How the 2021 FoodTech 500 companies advance the Sustainable Development Goals agenda
Forward Fooding
World's first collaborative platform fostering innovation via FoodTech data intelligence & corp-startup collaboration
What is the value of creating a great business if the future of the world in which it will be operating is under threat?
The global challenges that our world is facing are putting at risk its social and natural resources. Preventing their most negative consequences from materializing and enabling companies to have a positive impact while making good business is precisely why the?Sustainable Development Goals?are so important for the private sector.??
Through the lenses of these 17 global objectives, created by the United Nations and further subdivided in?169 targets and 240 indicators, companies can identify long-term risks, make their supply chains more resilient to shocks and transform business challenges into opportunities for impact.
While comprehending all sectors of activity of human life on planet Earth, all SDGs are connected to one another, making visible how all actions towards environmental, social and economic sustainability are connected to one another. This highlights how?impacting one sphere, for good and for bad, has also consequences on the rest of them.
The Sustainable Development Goals in AgriFoodTech
As FoodTech companies are able to disrupt, create markets and unleash impact at scale, SDGs are even more important to them.?
AgriFoodTech startups, for instance, work tirelessly to make the food supply chain more sustainable and efficient, providing technologies and services as solutions to some of the most pressing challenges affecting our food system.?
For this reason and from the very first edition of The FoodTech 500, at Forward Fooding we have included a Sustainability score based on the SDGs to rank the FoodTech 500 companies. Sustainability experts from the University of Turin have supported us in building a framework connecting them to the AgriFoodTech sector. You can find more on our methodology?here .
While using the framework as one of the evaluation criteria for creating the FoodTech 500 ranking, we have seen the following SDGs being the most recurrent ones across all finalists’ applications:?
What striked us the most has been the?correlation between the Forward Fooding taxonomy and the SDGs. Companies belonging to each one of the 8 AgriFoodTech verticals consistently chose one SDG over the others and we found that there is a strong alignment between their scope of activity and the Goal they are seeking to achieve.
For instance, we see how the?Agtech vertical, composed of companies working on making agricultural production more efficient and sustainable, is correlated with?Goal 2 – Zero Hunger. On the other hand, the?Surplus & Waste Management?vertical is tied to?Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production, with its companies aiming to improve the sustainability of supply chains and tackle food waste. Finally, the verticals?Consumer Apps & Services?and?Next-Gen Food & Drinks, while both providing products or services geared towards a more sustainable and healthy lifestyle, are mostly represented by?Goal 3 – Good Health and Well Being.
In addition, we found that Goal 2 – Zero Hunger?and Goal 3 – Good Health and Well Being are mainly tackled by FoodTech 500 companies with 20 to 50 employees, while Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production by smaller size companies, ranging from 10 to 20 employees.?
Furthermore,?53% of companies tackling Goal 5 – Gender Equality are also female-founded,?indicating that women-led companies tend to be more sensitive to gender issues when it comes to growing their company. Following it we found Goal 3 – Good Health and Well Being, with 35% of FoodTech 500 companies having at least a woman founder.?
Finally, the operations are undertaken by these companies that are not strictly related to their core business also?often have an indirect impact on achieving the SDGs, from gaining B-Corp certification to their investments in social infrastructure or their sustainable sourcing practices.
But let’s now make more visual and specific examples of the impact of some of the FoodTech500 companies!?
Here are three cases of technologies and business models from top-ranking FoodTech 500 finalists and how their businesses are tackling the SDGs.
Case studies: How FoodTech 500 companies are tackling the Sustainable Development Goals
Category:?Agtech
Founding date:?2017
Country:?United States
FoodTech 500 ranking:?#103
Locus AG is a certified B Corp accelerating climate change efforts, farm profitability and food security with a line of revenue-boosting soil “probiotic” technologies and the first carbon program to get farmers high-volume carbon credit payments called CarbonNOW program.
SDG 2 – Zero Hunger
Their technology directly increases agricultural productivity, enhancing sustainable food production and resilient agricultural practices.
SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth
They increase the incomes of small-scale farmers both through boosting agricultural productivity and through the monetization of their current conservation practices into carbon credits through their?CarbonNOW program .
SDG 13 – Climate Action
They reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture by cutting greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating crops’ ability to sequester carbon.?
Category:?Surplus and Waste Management
领英推荐
Founding date:?2015
Country:?Denmark
FoodTech 500 ranking:?#9
Too Good To Go is an app that fights food waste primarily by connecting users with different stores and restaurants that have unsold surplus food at the end of the day. Their greater mission is to inspire and empower everyone to take action against food waste.?
SDG 12 – Sustainable Consumption and Production
First of all, the core business of Too Good To Go is about reducing global food waste at the retail and consumer level. They measure impact by counting the number of bags of food saved. In numbers, they have already saved more than 105 million meals since launching the app in 2016.
?SDG 13 – Climate Action
Their impact on carbon emission is measured starting from the value of each bag, which represents 2.5 kg of CO2e prevented from being used in vain, according to MyClimate from data obtained from FAO. Hence, over time they have prevented more than 262,000 tonnes of CO2e from going to waste, the equivalent of emissions from 51,000 flights around the??world.
SDG 17 – Partnerships for the Goals
Finally, they go far and beyond the app and are heavily involved in public affairs work, closely monitoring food waste legislation and aiming to impact political agenda in the countries where they are present. They also contribute to educating society at different levels, increasing awareness through initiatives such as?education pilot programs in schools ?and the creation of a new anti-food?waste label ?included on the best-before-date product packaging.?
Category:?Next-Gen Food & Drinks
Founding date:?2019
Country:?United States
FoodTech 500 ranking:?#43
BIOMILQ is developing novel technology, currently at the R&D stage,?producing a more sustainable and more nutritious infant feeding option by culturing human milk cells outside the body. This would be the next best alternative to breastfeeding, the only one maintaining the same nutritional properties of human milk.
SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-Being
They provide children with the optimal nutrition of breast milk even when it is not available, with the potential to have a positive impact on newborns’ nutrition, improving their health and their development.?
SDG 5 – Gender Equality
The technology could provide an alternative solution for women during breastfeeding. This can have a positive impact on reproductive health, with positive spillovers on women’s lives.
SDG 13 – Climate Action
The infant formula industry accounts for between 5-15% of the liquid global dairy market, linking it to one of the main causes of global warming and environmental degradation: the animal agriculture industry. BIOMILQ has the potential to provide a low-carbon alternative to milk.
Key takeaways
That was a quick snapshot of how the FoodTech 500 companies are tackling SDGs with their solutions. However, we believe that this is only the beginning. As?consumers and investors alike pay more and more attention to sustainability over time,?the SDGs will become an essential tool for every startup to articulate and build their business model and mission statement.?
Indeed, the essential?reason for the existence of a startup company is solving a problem. SDGs indicators and targets can help identify those, shedding a light on the greatest challenges that still have to be tackled at a global level. By looking at them, startups can shape and orient their technological and logistical solutions as well as their business models to cater to those rising needs.?When aligned with specific SDGs, they can be more confident about the?relevance of their products and services?and, as a consequence, will be able to?satisfy future market demands?that are being built as we speak.?
While this strongly applies to early-stage companies, also the more established ones in the FoodTech 500 batch show strong alignment with the SDGs. Clustering together the FoodTech 500 10 IPO’d companies and the 7 Unicorns, we see that the most tackled SDGs are Goal 2 – Zero Hunger, Goal 13 – Climate Action and Goal 3 – Good Health and Well Being.?Goal 13 – Climate Action in this case takes the second spot instead of Goal 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production, when compared to the whole FoodTech 500 batch.?This is perfectly in line with the fact that these companies mainly operate in the Agtech and Next- Gen Food & Drinks sectors.?
Based on the interviews of the TOP 10 FoodTech 500 companies released for the?FoodTech 500 2021 reports , here are some key figures to illustrate an estimate of their impact in numbers.
The alignment of these companies to the SDGs also shows how important it is for them to shape their products and services keeping social, economic and environmental sustainability in mind. In the words of Mathias Muchnick, founder and CEO of?NotCo ?and Latin American unicorn:
So, if you haven’t already done so, establish ambitious targets and embed specific SDGs right into your business processes!?
Check out the official 2021?FoodTech 500 reports ?for more information and insight on the ranked companies and?here ?to know more about the Sustainable Development Goals and their role for?business .?
On our side, we will carry on supporting the development of the global AgriFoodTech ecosystem and its actors including FoodTech entrepreneurs, investors, F&B corporations, universities and other players involved in the food system by hyper connecting them to resources, knowledge and opportunities – in full SDG17 fashion!