Category: things

$35M in funding and a lot of buzz couldn’t save the business model of 5th Season, a vertical farming startup based in Pittsburgh. (link)

“What comes next is a period of depression and correction.”

Great paper.

https://usaskstudies.coop/documents/occasional-papers/middle-agriculture.pdf

By Bill Christison. Interesting perspective on evolving global consolidation.

Current USDA policy allows a “Product of USA” label for beef grown in other countries and finished in the US. There is some movement to change this in the senate:

link

Clean label’s dirty little secret

On the Future – “food tech”: It’s not about providing real solutions; it’s about money, and the people making the money don’t really care how people eat or cook or why people love food.

Rhonda Patrick is mad about vitamin reporting.

Can the world support China’s growing milk consumption?

Grocery stores as we know them have been in existence since 1916. (Thanks Piggly Wiggly) For detail on the history and potential future of grocery, I recommend this Atlantic article by by Ian Bogost.

As with any industry, there is always a lot of hype related to what’s coming next and how soon it will be here. For grocery stores this has been:

• online grocery is going to take off (was about 3% pre-pandemic)
• meal kits are going to take off (sort of, but not really)
• mega grocers will win the logistics game (which they are)

When you ask people why they don’t shop online you hear a few things:

• I want to review the quality of my produce
• Being in the store can sometimes inspire me to try new things

What if we broke the grocery store in two? Get your staples online. Amazon or Walmart will probably get this down to a science. Further, have you ever been to a grocery store full of Instacart shoppers? They are on a different mission from you, and you can feel it.

Let’s take the parts of food that people definitely want to experience: produce, meat, and food exploration, and build a store around that.

It’s pretty much a farmers market with a butcher. But the people there are experts. Never cooked lentils before? No problem. They help you pick recipes, they introduce you to local seasonal products.

Another concept: leave the ‘store’ setting altogether. What if your produce and meat were hyper-regional (your neighborhood). Perhaps a local farm stand with more consistent hours than a farmers market. Perhaps home delivery of produce brought to you by someone you know and trust. Perhaps you have access to text a real-life nutritionist as part of the service.

What if this were all managed by trained salespeople rather than gig workers?

There is a different future here. I think people will be willing to pay for this.

So I’ve been looking into it.

Currently holed up 4,000 miles away from my family and co-workers, I’m grateful to have health and rest today.

I’ve been on the big health > small health train for a while, but primarily focused on nutrition and obesity.

As a simple example, being a millionaire does not exempt your child from developing asthma due to regional air pollution. There are some things very difficult to buy (or “will”) your way out of. And now, there is no amount of kale you can eat that may inspire your state officials to implement policies that may save your parent’s life. Big health > small health.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been surprised to hear these sentiments:

• “there aren’t that many cases here”
• “when everything returns to normal”

I think we should be accepting that “normal” will certainly be different. “Plagues drive change.” I used this article as a source for some inspiration. I recommend taking a look. Here are some musings I had today re: what may be different.

Will there be a lasting impact to personal contact? Let’s get rid of handshakes. It’s such a weird dynamic anyways. No, I will not be proposing alternatives.

Will there be lasting impact to business travel? Probably, but not as much as people think. There is value to face to face interaction, and zoom doesn’t always cut it. Over time, I think we’ll return to normal here. Perhaps with some additional discipline to limit unnecessary trips.

Will there be a lasting thankful attitude towards medical professionals and nurses? Maybe, for a hot minute. It seems a stretch that the general public will care about PPE stockpiles six months after all of this. Nurses don’t need clapping right now, they need protective gear and good policy. Hopefully there are some lasting and meaningful legislative reforms capturing the moment.

What about grocery, warehouse, restaurant personnel? Highly doubtful. They’ll go back to being society’s low rung and replaced with computers as soon as possible. I will hold out hope for bold policy related to increased minimum wage and paid sick leave.

Will we all unite around experts and become a unified, less polarized country? I think this will depend on how many tens of thousands of people die. Most will die alone. This trauma will be significant. Further, medical personnel around the country will be stressed beyond reason, for months. It is impossible to tell the impact of this much death and trauma, but I believe most people are underestimating it.

Online fitness. Yes, we all need it right now. Yes, Peloton will sell a lot of bikes. Yes, public acceptance will go up. Yes, much of this trend will last. BUT. In-person training with a skilled coach is better. In-person training with people you know or at least recognize is more effective. Long, long term – wealthy people will start to realize this again. (And then maybe I will launch another soon-to-fail fitness startup.) Similarly;

Food and grocery delivery. Systems are being stress tested and will adapt. This is good. I don’t think there will be a “cook at home” resurgence. We’ll all go back to our normal, stressful lives soon enough. Take out apps and ghost kitchens are the winners here. BUT. Let’s hope there is an upswing in socialization and dining pulling people out of their homes when this is all over. Community may actually win here.

Stronger domestic supply chains? I think in more complex and capital intensive industries, this may happen. For processed food (what I actually know about), the game is already global. This type of risk was built in. The most reliable factories in the world right now? In China. There are infinite variables here, but I don’t expect consumers to “buy American wheat!” with vigor. They are going to buy what’s cheapest, and for the most part – not care where it came from. Global

MAYBE WE WILL START TO CARE ABOUT ELDERLY PEOPLE IN AMERICA? I hope so but it’s hard to tell if this will last. So far, I’ve called my parents and grandparents of the highest frequency of my lifetime.

eBOL – (a niche entry for logistics nerds) For the most part, when a truck driver arrives for pickup, they are still physically counting pallets, and inspecting them for damage. Then they sign good old fashioned paper to seal the deal. This paper is called a BOL, or “Bill of Lading.” Although tremendously difficult to modernize, there is no reason paper should be involved in this process. When truckers start getting sick and avoiding contact for pick ups or drop offs, we may see a push for this technology.