With Astanor’s new fund for like-minded startups, the world is a step closer to achieving food security.
Astanor Ventures, an impact investor focused on the agriculture and food industry has earmarked a $325 million fund to invest in various European and North American FoodTech and AgTech startups. According to a Reuters report, the slated Astanor Ventures funds will be used to support food and agriculture technology startups with the primary goal of contributing to the world’s food security while helping to minimize environmental impacts from such processes.
Our world today has many challenges bordering on ensuring an adequate food supply to the growing world population. While this is a challenge yet to be addressed, the need to watch the processes involving in food production such that they will not aggravate climate change concerns further complicates the farm-to-fork food production models. The few firms helping to bridge this gap and to solve these problems are Astanor Ventures’ target, to get funding through to.
“It’s never been clearer that there’s a direct connection between the food that we eat and the environment that we live in,” said Eric Archambeau, co-founder, and partner of Astanor Ventures. “When one part of the ecosystem that connects farmers, consumers, livestock, rivers, seas, soil, plants, and air becomes damaged, all parts suffer.”
Per the figures culled from Astanor, agriculture generates a third of all greenhouse gases and consumes 70% of the world’s freshwater, while 40% of the total food produced either goes to waste or did not get to the market, and subsequently the final consumers it’s meant for.
As reported, Astanor Ventures said every one of its investments will be given to firms that align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. The SDG which was adopted in 2015 seeks to address Climate Change challenges through environmental protection with a focus on ensuring prosperity for all by 2030.
Astanor Ventures to Support FoodTech and AgTech
Astanor Ventures has six core principles guiding its investment processes and they include Soil regeneration based on the belief that agricultural processes and other man’s activities lead to a significant loss in the topsoil over time as the earth’s soil is degrading fertile soil is being lost at a rate of 24bn tonnes a year, according to TechCrunch.
Astanor also prioritizes food integrity, sustainable diet, the role of food as medicine, food conservation, and the employment of new approaches for the distribution, and packaging of food in order to preserve it without polluting the environment and a focus on urban agriculture to put great tasting food on the table. Among Astanor’s funding portfolio includes Ϋnsect, a French-based insect farming startup, Berlin-based Infarm, La Ruche Qui dit Oui, a French farm to table supplier, and Notpla, a UK-based company with the goal of converting Sea Weeds to a resilient food packaging material.
With Astanor’s new fund for like-minded startups, the world is a step closer to achieving food security.
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