Agriculture

Restorative Cultivation

Creating ventures to transition agriculture from extractive to regenerative practices
Our current agricultural system is almost entirely extractive, designed to maximise yield but often at the expense of natural resources and lands of high biodiversity. Unless we correct our current practices, we risk declining food security and ecosystem collapse.

Our current extractive farming processes reduce the ancient natural potential of an ecosystem and its service value. We can see this in the industrial food system, which incentivizes mega-sized farming and monoculture, degrading the soil, wasting fertiliser and directly increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. When coral reefs bleach and rainforests are replaced by savannah, we know it will take centuries for these ecosystems to recover their complexity. If a similar collapse is allowed to happen in our agricultural heartlands, the consequences will be global.

We are creating ventures to avert this disaster, leveraging modern techniques to restore soil quality and increase biodiversity, while ensuring scalability through strong commercials and knowledgeable local partners. Using our proprietary methodology, we have a bioregional focus, assembling consortia of partners to create companies that can be scaled across similar ecosystems.

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Contact

To speak with our agriculture team, please send us a message using the form below.

Areas of venture creation:

Cacao Sustainability & Smallholder Uplift for Biodiversity Enhancement

Problem to solve

Cacao is one of the most economically important crops grown in tropical regions, but its cultivation drives a cycle of environmental and financial deprivation. The pressure for short-term yield drives farmers to adopt monoculture systems with high input dependency, unsustainable soil degradation and yield loss within ten years. The associated income loss pushes farmers to deforest more fertile land and restart the cycle. As a result, significant biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, and poor labour practices are associated with cacao cultivation, while yields have plateaued.

Reason to solve

This system must change as cacao demand expected to double from 2010-2050, and key industry players and governments have codified this need. DSV sees an opportunity to achieve a just transition to sustainable and profitable cacao with innovative solutions that can enhance smallholder productivity and profits, break the cycle, and ensure that no further deforestation occurs, whilst farmers become enrolled as agents of biodiversity enhancement.

See Opportunity Area in Detail

Pollinator Reinforcement

Problem to solve

The significant global shortage of pollinator services continues to worsen as wild insects die off and managed honeybees lose ground to disease, climate change and habitat loss. Globally, 70% of crop production is dependent on or enhanced by animal-mediated pollination, accounting for 35% of food production. Despite this there are few companies and methods able to deliver or improve on this service. A lack of effective pollination seriously hinders regional crop yields from reaching their full potential.

Reason to solve

The prospect of actively deploying pollinators and restoring ecological systems to support more insects is an exciting opportunity for new companies to provide a profitable way to reinforce agriculture and nature in a mutually beneficial relationship. Improving the resilience and range of managed insects, domesticating new species, and improving habitats are well within reach using emerging insect husbandry techniques, in conjunction with novel monitoring technologies, automation and knowledge of pheromones.

Post-Harvest Loss

Problem to solve

We currently waste a third of all food produced, not just at consumer level but also as a raw product. Two staple goods that are particularly affected are sugarcane and sugar beet, with an annual production value of $75bn and $10bn respectively, and post-harvest loss of 20-30%.

Reason to solve

By developing loss-reduction technologies to counter this problem, we could enhance land use by maximising productivity without needing to rely on unsustainable practices to achieve the same major outcomes.

Topsoil Regeneration

Problem to solve

The world grows 95% of its food in the uppermost layer of soil, making topsoil one of the essential components of our food system. Unfortunately, due to conventional farming practices, nearly half of the world's topsoil has disappeared in the last 150 years, threatening crop yields and contributing to nutrient pollution, dead zones, and erosion.

Reason to solve

Historically, degraded soils are "remediated" by applying harsher agrochemicals to increase profits or are abandoned, leading to expanding into forests causing deforestation. Recently, there have been initiatives to restore topsoils, including cover cropping, polyculture, and, in some instances, alternating animal grazing. Still, its wide adoption is somewhat met with resistance since the process to regenerate topsoil takes time, and farm profits projections (if adopting) are not favorable. Our work in this area presents an opportunity to build top-quality topsoil in conventional farms for less time than traditional practices of soil health regeneration.

Available opportunities

Founder in Residence, Enabling Native Pollinators for Sustainable Agriculture

Agriculture
See job description

Co-founder in Residence: Feedstock Engineering for the Circular Bioeconomy

Agriculture
See job description

Co-Founder in Residence: Create a Commodities Market for the Circular Bioeconomy

Agriculture
See job description

Commercial Co-Founder in Residence, Innovating Agricultural Soil Restoration

Agriculture
See job description

Associate, New Venture Creation in Agriculture

Agriculture
See job description
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Our advisors

Bruce Whitelaw

Director Roslin Institute, University of Edinburgh

“It's really exciting to see the novel approach that DSV brought to startup ideation, and to see the companies they created and the scientific entrepreneurship they enabled. I'm very excited about the way their programs put deals and new companies on the table that fit in with - and broaden - the overall entrepreneur ecosystem at the University of Edinburgh and Scotland.”

Our companies

  • agriculture
  • Pre-seed
Sustainable marine protein - no ocean required

Aquanzo

Opportunity

Marine fish and shrimps require proteins to grow. However, natural sources like forage fish and zooplankton are limited and fully exploited. 90% of marine protein supply is already overexploited, while the performance of plant based marine aquaculture is not providing enough protein for optimal marine fish and shrimp performance.

Solution

Aquanzo is pioneering the first scalable Zooplankton farming system. The process uses aquaculture recirculating systems and agricultural byproducts to produce zooplankton biomass and process it to a high-quality protein-rich powder to sell to marine aquafeed manufacturers. This will allow the aquaculture industry to access the first ocean-independent sustainable marine ingredient.
  • agriculture
  • Seed
Restoring the underground network of forests

Rhizocore

Opportunity

Trees are highly reliant on symbiosis with local mycorrhizal fungi strains. Reforesting clear-felled or ex-agricultural sites is challenging, with slower growth rates, higher tree mortality and lost potential for carbon sequestration.

Solution

Rhizocore Technologies produces locally-adapted mycorrhizal fungi to enhance tree planting success. By working with native fungi, we offer a sustainable solution to accelerate woodland regeneration, improve forest productivity, and increase natural capital benefits.
  • agriculture
  • Seed
Better soil health

P.E.S. Technologies

Opportunity

Despite advancements in precision agriculture, we are in the midst of a global decline in crop yields. The root cause is a lack of soil health data availability for farmers to make effective soil management decisions: from which fertiliser to use to whether they ought to employ “no till” strategies.

Solution

PES Technologies have developed an ultra-portable device capable of measuring microbial activity in soil. In contrast to sequencing, PES’s technology identifies what bacteria are doing, rather than which bacteria are present, by assessing emissions of volatile organic compounds, finally allowing farmers to gain a clear understanding of their soil health.
  • agriculture
  • Seed
Making better insects

Beta Bugs

Opportunity

As a growing global middle-class demands more meat, existing livestock feed supply chains are struggling to keep up. Insects, 150x more space efficient than soy, are a great replacement. Insect farms are growing at 100% CAGR but all rely on the use of “wild type” insect strains.

Solution

Beta Bugs evolve better insects, using their world-first protocol for insect evolution to breed black soldier flies which are rich in Omega 3 for the aquaculture feed market. They have also designed modular, scalable breeding units that are 100x more space efficient than the trait development technology used in academia.
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Content
  • agriculture
  • Bioeconomy

Unlocking the Potential of Agricultural Residues

Agricultural residues are increasingly no longer seen as waste, but as valuable resources and inputs for other sectors of the economy. While advancements in technology are enabling the transformation of these raw materials into products, we are still failing to harness these resources effectively, with vast amounts of potential feedstocks being wasted or used for low-value applications. In this article, we explore how a commodity market for these materials might help us overcome this problem.

27 September 2023
  • agriculture
  • Soil erosion

From Erosion to Regeneration: Our Vision for Saving Agricultural Soils

Soil degradation from intensive farming practices creates an urgent need for regeneration but current erosion prevention solutions have limitations. In this article, we outline a promising alternative, using biodegradable polymers derived from natural sources, which can integrate into the soil while avoiding environmental risks.

02 August 2023
  • agriculture
  • Plant resilience

Enhancing Plant Resilience for a Changing Climate

The detrimental effects of rising temperatures on crops are felt worldwide, as climate change expedites withering and drives premature ripening of agricultural produce. The repercussions extend beyond the affected crops, wreaking havoc on surrounding plant life and posing severe challenges for agricultural sustainability and profitability. In this article, we outline potential approaches to support farmers in meeting human needs, supporting livelihoods, biodiversity, and the natural processes that sustain life on Earth.

19 June 2023
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