Paris-based insect farming venture Ÿnsect has been awarded a €20 million grant from the European Commission and a €3.7 billion European public-private partnership to build an industrial-size facility in northern France.
"I had a front-row seat to the buzz - and the reality. It’s easy to criticize this industry, and the entrepreneurs who drive it forward, for being full of hype. In many cases, that is true; but it’s part of a more complicated reality," writes Sean McDonald.
Last week, Enterra Feed Corporation, an insect farming business from Canada, announced its latest round of funding and plans to construct three new insect factories in Canada and the US.
The AgriFood News Aggregator features headlines from around the globe collected on AgFunder’s news sharing platform #feediteach week.Have news to share? Post it here and engage, share, and debate with your peers.
The Mekong AgriTech Challenge (MATCh), the Mekong region's first AgTech pitch competition and market access boot camp, launched for the first time last week.
Beta Hatch cultivates mealworms for animal feed using patent-pending equipment, a trade-secret process and unique genetic stock, developed by entomologist and founder Virginia Emery.
It was an exciting year in farm technology, to say the least, with several exits and record deals set and then overtaken by even larger deals just weeks or months later. Check out the standout deals of 2017.
IKEA's iconic meatballs and packaged food products are headed for a shake-up, says Michael la Cour, so we caught up with him to find out what's in store and how startups might play a role.
Since 2014, insect startups raised $124 million. Of this, $4.2 million went to companies creating consumer products for human consumption - the rest went to insect farming operations.
The company will soon break ground on a 117-acre property in Boynton Beach, Florida, which contains a 55-acre man-made lake where the firm will operate a “de-coupled” aquaponics system.
According to the founder, Hargol is the only active, commercial-scale grasshopper farm in the world and consumer products customers are clamoring to get this traditional protein source.
The Good Kitchen, launched last year as Europe's first accelerator program for social startup businesses tackling food issues, will award low-interest loans to the startups to get their businesses off the ground.
Also, John Deere has opened a strategic technology office in the Iowa State University Research Park and Aggrigator launches a Farm to Shelf Marketplace for small farmers to sell direct to restaurants, schools, and grocery stores.
Investment in seafood and aquaculture technology increased 271% compared to the $52 million raised across both 2014 and 2015, but there is still a huge need for technology to bring efficiency and sustainability to the industry.
