NEW FOOD ORDER🎙: Investigating alternative business models in food & agriculture

Editor’s Note: New Food Order is a new podcast brought to by AFN’s parent company AgFunder in collaboration with Food+Tech Connect, co-hosted by AgFunder’s Louisa Burwood-Taylor and Food+Tech Connect’s Danielle Gould.

The views expressed in the podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the team at AFN or AgFunder.

Companies across all industries are being forced to rethink the way they do business, and food and agriculture are no exception. The food and agriculture industries are major contributors to today’s social and environmental crises, paying some of the world’s lowest wages for some of the most dangerous jobs and emitting one-third of greenhouse gas emissions.

In her consulting work with Alpha Food Labs, my co-host on the New Food Order podcast Danielle Gould, noticed increasing enquiries from large food corporations about how to ensure they are resilient in an ever-changing climate – environmentally, socially, consumer-based, and otherwise. And that got her researching new and existing alternative business models for them.

But it’s not just big businesses that looking at alternative ways to structure their businesses. Building a planet and people-positive business has become increasingly important to business leaders both intrinsically and intrinsically, as their customers demand it.

In this episode of New Food Order, we take you on a journey through a few existing and emerging alternative business models that companies and farmers are exploring today that decentralize power, distribute value more equitably across all stakeholders, and aim to have a better impact on our planet. 

What to expect in this episode:

• Different ways of doing business, including cooperatives, B Corps, perpetual purpose trusts, stewardship ownership, DAOs, NFTs, and open source 
• How these alternative business models may work better than the norm for the people working within
• Why a better deal for food and agriculture employees can benefit all of us
• Barriers to entry to these models and how to break them down
• The potential failings of emerging business models and the risk of building the wrong thing with good intentions
• The challenge of applying models that have been successful on a small scale, to large food corporations
• How Western business tactics have impacted emerging market farming communities
• Business model inspiration from emerging markets
• How sharing knowledge publicly can remove friction for small businesses
• The appetite to fund these kinds of businesses

Our guests include: author and regenerative business pioneer Carol Sanford; farmer and activist Jon Jandai; Adrian Rodrigues, co-founder and managing director at Providence Capital Group and formerly of Patagonia; Snaxshot founder Andrea Hernandez; Nigel Teh, founder of Next Billion Burgers, and Katherine Miller, author and founder of Table 81, formerly of the James Beard Foundation.

How to listen

You can listen in the player below, or wherever you get your podcasts. And please remember to subscribe and share with anyone you think will find it interesting.

*Giveaway Details*

In this week’s episode, you’ll also hear us introduce a new giveaway with our partners at New Hope Network to offer ALL of our listeners an exclusive 25% off discount for an Expo West 2023 badge and ONE lucky listener will have the opportunity to win a free booth at Expo West 2024 ($8k value).

To enter, do the following by February 17th:

• Head to New Food Order’s show page on Apple Podcasts
• Make sure you are subscribed
• Leave us a review – good or bad – but hopefully good! (Scroll to the bottom of the page to do so.)
• Screenshot the review and email it to Meg at [email protected] – if you’re interested in the 25% discount to this year’s Expo, please call it out in the email.  
• Lastly, click here to register to receive our newsletters. In addition to New Food Order content, AgFunder and Food+Tech Connect publish the leading newsletters for the food and agtech community.
• Those who follow New Hope Network, Food + Tech Connect and AgFunder on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn will receive a double entry.

Good luck!

New Food Order is sponsored by FoodShot Global and New Hope Network.

It is hosted by Danielle Gould and me, Louisa Burwood-Taylor