HAY folks, it’s Christopher, Simon & Julia, here from PELICAN AG VC. We invest in early-stage heroes 👨🌾🐄🥕and are at first close on our Regenerative Food & Ag Venture Fund. Mooove on to the end of this email to join The Sustainable Food Revolution! Thks for reading.
- 2023 HEADLINE HARVEST -
It’s been a big year for food & climate news. Our takeaway? There’s never been a better time to invest than TODAY. Why?
POLITICS- Sunak clearly doesn’t give a fork about UK farming💰Despite grocery costs up 10% and food security in jeopardy (Prof. Tim Lang, must watch) 🧪 November ’23 sadly saw BAYER win the right to keep using RoundUp weed killer.
ECONOMICS - ‘Greenhushing’ is on the rise as a number of firms including BlackRock and Vanguard have started to actively hide their CSR targets 🥕 The UK Organic market grew for the 11th year, up 1.6%, now worth over £3.1 billion.
GLOBAL IMPACT - The Economist explains how war and subsidies are impacting the Green Transition 💣 AI learns how to taste 👄 New York Times’s David Wallace-Wells talks Climate’s Uncertain Road Ahead.
COP 28 - Finally food & farming take centre stage 🧑🌾 See 3 main outcomes, as 134 countries signed the landmark agriculture, food & climate action declaration 🌍 An EU area triple the size of France marked for ‘regenerative advancement’ by Big Food 👑 Our King goes in to bat for farming and pushes big ag to take regenerative farming mainstream.
Can COP make a difference, Patrick Holden of Sustainable Food Trust’s optimistic.
THE CATCH: Watch - Read - Listen
- TO WATCH -
‘Farming’s the solution to bring the whole planet to carbon neutral’
COMMON GROUND: NETFLIX’s Kiss the Ground, watch with your kids & show your friends; 11 reasons to watch. Hollywood’s first award-winning Regen Ag documentary. A gateway drug, laying out how farming effects climate, biodiversity and health. The sequel Common Ground’s due Jan, featuring Woody Harrelson, Jason Momoa and Laura Dern - already 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
You guessed it. We’re soiling ourselves for this one.
- TO READ -
3 must-read books to understand how food & farming is the quickest & easiest lever for solving our climate, biodiversity and health crises:
‘The food system is no longer simply a means of sustenance. It is one of the most successful, most innovative and most destructive industries on earth. It sustains us, but it is also killing us.’ - Ravenous
😊 RAVENOUS - Writing for his 12 year old daughter, Henry Dimbleby (UK Gov’s food tsar, DEFRA NED & lead behind the UK’s National Food Strategy) explains modern food systems and the solutions that gov have thus far ignored!
🥕 WHAT YOUR FOOD ATE - A detailed analysis of +2000 papers proving: healthy soil = healthy humans. The scientific and historical evidence for how farming directly influences soil health, hydrology, crop quality, and nourished humans.
🍩 ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE - How to live longer and how to break unhealthy habits: Dr Chris van Tulleken investigates our ‘rigged’ food system; via the science, economics and production of ultra-processed food, to the impact on global health.
- LISTEN TO -
Monsanto/ MonSatan? A dig into Roundup herbicide’s wartime roots: from the fields of Vietnam, to the seeds of America- and to a farm near you 😈 For Climateers who can’t talk so good: The ‘Robin Hood of PR’ David Fenton, on how to communicate climate in a way that actually resonates 🪱 SOIL: THE DIRTY CLIMATE SOLUTION - why ducks eat slugs, how rich in wildlife ancient pasture was, how to restore soils quickly using animals and how to make money doing it. A layman’s guide by farmers that swear by it.
- A DEEPER DIG -
Hidden Costs of Global Agrifood Systems Worth at Least $10 Trillion - The FAO’s State of Food & Ag 2023
A new report on our Agrifood system’s huge hidden costs on our health, the environment and society: equivalent to 10% of global GDP.
- OUR NEWS -
We’re at First Close on our Regen Food & Ag Fund
We’re proud to launch PELICAN AG Fund 1: The UK’s First Regenerative Food & Ag Venture Fund. If you’d like to get involved, please get in touch.
- PELICANS ON THE WING - What We’ve Been Up To:
We visited the House of Lords to talk transforming food production 🍠 The House of Commons to discuss regulatory reform for bio-inputs 🍄 advise the Gov Dept of Science Innovation & Tech on how the UK can bolster its Agritech lead 🚀 hosted our Regen investor breakfasts with WILDFARMED Founder and Groove Armada frontman Andy Cato, and with Rebirding and Cornerstones author, and natural systems guru Ben MacDonald 🥕 We met regen farmers near and far, like the Buskalls at Wild Ken Hill and chefs like Dan Barber in New York, who’s growing cutting-edge wunderfoods for taste and nutrient density, not shelf life or shape (see Row7Seeds )🇺🇸 We spoke to over 150 investors across the globe, co-leading the definitive Regen investor conference RFSI in Europe, Chris spoke at the RFSI in Denver alongside Patagonia, 🇳🇴 Simon talked to family offices at Grunderkraft in Oslo about Impact Investing for Food Systems Change 👑 And finally, we are proud to have been selected as Nominators for Prince William’s EARTHSHOT PRIZE.
Final shout out to Ian Wilkinson at FarmEd, whose work in Oxfordshire to promote Regeneration to farmers, policy makers and investors has been tireless. Please bring friends and visit!
You’ve reached the end! Feel free to share this newsletter & spread the word. It’s the best way for us to grow.
Thanks for staying tuned,
Chris, Simon & Julia
Still scrolling?
Here’s Simon with some special bonus content:
Check out Bioverse: unlocks the economic value of intact forests with earth observation + AI-powered forest inventory analysis, identifying clusters and densities of the forest beyond only timber, using drones to collect high resolution pics of the forest. They’ve been able to find 10x the number of trees of each species compared to what was previously known locally.
IMPACT - With this data, stakeholders can not only strengthen the economic case for conservation areas, and the protection of indigenous communities - they can drive income streams to those communities by coordinating non timber harvests, sharing data on optimal collection sites and allowing them to ground truth the models that they provide.’
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Ok fine. We know what you want. Here’s a festive beaver doing what they do best. Damn!
Happy Holidays!