🥬 Where are they now? Revisiting innovation in our food supply

Innovation, education, and investments in the future of food production

FEATURED CONTENT:
A look back at two organizations that are reimagining our food supply: Rethink Food and Marine Education Initiative.

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Nearly one in eight families in the U.S. currently don’t have enough to eat, and those numbers will only rise as the population grows. How we produce, process, and distribute food accounts for over a third of global greenhouse gas emissions.

With a growing global population and rising temperatures, innovation and adaptation will determine how we produce and distribute food in the future.

Entrepreneurs in food are already building the future of food, as we learned in our Interview with Rini Greenfield, Founding General Partner at Rethink Food, a venture capital firm that invests in companies disrupting the food industry through sustainable and accessible food and beverage solutions for a growing population.

Rethink Food is “focused on supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs in food who are trying to redesign the system,” Greenfield said. The VC firm was launched in 2022, investing in companies that produce more food in a way that doesn’t bring harmful environmental effects while also creating much greater access to nutritious food. Examples include plant-based proteins, synthetic biology (where things like yeast are used to grow proteins), or cultured meat (where meat is grown from animal cells outside the animal).

To Greenfield, all three will be part of our lives in the future.

Vertical farming offers another option for future generations

Agriculture – from how we produce to transport food – is poised to change, too.

Our warming climate and loss of agricultural land are already impacting global food systems, according to recent research from the Climate Impact Lab. Innovation in agriculture can help find ways to feed more people while making food systems more resilient.

The Marine Education Initiative educates the next generation on sustainable agriculture while combating food insecurity. Students are brought in to learn how the “aquaponics” food production system works – using aquaculture (fish in tanks) to grow and feed plants hydroponically (in water instead of soil). Watch our tour of the Delray Beach facility here.

The facility also includes HyperLocal Farms, where almost half of the produce gets donated and the rest sold to restaurants and supermarkets in the Miami area.

“It’s a completely symbiotic system,” noted founder Nicholas Metropulos. “Not only are we able to donate more food, but we are able to produce it sustainably.”

One of its most successful products is microgreens, grown vertically in one of several dozen rows of trays. “We’re able to cut out the environmental cost completely and still provide the same value of crops in our facility,” Metropulos said of the difference between traditional and sustainable farming.

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