Innovator Spotlight: LumiGrow Smart LED Grow Lights for High Performance Plant Growth and Increased Profits

LumiGrow is a lighting engineering company based in Emeryville, California that makes smart LED grow lights for controlled environment agriculture (CEA). We recently met with Melanie Yelton, VP…

Innovator Spotlight: Irwin R. Donis-Gonzalez, an agriculture engineer specialist at UC Davis, is developing new dehydrating and refrigeration techniques to improve our food system

As a child, Irwin R. Donis-Gonzalez grew up on an avocado and dairy farm in Guatemala. It was there that he says he learned to appreciate what farming meant, where his food came from and the hard work…

Innovator Spotlight: Biome Makers Creates Ag Solutions with Micoorganisms

Biome Makers is a biotech company that recently relocated from the Bay Area to West Sacramento. Biome Makers specializes in understanding the microbiome – the microlife – around agriculture, in order to improve agricultural production…

Innovator Spotlight: Pheronym – Directed Plant Protection

Pheronym is an ag biotech startup that uses nematode pheromones to control beneficial and parasitic nematodes. The firm is located in Alachua, Florida and at the UC Davis HM.CLAUSE Life Sciences Innovation Center in Davis,…

Innovator Spotlight: Caroline Cotto of Renewal Mill on the Upcycled Food Movement and the Next Generation of Ingredients That Are Leading the Way

Renewal Mill, a Bay Area food ingredients company that upcycles the byproduct leftover from soy milk production, is at the forefront of the food waste movement. Its current focus is okara, the wet pulp-like substance that’s left…

Innovator Spotlight: Maas Energy Works, Providing Renewable Energy, Economic and Environmental Benefits in the California Dairy Industry  

Maas Energy Works develops, owns, and operates anaerobic manure digesters which produce methane that is turned into electricity and compressed natural gas. Maas harnesses this “cow power” in partnership with dairies and other commercial facilities. Sixteen of…

Innovator Spotlight: Tobias Peggs of Square Roots on Their Platform to Empower the Next Generation of Farmers

By Wes Melville

Tobias Peggs is the CEO of Square Roots, an urban farming company based in Brooklyn, NY with a mission to bring local, real food to people in cities around the world…

Innovator Spotlight: Replate on Solving Food Waste and Food Insecurity

Maen Mahfoud, Founder and CEO of the food rescue tech non-profit Replate, started Replate in 2016 while a student at UCB. Maen was inspired to start Replate when he realized that food insecurity…

The New Food Economy – Follow the Food

Farmers located in California’s San Joaquin Valley Region account for half of the state’s agriculture output. According to a new report, farmers in this region will have to severely limit their water use if the beautiful state of California’s groundwaters…

Food Origins

FOOD ORIGINS

Food Origins is a Salinas-based SAAS startup that captures specific data points from fruit and vegetable harvesters in real time. The data provides valuable actionable insights for worker productivity…