Louisa Burwood-Taylor, Author at AgFunderNews

Louisa Burwood-Taylor

Louisa is editor of AgFunderNews, with a background in foodtech, agriculture and financial journalism. Please get in touch at louisa@agfunder.com or follow her on twitter @iamlbt.

Future Food: Catching up with GFI’s Bruce Friedrich to talk alt protein winners, losers, innovation whitespace

December 12, 2019

In this episode of the podcast, I catch-up with GFI's Bruce Friedrich and revisit some questions I asked him back in 2016.

BREAKING: Perfect Day closes $140m Series C led by Temasek to scale B2B dairy alternatives

December 11, 2019

We asked Perfect Day why they're leaving value on the table by focusing on partnerships and not marketing its own brand and how they're staying ahead of the competition.

As agtech moves from “more with less” to higher quality, Benson Hill Seeds has right idea for 2020

December 9, 2019

Do more with less. It's probably fair to say that's been the key mantra for the agtech industry over the past decade. As we approach 2020, expect more attention on improving the quality of the food we produce. Benson Hill is one example.

UPDATE: Bond Pet Foods raises $1.2m seed round to take the animal out of pet food

December 6, 2019

Did you know that if America's cats and dogs were a country, they'd be the fifth largest consumer of meat products globally? Now add the world's pets into that; that's a big contribution to the carbon footprint of the world's meat industry.

BASF’s Xarvio partners with Arable to improve fungicide recs in lead up to outcome-based pricing

December 4, 2019

Xarvio is now pulling data from Arable's hyperlocal weather data sensors to help farmers improve the timing and efficacy of their fungicide applications, which will feed into BASF's new business model plans for farmers.

President Barack Obama or Eddie Vedder? My week at Dreamforce

November 27, 2019

Luckily I didn't have to choose. Here’s a few things I heard while living it up at the St Regis and bumping into celebs at every turn.

Forward Fooding reveals FoodTech 500 2019 finalists

November 20, 2019

The idea for the FoodTech 500 first came over a team lunch at Forward Fooding HQ, where we were debating the recent IPO of Beyond Meat and wondering who will be the next big player in AgriFoodTech to IPO, writes Lesley Stonier.

Food & agtech investors are most excited about the future in Asia

November 19, 2019

With Idea2Scale, we conducted a survey of 50 global venture capital firms that invest in foodtech and agtech and asked them about the categories and geographies they were most excited about as well as the key challenges to investing in the sector.

Plant Response Biotech merges with Koch spin-out in first move of biologicals roll-up

November 18, 2019

Plant Response Biotech has merged with Koch Biological Solutions in the first of a planned series of "rollup" deals for the biological crop input category, AFN can exclusively reveal. Read on to get the scoop on how this deal came about.

Bowery CEO: Building tech is expensive, takes time but has direct impact on economics of vertical farming

November 12, 2019

Bowery Farming, the New York-based vertical farming startup that counts Google, First Round Capital, and famous chef Tom Collichio as investors, has just raised an extra $50 million as an extension to its Series B.

Future Food: Who’s responsible for obesity? And when Futurist Jack Bobo is pro-tradition

November 7, 2019

"I'm very optimistic and excited about what the world will look like in 2050 but I think it is helpful though to think about where we've come from in order to think about where we're going."

Paine Schwartz is eyeing plant-based revolution with new $1.5bn PE fund

November 6, 2019

Institutional investors are increasingly looking to invest in important sectors that matter and food and agriculture is one of them, according to Kevin Schwartz.

EXCLUSIVE: Pontifax AgTech holds first close of Fund II on $140m with $170m committed

October 14, 2019

Pontifax AgTech Fund II is targeting $250m overall.

UPDATE: Future Meat Technologies raises $14m Series A as Memphis Meats eyes jumbo Series B

October 10, 2019

This is the second-largest round for a cultivated meat startup after Memphis Meat's $17 million Series A.

What the Fork? A review of Good Day’s CBD cold brew & UbU’s hemp tonic

October 9, 2019

What’s this? A product review? On AFN? I know; we’re moving out of our comfort zone and spreading our wings – or rather our tastebuds - to sample the cutting edge of consumer food products with a new series.

BRIEF: Motif hires agrifood industry veteran from Kraft Heinz, PepsiCo, DuPont as CTO

October 7, 2019

The microbe-based food ingredients company has hired a new chief technology officer: Michael Leonard

Paine Schwartz closes $1.425bn food & ag private equity fund

October 1, 2019

The firm closed the fund with new and existing investors from across the globe.

From biz dev at Grubhub to Kraft Heinz’s VC arm, Steve Sanger is still selling hard

September 30, 2019

Evolv Ventures launched late last year as the venture arm of ketchup and mac-and-cheese behemoth Kraft Heinz with $100 million to invest in startups. We caught up with Steve Sanger, a partner at Evolv, to find out more about the fund's strategy and his personal shift from startup to investor

Indoor AgTech Landscape: 1,000+ companies innovating inside

September 26, 2019

People are recognizing the potential opportunity for indoor growing to address many of the challenges in food and ag. Since the Plenty funding in late 2017, we have seen a surge of funding for both sunless and greenhouse approaches, says The Mixing Bowl releasing its first Indoor AgTech Landscape.

What’s happening at Climate Week NYC? Keep track of major agrifood announcements here

September 24, 2019

Announcements are coming thick and fast out of Climate Week NYC as a range of organizations take advantage of the spotlight to push forward their environmental agendas.