24 March 2021
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Changing consumer trends and the future of agri-food
CONSUMER behaviour has been shifting over recent years, with the farm and fork growing more connected every year and new trends impacting on all those in the growth and supply of crops, experts claim.
Lux’s food and agriculture experts continuously monitor and evaluate industry trends and events to target and analyse promising startups capable of capturing the opportunities created.
“Numerous challenges, from climate to COVID to human migration, aligned in 2020 to stifle growth across food and agriculture, laying bare technology, food, and health system weaknesses,” said Josh Haslun, Ph.D., Senior Analyst at Lux Research. “These vivid impacts are not without opportunity, even as the lines across value chains blur. Picking the right startups and partners to remain ahead in this dynamic period is critical.”
Four key trends were identified that the agrifood industry should be tracking:
1. Major food companies face intense competition from smaller, more agile brands..
2. Companies whose businesses rely on consumption for top-line growth are facing pressure to diversify while producers are reducing resource use, driven by concerns of affordability and scarcity.
3. Innovations underlie the products and services currently driving consumer markets, including bioinformatics, POU sensing, and ingredient informatics.
4. Prevention of negative health effects and personalisation are reshaping consumers’ choices.
Some of the named startups that are now paving the future of agri-food include:
- Aphea.Bio which develops agricultural biologicals;
- Agrorum, which specialises in encapsulation for green pest solutions in the crop protection field; Agritask which provides a single platform to manage and optimise ag-operations;
- Solynta - hybrid potato breeder;
- FoodLogiQ which produces food traceability and sustainability software;
- Ceradis Crop Protection which develops and sells environmental friendly fungicides and fertilisers
- Growcentia, which creates biostimulant products, focusing on soil microbioligy;
- Plantix, a mobile crop advisory app;
- SatAgro, an app featuring satellite imagery enabling the monitoring of crops’ development;
- Saturas, which enables precision irrigation and crop water stress measurement;
- Azotic Technologies, which specialises in natural nitrogen which helps address the problem of nitrogen pollution;
- Vibe Imaging Analytics, which develops advanced analysis sensors and other instruments;
- Enko Chem, which develops sustainable solutions for crop protection
- Conagen, a biotechnology company;
- Brightseed, a biotechnology company;
- Lavie Bio, developer of bio-stimulants and bio-pesticides
- Biomeme, which extracts and purifies DNA or RNA from soil samples
