These Y Combinator (S18) startups could change farming forever.
Agriculture is a vast complex system . It’s cows, plows and sows. Sure. But it’s also everything that goes on between farm and fork. A chaotic mix of every discipline imagine-able.
Only 1% of the companies in this Y Combinator batch are considered to be in ‘agriculture’. Loads of these startups not labeled as agriculture are going to make waves in how food happens. So I’m going to take a broader view.
So sip your coffee and use your imagination. We have some important things to build if we are going to feed the planet. Lets check out some new companies that might *actually* be making the world a better place.
C16 Biosciences: Brews Palm Oil like beer
So back in the day it used to take 4,000 pounds of pig pancreas to make 8 oz. of insulin to treat diabetes. Talk about hard work. But then in the late 70’s through no small feat of engineering insulin started to be made synthetically via yeast. A breakthrough of science really. What C16 Biosciences is doing is very similar except they use their engineering chops to create palm oil without plants. They brew it like beer…
