LOS GATOS, Calif. — SVG Ventures|THRIVE (https://thriveagrifood.com), a global agrifood investment and innovation platform, revealed the winners of the 2022 THRIVE Global Impact Challenge. The challenge is a global search for the most innovative startups advancing a net-zero future for agriculture.
The four winners, selected from an initial global pool of almost 500 applicants, were in three categories:
- Increasing Food Security (and grand prize) winner: Umami Meats of Singapore
- Improving Soil Health and Biodiversity winner: Verdi of Vancouver, Canada
- Reducing and Offsetting Emissions winner: California Cultured of Sacramento, California
- People’s Choice award: Biochar Now of Berthoud, Colorado
The winners were announced at the Nov. 17, 2022, THRIVE Global Impact Summit that took place at the San Jose Convention Center. In addition to themed panel discussions and industry networking opportunities, the summit showcased 10 finalists and their innovations for agriculture’s net-zero future — all aligned with the UN’s sustainable development goals and key themes of COP27.
“Selecting just four agtech and foodtech winners was a monumental challenge,” said John Hartnett, founder and CEO of SVG Ventures|THRIVE. “But these agrifood startups stood out for their promise to deliver innovation with global impact.”
And the winners are…
Umami Meats was named the Grand Prize Winner of the 2022 THRIVE Global Impact Challenge as well as the THRIVE Winner for Increasing Food Security. The fishing industry generated $252 billion in 2021 alone, but it currently requires catching more than two trillion fish annually. Those numbers will collapse in less than a decade without a radical rethinking of seafood itself. Umami Meats is cultivating seafood, not catching it. In addition to obviating unsustainable fishing practices, cultivated seafood avoids the heavy metals, antibiotics, and microplastics now present in so many aquatic species.
Verdi won for Improving Soil Health and Biodiversity. Small farms are struggling to build, manage, and scale the precision agriculture systems needed to survive. Verdi is building tools for plant-level healthcare that enable growers to de-risk water scarcity and improve crop productivity. The Verdi Platform enables any grower to connect sophisticated software and modular hardware with a rich layer of farm data.
California Cultured took home the prize for Reducing and Offsetting Emissions. Coffee and chocolate are in crisis. The amount of land suitable for coffee and cocoa cultivation is shrinking rapidly. California Cultured is pioneering new plant cell culture technology to reproduce coffee and cocoa that requires a dramatically smaller carbon footprint.
Biochar Now was named the People’s Choice winner. Averting disastrous changes to our climate no longer rests on reigning in pollution, but also on removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Biochar is charcoal produced from decomposing plant matter. It can enrich the soil while removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Biochar Now developed a process to bind toxins during biochar production, making them easier and safer to sequester.
The audience included hundreds of other entrepreneurs, investors, students, and executives from ICL Planet, Bayer, BASF, Driscoll’s, Kubota, Alberta Innovates, Dairy Australia, La Trobe University, Invest Alberta, and Freewave, along with executives from THRIVE’s corporate partners.
Read more about the 2022 THRIVE Global Impact Challenge here.
About SVG Ventures|THRIVE
SVG Ventures|THRIVE is a global agrifood investment and innovation platform. Headquartered in Silicon Valley, THRIVE is the most active agtech investor in the world — investing in, accelerating, and providing market access to more than 8,000 startups throughout more than 100 countries. THRIVE works with promising startups, leading corporations, top universities, and global growers to commercialize agtech and foodtech solutions to the biggest challenges facing agrifood. THRIVE experts, events, programs, and platforms work to foster large-scale adoption of climate-smart technologies. Learn more about THRIVE summits, events, challenges, and programs at https://thriveagrifood.com.
–SVG Ventures|THRIVE
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
ITHACA, N.Y. — Governor Kathy Hochul today announced that ProAgni has been named the $1 million grand prize winner of the Grow-NY business competition, a food and agriculture startup challenge focused on enhancing the emerging food, beverage, and agriculture innovation cluster in Central New York, the Finger Lakes, and the Southern Tier. The Grow-NY competition […]
FRAZEYSBURG, Ohio — More than 300 people attended the Ohio Association of Meat Processors (OAMP) convention recently in Columbus. One of the highlights of the convention is the product competition in which Ohio City Provisions, Cleveland, walked away with the honor of Best of Show out of more than 12o entries. The winning entry was […]
WASHINGTON — Biochar is similar to charcoal and can be added to soil with the goal of improving its quality. It can help increase nutrient and water retention. However, what happens in soil impacts fungi and plants that live there, and it is not always clear how they will react to biochar. Jake Nash, a researcher at […]
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (THE CONVERSATION) — As the effects of climate change intensify and paths for limiting global warming narrow, politicians, media and environmental advocates have rallied behind “carbon farming” as a mutually beneficial strategy for society, the environment and farmers. Agriculture covers more than half of Earth’s terrestrial surface and contributes roughly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Paying farmers […]
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — An increasing awareness and concern about the environment, changes in government policy, America’s re-entry into the Paris Agreement and a robust demand for carbon offsets all point toward an appetite for a different type of agricultural crop – carbon. “There has been an increasing amount of discussion on how to create a […]
