ tech executive” and his time at Alphabet. Curious about this experience, I went to his LinkedIn profile. Was he a C-level executive at Alphabet? Division [...]
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 [...]
“We are going to replace animals in the food system by 2035,” said Pat Brown, founder and CEO of Impossible Foods, in late August 2019. According to a Harvard Business School case study on plant-based meat alternatives: “In 2016, after $80 million in research and development, Impossible Foods launched its first product: a plant-based imitation of [...]
In the 1950’s my grandparents began growing green chili peppers in the high desert of southeast Arizona with its warm summer days, cool evenings, and dirt ditch irrigation. The limiting factor for pepper market growth was the inconsistency of the heat - a consumer would get a really hot chili one meal and a mild [...]
“We don’t see many options." "It’s not relevant, it doesn’t move the right needle." These are 2 common themes about technology solutions that I hear when talking with big players in animal ag production that would be customers, the strategics that would be acquirers, and the angel & venture investors that would provide early capital [...]
Listen to this interview with David Newman on the Future of Agriculture podcast (link) Building a moat is the only way to escape the tyranny of commodity markets, and in this podcast interview David Newman explains why Newman Farm began building a moat, and what they learned along the way. This isn’t mom & pop stuff, [...]
Tyson recently announced their next CEO and there’s only one way that decision makes sense: Tyson intends to be a tech company. The natural next questions are, why & how would Tyson do this? To answer the Why, follow the margin. Here’s a snapshot of Tyson’s FY Q3 margins across business lines for 2020 [...]
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 [...]