This week: slow in fundraises, heavy in partnership announcements: Air New Zealand and My Native Forest; Corteva and Profluent Bio; DoorDash and Serve Robotics, to name a few.
In other news, the European Parliament is backing a ban on terms such as steak, sausage or burger on plant-based meats, Tyson and Cargill are on the hook to pay a price-fixing settlement, and color manufacturers are challenging a ban on synthetic food dyes in West Virginia.
Funding news
🇫🇷 France-based Phagos lands $29m to further develop its antibiotic alternative for livestock AgFunderNews
🇨🇦 Vive Crop Protection secures US$10 million to advance its Canadian ag tech Real Agriculture
🇦🇪 Aydi raises $7.5 million seed to launch its AI agronomy assistant Wamda
🇮🇱 Asterix Foods emerges from stealth with $4.2m to unlock ‘2nd wave’ of animal-free proteins in plant cell culture AgFunderNews
M&A, IPOs & partnerships
🇳🇿 Air New Zealand invests in nature-based carbon credits Carbon Herald
🇺🇸 Corteva, Profluent Bio partner to develop gene editing tools AgTech Navigator
🇺🇸 🇳🇱 Gowan Company acquires Ceradis Pymwymic
🇺🇸 Chestnut Carbon and Funga Partner to supercharge forest restoration and carbon capture C Carbon
🇺🇸 🇧🇬 Checkerspot teams up with Huvepharma to produce human milk fat analog at scale AgFunderNews
🇺🇸 Bayer Partners with Cornfed Farms to create first ForwardFarm in Midwest American Ag Network
🇺🇸 Serve Robotics partners with DoorDash Restaurant Dive
🇺🇸 InSoil and Anew Climate have established a strategic collaboration to market over 500,000 Lithuanian verified soil carbon removals Yahoo Finance
People moves
🇺🇸 PepsiCo announces new chief financial officer PR Newswire
🇺🇸 Driscoll’s announces Brie Reiter Smith to assume full-time role as vice chair Business Wire
🇺🇸 Climax Foods rebrands as Bettani Farms, hires new CEO, focuses on markets it can ‘serve at scale profitably’ AgFunderNews
🇮🇳 Zepto gets new HR exec Deal Street Asia
Other news
🇺🇸 Farmers Business Network the latest to announce spin off company, following Corteva, Kraft Heinz AgFunderNews
🇺🇸 Windfall Bio begins construction on methane-to-value demonstration plant in Houston Yahoo Finance
🇺🇸 Evolv launches peptide that engages GLP-1 receptors as new ‘biomimetics’ category emerges AgFunderNews
🇺🇸 Tyson, Cargill to pay $87.5 million in record beef price-fixing settlement Ag Daily
🇪🇺 EU Parliament backs ‘veggie burger’ labelling ban on plant-based meat Green Queen
🇺🇸 Color manufacturers sue to strike down West Virginia artificial dye law Food Dive
