Fast-growing birds’ bodies are unable to keep up with their rapid weight gain leading to leg problems and in some cases complete immobilization. He points to recent documentaries and data showing that chickens are significantly bigger today than they were in the 1950s.īut as the industry has optimized its breeding programs for one factor - a bird that gets to butcher weight as fast as possible while consuming as little feed as possible - other problems manifested.
The genetic line that it has developed - called the Pioneer - is slower growing, has fewer disease problems, and consumes a more diverse diet compared to the Cornish Cross variety that dominates 99% of the US poultry industry and 90% of the global poultry industry, according to Phillips. But on the agtech side, from an animal health and production standpoint, we saw some significant advantages with the breed that Cooks is commercializing.” An athletic breed They are breeding, growing, and processing chickens. “It is a different type of investment for us given that it is a vertically integrated operation. “It is foodtech and agtech in some sense,” Dan Phillips, managing director at Cultivian Sandbox, told AFN regarding how the company fits into the firm’s portfolio.
Cooks venture jobs series#
The Arkansas business recently closed a $10 million Series A round led by agtech investing pioneer Cultivian Sandbox alongside SJF Ventures. Large corporations are tracking these trends and the US chicken industry’s largest player Perdue launched its own e-commerce direct-to-consumer website last year it also owns regenerative farming operations.Ĭooks Venture, a poultry producer founded by former Blue Apron cof0under Matt Wadiak, is also pursuing many of these trends: it has an e-commerce offering, it describes itself as using regenerative agriculture practices, and it’s also developed its own chicken breed. Covid-19 has advanced all of these trends: local supply chains, producers and delivery services have benefited from stay-at-home orders, while the pandemic has also strengthened consumer interest in where their food comes from, at times pushing more meat eaters to alternative products but also renewing their focus on quality. From the rise of grass-fed to direct-to-consumer e-commerce aggregators to small-scale farmers shipping straight to consumers’ doors, not to mention the advances of new farming methods as well as alternative meat products, there’s an ongoing shakeup happening in the meat department.
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