Tech to Table: 25 Innovators Reimagining Food

Imagine eating a burger grown in a laboratory, a strawberry picked by a robot, or a pastry created with a 3-D printer. You

would never taste the difference, but these technologies might just save your health and the planet’s. Today, landmark

advances in computing, engineering, and medicine are driving solutions to the biggest problems created by industrialized

food.

Tech to Table introduces readers to twenty-five of the most creative entrepreneurs advancing these solutions. They come

from various places and professions, identities and backgrounds. But they share an outsider’s perspective and an

idealistic, sometimes aggressive, ambition to rethink the food system.

Reinvention is desperately needed. Under Big Ag, pollution, climate change, animal cruelty, hunger, and obesity have

festered, and despite decades of effort, organic farming accounts for less than one percent of US croplands. Entrepreneurs represent a new path, one where disruptive technology helps people and the environment. These innovations include

supplements to lower the methane in cattle belches, drones that monitor irrigation levels in crops, urban warehouses that

grow produce year-round, and more.

The pace and breadth of change is astonishing, as investors pump billions of dollars into ag-innovation. Startups are

attracting capital and building markets, with the potential to upend conventional agribusiness’s stranglehold on the food

system. Not every invention will prosper long-term, but each marks a fundamental change in our approach to feeding a

growing population—sustainably.

A revolution in how we grow and eat food is brewing. Munson’s deftly crafted profiles offer a fascinating preview of the

coming future of food.