The 500 Best Food Tech Companies Show Us The Future Of What We Eat

Published on February 29, 2020

Food and tech are two hot topics in this era, and 500 companies are here to show us how they combine both. Inspired by the Fortune 500, Forward Fooding presented the FoodTech 500 earlier this month — a list of global talent in food, tech and sustainability.

Forward Fooding is a network of entrepreneurs that gives support for collaborations and partnerships between big food companies and startups. In other words, they partner those big food companies with newer ones to promote growth.

To qualify, companies must be an incorporated entity with an active website. They also must exist for less than 15 years, and must fit within Forward Fooding’s definition of  “AgriFoodTech. The company describes AgriFoodTech as the emergent sector trying to “improve efficiency and sustainability in designing, producing, choosing, delivering & enjoying food.”

The companies are then ranked by three parameters: financial performance, digital presence, and sustainability. Then the applicants are given three individual scores which add up, giving each finalist a score out of 300.

According to the Forward Fooding website, 78.2 percent of the companies are less than 5 years old and 56.1 percent are at pre-seed or seed-stage funding. But about 75 percent are already generating revenue.

Forward Fooding claims 1,200 applications from 54 different countries applied to be on the list. Here are the top five:

AeroFarms

AeroFarms is a developer of aeroponic systems that grow produce at high yield densities in urban vertical farms. The company boasts the world’s largest indoor vertical farm in its Newark, N.J. headquarters. They also mix up distribution by building farms on major distribution routes and near population centers.

Total Score: 292

TIPA

TIPA is an Israeli company that creates biodegradable food packaging solutions. Their goal is to address the challenges of plastic waste with bio-material packaging, while acting like plastic.

Total Score: 258

Bowery Farming

Bowery Farming is a modern farming company based in New York that controls every aspect of the farming process. According to their website, they rely on seeds from smaller partners, farm in indoor vertical rows, and manage all growth aspects. They claim to harvest at the right moment and deliver much faster than traditional farms.

Total Score: 257

Agrivi

Agrivi is a Croatian company that specializes in cloud farm management software. The website explains that the software lets farmers plan, monitor and analyze all activities on your farm easily. They say that farmers from more than 150 countries use Agrivi to improve their productivity, and that the software works for farms of all sizes.

Total Score: 245

JIMINI’S

Paris-based company JIMINI’S creates products that include edible insects. They understand that eating bugs might be a strange thing, so they want to gradually help people try their products. Hoping people have an open mind, the website says they use insects to “reduce the environmental impact of our westernized diet. They add that insects have more nutritional value than normal protein sources.

Total Score: 244

The full list is available for download here.

Frank Diez is a Staff Writer at Grit Daily based in New York. Along with music, he also writes on film and food. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University's Journalism School and currently works in Technical Operations at Fox News Channel.

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