Why I Made a VC Firm for the Future of Food I've spent much of my career building businesses across sectors as diverse as biotech, mining,and real estate. But in recent years, I've begun to ask myself a profound question: 'how can wecontinue to feed a growing global population without devastating the planet or causing sufferingto billions of animals?'

That question led me to explore the flaws in our food system and ultimately to co-found Agronomics. The problems with the status quo are everywhere. Environmentally, our food system is one of the greatest drivers of climate change. Livestock emissions, land degradation, excessive water use, and biodiversity loss from destructive practices like palm oil cultivation make the current system unsustainable. On the ethical front, the industrial-scale cruelty inflicted on animals is unconscionable. And economically, it's astonishingly inefficient. Animals are terrible converters of calories; it takes around 25 calories of feed to produce just one calorie of beef. Layer onto this the fragility of supply chains, from the Ukraine grain crisis to rising import dependencies,
and the urgency for change becomes obvious.

But this challenge is also a once-in-a-generation opportunity. A new food system has the potential not only to reduce emissions, restore ecosystems, and eliminate animal suffering butalso to unlock a wave of economic growth. Just as renewable energy has become a trillion- dollar industry, the technologies reshaping how we make food are set to become the next great industrial revolution. That is why Agronomics exists. We back the pioneers creating what we call "clean food": food made through cellular agriculture, including cultivation and precision fermentation. These twinpillars of clean food are showing incredible promise in being able to supply nutritious food for a growing population without the environmental or ethical toll.

Precision Fermentation Process and Cell Cultivation Process:
These approaches can deliver the protein, fats, and nutrients the world needs without animals and with a fraction of the environmental footprint. Our portfolio is diverse: from Meatly, which is revolutionising pet food with its cultivated chicken, to Clean Food Group based in Bristol, which is working on precision fermented fats and oils, made using yeast proteins, to replace palm oil. Or Onego Bio, a growing scale-up creating bioalbumin, which is egg protein without needing to rear chickens.

The journey hasn't been smooth. Early attempts at cultivated meat and precision fermentation were plagued by astronomical costs and unsuitable technologies. But the breakthroughs are now coming thick and fast. Bioreactor and growth medium costs have plummeted. Companies are hitting milestones that once seemed like fantasy. Regulators are beginning to approve products in markets from the US to Australia. And consumers, especially younger generations, are showing they are ready for clean food.

Why We've Built a VC Firm for This Space
Momentum is growing behind cellular agriculture as well, with five countries having now approved the sale of products such as cultivated meat, with Australia and New Zealand most recently approving the sale of Vow's cultivated quail pate. Critics once dismissed cellular agriculture as science fiction. But today, it is proving them wrong. Price parity is coming into view, new product formats are reaching the market, and investment is
flowing into the sector at record levels. At Agronomics, we are proud to be at the forefront of this

The future of food is no longer about compromise between people, the planet, and animals. It is about building a system that benefits all three and seizing the economic opportunity that comes with it. That is why we built Agronomics, and why I am so confident that the next decade will see cellular agriculture shift from the margins to the mainstream as more countries approve cultivated meat and precision fermented products.

What Founding Agronomics Has Taught Me
The process of launching a VC Firm for such a nascent space has undoubtedly come with a learning curve. Despite all the previous success that I've managed to achieve in my career,launching Agronomics has taught me some of the most important lessons as an entrepreneur and those are:

Be curious: Be open-minded to new and exciting alternatives, the entire premise of Agronomics stems from the learning that there are new and better ways to do something as traditional as agriculture. My curiosity to explore these new technologies of clean food led me to believe there was an incredible opportunity here to help revolutionise the industrial food complex. My curiosity has resulted in us supporting a wave of new and innovative startups that are doing incredible work and whose value grows by the day. So keep your eyes and mind open, don't accept that 'business as usual' is what is needed in any industry or sector, look for the white
space and if viable, invest in it!

Challenge the conventional: It's easy to be apprehensive when it comes to innovation. Is it a flash in the pan, or could it be something of real impact? The science and technology that the ANIC portfolio is utilising is still very much unknown in a lot of the general public's eyes, but trusting the process and backing innovation has helped bring around the reality of a world where 'clean food' and cellular agriculture is quickly becoming the norm. I like to believe this is a direct result of the work that we do at Agronomics, challenging the conventional.

Shift the conversation: For me, evolving the world of the food industry stems from a deep desire to rid the world of animal cruelty. As time has passed and Agronomics has evolved, the economic and environmental benefits that our portfolio companies are capable of has come more to the forefront.

So my advice would be, if you have a venture that you're passionate about, that passion will take you very far, but in due course, you'll want to be able to back up your passion with arguments that support your cause from both an environmental perspective as well as an economic one. Clean food and agriculture are showing incredible promise, and it's quickly becoming a necessity in a world plagued with food shortages and climate uncertainty. I'm incredibly proud to say that the work Agronomics is doing is helping to bring about the reality of a world without animal cruelty. What started out as a pipe dream, spurred on by passion, is now gaining an increasingly strong foothold in an industry with a projected 2030 value of $520.61bn.