Last week I participated in the 48h Makeathon: Meat the Future organized by Swiss Food Research.

Following the design-thinking approach combined with expert inputs to foster innovation in one of the most pressing challenges the world food system is facing: our meat consumerism. Participants worked in preformed teams to create new business ideas that would help reduce meat consumption and presented them to expert judges at the end of the event.

 Challenge Brief - Social & cultural dimension

Eating and diets have a strong socio-cultural and psychological link – Taking this into account, what can help to successfully rethink meat consumption habits?

• Day 1. Setting the scene through presenting the topic through various speakers presenting their research and development in the area. This concrete data served as a strong basis to drive the teams.
• Day 2. The most intense of the days. Full on idea creation and prototyping.
• Day 3. Finalization and presentation of solutions.

Tackling global food challenges with a collaborative and diverse team

I was blessed with a wonderful team, full of knowledge, each of us bringing our own spark and expertise from different fields, food science, business, nutrition and hospitality.

We received the “highest social impact” award. Our project, “Beyond MEATing” focused on empowering companies to boost employee engagement and reach their sustainability goals even though people work in home office. With our slogan : Connect. Act. Have fun.

To do this we wanted to create a platform to unite home-office workers through their love of food, but not just any food. We would send employees a plant-based mystery box to conjure up meals of the future, all locally sourced, all sustainable. It is pertinent and a valid business opportunity as companies must push CSR to concrete actions, no more greenwashing.

Although a logistically complex project, the after effects would work positively on many levels.

• Engaging local farmers for ingredients, 
• Making plant-based ingredients accessible and socially accepted 
• Reconnecting and reviving life within the home 

... All of this through one movement. Beyond MEATing. Prized with a further 15 hours of coaching from Swiss Food Research, we now have the option to try and bring our idea to fruition. 

Exploring ideas and discovering new solutions

Through design thinking processes you can go from a 50 idea mindmap to a 1 idea pitch within less than 48 hours. All you need is a diverse team of motivated people and a time crunch, and the tool “miro” we used was a great help to visually map everything out. You can very quickly produce a relatively solid business plan. So if you have an idea, go for it!

Overall, what I found most impressive over the workshop was the passion and sheer quantity of ideas all participants had. It  gave me hope that despite having many worldly issues to tackle, we are not missing ideas or motivated individuals that truly want to take them further and solve problems.

I feel inspired and more engaged than ever to tackle the food crisis through a new and innovative business. 

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ETH spin-off and vertical farming startup YASAI announced partnership with Switzerland's agricultural cooperative federation FENACO to invest together CHF 1.5Mio to build the first Circular Vertical Farm worldwide.

The ETH spin-off YASAI and fenaco join forces to build an industrial-scale vertical farming pilot project based on a circular economy model in Zurich, Switzerland. With an investment of CHF 500'000.- in YASAI AG, fenaco asserts its market-leading position as an innovator in the farming and food industry.

Consumer demand for healthy, safe and sustainably produced food requires innovative solutions from the farming and food industry. By participating in the construction of a Vertical Farming plant, fenaco National Products intends to assess the robustness of the advantages of this farming method and:

• Increase productivity by a factor of 10 to 15 per square meter thanks to a layered construction method.

• Achieve a 90% reduction in water consumption.

• Farm without pesticides or only in marginal amounts, in comparison to conventional agriculture.

• Allow for all-year-round production and the total volume of Swiss vegetables and herbs.

In addition, the venture project will be used to test and identify solutions for the challenges of large-scale vertical farming plants such as higher energy consumption and efficiencies derived from economies of scale for different product categories.

A strong innovation signal for the agrifood industry

Together with Yasai, fenaco will enter the field of vertical farming to realize a pilot project of approximately 20 tons of biomass products per year. fenaco’s CHF 500 000’s investment, in the form of a loan, signals turning point for innovation in the Swiss farming and food industry. The partnership with the ETH spin- off will enable fenaco to assess the potential for vertical farming and, if conclusive, to exploit economies of scale with larger plants and additional partners.

YASAI’s product portfolio will be tested for cultivation and marketing, as well as evaluated on central agronomic questions in cooperation with Agroscope. "We are working on the farm of the future and regard this investment as a preliminary work and a basis for decision-making for future investments in our producers" says Markus Hämmerli, Head of fenaco country products and research cooperations. The commitment is rooted in the fenaco cooperative’s purpose: to support Swiss farmers in the economic development of their companies. "In the future, we do not want to produce ourselves, but rather share our experience in the field of vertical farming with our producers to open up a new, profitable business segment for farmers", Daniel Schwab, Head of the Vegetable Category at fenaco National Products. To this end, a think-tank of leading industry players was set up with vegetable producers from the Seeland region.

Industry and technology know-how go hand in hand

Under the leadership of CEO Mark Essam Zahran, ETH spin-off YASAI is the ideal partner for fenaco. With in-depth expertise and know-how in the field of software and hardware, the four founders and majority shareholders are ideally placed to capitalise on a large international network of committed stakeholders. After the successful Seed-Funding rounds, fenaco's financial commitment and associated support in the construction of the first pilot plant in Switzerland is an important milestone for the fast-growing start-up. "Thanks to the cooperation with fenaco, we now have a strong industrial partner with a great deal of market and customer knowledge in the space on our side. This is extremely valuable when scaling up the technology and penetrating the Swiss market." says Mark Zahran. The partnership will enable YASAI to boost the distribution of its vegetables and herbs in the retail and catering segments.

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