Farmless, a Dutch company, announced that it has secured a €1.2 million pre-seed financing round at an undisclosed valuation in order to deliver proteins produced without the use of typical agricultural operations. The climate crisis means that it has never been more pressing to develop alternative food sources in order to both protect our planet and feed its ever-growing population both effectively and sustainably.
The start-up is using fermentation to produce carbon-negative, functional proteins with a complete amino acid profile. This technology, which will decouple food production from agricultural land and is basing its platform on liquid feedstock made with CO2, hydrogen and renewable energy. This makes the initial product a functional protein that provides all essential amino acids.
Instead of using sugar, Farmless is pushing the fermentation frontier using a liquid feedstock which can be made with renewable energy. This makes Farmless’ process dramatically more resourceful and land efficient than animal farming, requiring 10-25x less land than plant protein and 250-500x less than animal protein.
The company was founded by Adnan Oner, with the intention of creating a positive change with efficient food production while reversing centuries of agricultural sprawl that is based on renewable energy.
Oner said, “with our fermentation platform, we aim to dramatically outperform animal agriculture and reliably produce low-cost proteins at a planetary scale,” Adding in; “We believe this technology has the potential to end factory farming, rewild our planet and draw down gigatons of carbon.”
The €1.2 million pre-seed round was co-led by Revent, Nucleus Capital, Possible Ventures with participation from HackCapital, Sustainable Food Ventures, VOYAGERS Climate-Tech Fund, TET Ventures and other angel investors.
Oner commented on the pre-seed round, “with this round, we were able to find microbes that taste and act like animal proteins, set up a lab and build a team of dedicated fermentation and food scientists. We’re currently developing our initial product prototype, which is an amino acid-complete protein with high functionality.”
The funding will also be aimed at expanding the company, while pushing its limits of what can be made with synthetically produced proteins.
Oner added, “we are building a new interface between food and electricity, which means we are domesticating microbes selected for their food properties and their ability to grow on renewable energy-based feedstocks.”
Sources: Protein Report, Tech Crunch
