The Mixing Bowl: Innovation Space for the Future of Food

Today we are on Fifth Ave in New York for the conference organised by Forbes and The Mixing Bowl. The location is terrific and Paul Noglow executive director and head of Forbes media explains how it was built in 1926. It used to be a hotel but Forbes decided to take it over after they moved their main offices to Jersey. “We needed a presence in the Fifth, so we took this spot for events and conferences,” he said.

The Mixing Bowl is an organisation aiming to connect people who are feeding the world with people who are changing the world through technology. They see the value in the intersections between agriculture and technology, land and sensors, tradition and innovation. In support of that, they organise events, they work with companies in the industry and they support startups that can potentially innovate in this space. The event hosted on Tuesday, March 21st was one of these activities that I was lucky to attend as a representative for Future Food. During the day, I was exposed to a number of interesting people and projects that are all working within this innovation space, and also had a chance to speak of our work in the food tech scene with many attendees Some of the most exciting discoveries I’ve outlined below.

Ag Tech Landscape in 2017

Seana Day, partner at the Mixing Bowl, has over twelve years of investment, M&A advisory and technology experience in both the US and Europe, in addition to deep agricultural roots from having lived in the Central Valley of California. While working at AgTech Insight, an organization that has provided great energy to the ag tech innovation movement in and around Salinas, he helped develop a useful AgTech Market Map. Together, she led us through the current ag tech landscape of 2017, exploring the main trends which are shaping this year. From automation to food safety, from adaptive irrigation to supply-chain management systems, and from big-data aggregators to food recovery, we see that in agriculture main technological impacts hit the top of the chain, with in-field systems, post-harvest monitoring and efficiency boosters.

“Traceability and transparency represent the main needs for the customers,” she said, “and it is where technology can make the difference now and investors are willing to push.” By talking about production, drones and VRT (precision agriculture), increasing efficiency in the fields seems to be the main focus. Logistics is turning out to be an active space for investment and innovation as well.

The Food Tech Landscape in 2017

The food tech landscape seems to follow different drivers. The focus on the consumer is extremely relevant here and the definition of technology means everything which is put in the final users’ hands — smartphones, wearables, implanted technology, social media and payment systems.

The main point here is that many startups are showing how technology can improve efficiency and make the user experience smoother, but quite often technology is not the core, it is just an enabler. Technology can empower smart and easy decision making, opening the doors to personalised nutrition, improved wellness and responsible food choices. The gap to fill? How to go from data supply to effective information supply, effectively enabling education and thus sustainable healthy decision making processes. I love to see how education and inspiration are always at the center of the conversation: it confirms to me all we are doing with Future Food. “Education changes people and people change the world” said Paulo Freire.

Technology’s Role and Main Challenges

At some point one of the guests at the event said, “I lived in Silicon Valley before internet was there and I saw the curve, I saw the frenetic, non-stopping explosion. The question here is, how do we replicate this skyrocketing rush in ag-tech?” A possible answer talks about platforms: building a common system where we can communicate and move data. We do have data but we still do not have fluid and ubiquitous connectivity. We need to connect all this data to let it speak the same language. Which brings me back to what Matthew Lange says about the need of finding a common food language.

And it also reminds me about an article I read months ago about “platforms vs. pipes”. Pipes have been around us for as long as we’ve had industry. Firms create stuff, push them out and sell them to customers. What we see is that pipes are not connected and/or are not speaking the same language. What technology is doing, especially with the help of internet, is building more and more interconnected systems. Unlike pipes, platforms do not just create and push stuff out. They allow users to create and consume value, creating layers able to link different pipes, in order to aggregate value, exponentially increasing it.

What’s Next

Next steps are to pinpoint the main challenges we see in these food and ag maps and try to see how technology can face them. The main ones?

• Food waste: using technology to re-use what have been so far considered as waste.
• Food care: switching from data to information supply in order to educate to see food as medicine AND using AI to adapt human-tech relations, enabling smarter human decision making. (At the very end, we are still the ones to decide what we eat!)
• Alternative food production: using technology to reduce environmental impact while maintaining protein intake.
• Smart farming: leveraging technology to increase precision and efficiency in the value chain.
• Holistic hospitality: increasing food experiences through technological supports such as virtual reality and augmented reality.

It was great to be a part of a Mixing Bowl event and get a perspective on what is happening with innovation in food, agriculture and IT. The day showcased not just big ideas in the food and ag tech scene, but also small innovations that are taking place across the industry and trend forecasting for the future. As a representative of Future Food, it was really amazing to see that the connection between food, technology and wellness is being strengthened and that the initiatives we are promoting are on point with what is happening in the rest of the industry. The more we bring together the various aspects of the food system, the better results we will have in productive innovation for increased global health. Looking forward to following Mixing Bowl and the larger innovation scene from within