Over the course of our summer tour exploring the French foodtech and agtech ecosystem, we were impressed by the variety of approaches and solutions that the entrepreneurs we met are taking to confront the numerous challenges the world is facing in terms of food sustainability, hunger, climate change, biodiversity, environmental collapse, and more.
Many of these solutions employ novel approaches to these issues using cutting edge laboratory technology, while many others put a modern twist on traditional approaches. What became clear over the course of our tour is the importance of both solutions in order to achieve food security and environmental & financial sustainability in the food space for the decades to come.
One example of a high-tech, laboratory approach is Le Papondu, who is creating a vegetable-based egg substitute that can be used in culinary, bakery, and nutritional applications. The founders first met and conceived of the idea while studying biological engineering together, underscoring the centrality of science to their solution. In fact, most of the effort and funding of their venture to this point has gone towards perfecting the chemical engineering of their product, currently a powder-based egg substitute, and expanding finding and expanding their laboratory operations. It is only once this work was well underway that they could then devote time to growing their team and customer base. They are now working on parallel pathing the creation of a more egg-like product while ramping up production, fundraising, and growing.
To us, this emphasizes the notion of food as science, certainly not a new concept, as farmers and big food have been scientifically engineering our food for centuries, but a timely reminder of just how indispensable the laboratory has become to the advancement of food in the 21st century.
Another scientifically-focused startup that we met with, Yeasty, also faced similar challenges as Le Papondu in finding laboratory space and proving their product before they could focus on more strategy-related questions they were facing in the development of their business. The technology behind their solution was perhaps even more critical to their success, as it centered on a proprietary technique for transforming removing bitterness from industrial yeast to be used for human consumption. Without this technology, which they were exploring the possibility of patenting or maintaining intellectual secrecy, their business would lose its competitive advantage and would have to explore other avenues of development or risk going defunct.
However, not all businesses in the foodtech and agtech space rely on purely high-tech or original methods to achieve success; rather, they adapt centuries-old processes or methods in novel ways to the needs of the present day.
Take, for example, Agripolis, a startup specializing in the creation of urban and vertical farms. At its most basic level, they are working to bring agricultural production, which has historically been based in rural areas, into densely populated urban areas on rooftops, within existing green spaces, and anywhere in between. Agripolis and companies like it are important players in the movement to an agriculture that is focused on short-circuit delivery and local production, which we believe will become especially relevant in the future, when 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas by 2050 according to the World Bank. This represents a doubling of the present urban population. Producing food within cities is undeniably a green solution, eliminating a lot of pesticide use, water consumption, fuel consumption, chemical fertilizer use, and many brown features of traditional agriculture.
However, despite the numerous benefits of urban agriculture, one must also be aware of its high cost. Urban farms have high real estate costs, consume high amounts of electricity, require highly paid scientists, technicians, and software talent, and have limited scale potential. And consider all this in an already low-margin industry. Thus, following our tour, we are convinced that while urban agriculture and vertical farming represent an exciting opportunity, this opportunity is incremental and not sufficient to meet the food production needs of tomorrow. For that, we will still need to rely on traditional agriculture, but an updated version capable of enduring the challenges of the climate crisis and carrying capacity of the earth.
A great example of a company that is committed to such practices is Terres de Café, a coffee retailer located in Paris. The principal goal of Terres de Café is to introduce the French to a consumption model of coffee that resembles the approach that they already take to wine consumption. That is to say, with attention to terroir, agricultural practices, flavor profile, and service. Terres de Café develops relationships with coffee growers around the world and engages in partnerships with them to help them produce in a more eco-conscious way, which results in a better product, a better profit, and a better planet that is shared between Terres de Café, their growers, and their customers.
We believe that this model could be adopted across other agricultural, food, and beverage commodities, from fruits and vegetables, dairy products, baked goods, and more. Imagine walking into a supermarket where you could be confident that every product you were buying had a net positive effect on the lives of its producers, on your own health and on that of the planet. A common argument against such a model is that it would be financially infeasible due to the higher cost to the consumer, but we believe that the rapid expansion of Terres de Café, other third wave coffee establishments, and countless other eco-conscious brands shows a high appetite for such solutions. And with a food wastage rate of 33% on the consumer’s end, we believe that an attention to a better product and a relationship with the people and planet responsible for the nourishing of our bodies, that more and more customers would have a greater consciousness towards the quality rather than the quantity of what they consume, and they would find that the 33% they currently spend on waste goes towards health instead.
-Wade Newville & Zoé Toulouse
INSEAD SUMMER STARTUP TOUR 
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