In Rochester, New York, there’s a food-tech startup that has recently developed the technology to preserve food without refrigeration for many months, preventing them from spoiling for a long time. Plus, there no use of artificial preservatives.
This startup is called Farther Farms. The aim of the startup is to ensure that food does not get spoiled, is commercially available, is shelf-stable, does not require freezing, and many more.
Farther Farms developed its technology at Cornell University, a leading food science institution located in Ithaca, New York. Plus, it has a lot of impressive investors and advisors such as SpaceX, Venetian Hotels, Shake Shack, and other experts in engineering, food processing, and agriculture.
The co-founder is Vipul Saran. He grew up in India in a farming family and was a graduate student at Cornell University at the time. Since he was already familiar with the costs of and difficulties of agricultural products, like potatoes, he knew what he was doing.
At the time, Vipul had reportedly told reporters,
“The whole goal was, basically, how can we look into new, innovative food processing technologies that can allow us to create value-added food products from these perishable food products, which avoids the need and the dependency as much as possible on refrigeration and freezing?”
Since there are millions of tons of food waste that is generated worldwide, this technology can change how agriculture is done in many countries, including the major nations like the United States, and developing countries across the globe.
For example, refrigerating shipping containers in vehicles and trains can be pretty expensive especially when suppliers travel long distances to ship food. With this technology, more food can be stored for a longer period of time, allowing more people to access food, while also remaining cost-efficient for the businesses who supply these goods.
When it comes to food shortages, it is hard to devote more cropland to more coveted vegetables and fruits. Vegetables and fruits are the most nutritious food available but can easily lose their freshness quickly, and they can easily get spoiled in the process. Meanwhile, grains are less nutritious compared to fruits and vegetables but are not as likely to get spoiled (hence them being more readily available in multiple locations).
In most years, there is food spoilage surrounding fruits and vegetables, and it can generate costs that are in the millions or even billions across many nations. For example, according to the US Department of Agriculture food waste is estimated to be found in 30–40% of the food supply and often costs $161 billion worth of food. This means an unknown percentage is attributed to things like food spoilage.
It’s such a shame that food spoilage occurs. From the sounds of it, food gets spoiled from many things. For example, drying, transporting, processing, and milling foods can cause damage, such as from animals, bacteria, or even insects — so this stuff gets thrown away. Other problems include over-ordering, under-ordering, processing issues, and many more.
Anyways, Farther Farms first created a fresh-cut style French fry that’s never frozen and is always ready to cook. Since it is sustainable, requires no artificial preservative, and no freezing/refrigeration, the future looks really optimistic. The plan is to get Farther Farms to produce other foods as well.
Their revolutionary food pasteurization technology means that a new market can be created where preservative-free and refrigerated-free foods can be used to reduce the severity of food spoilage, help out the supply people, and even the farmers who harvest food.
For example, the co-founder and CEO of Farther Farms is a person named Mike Annunziata. He reportedly said,
“Food processing technologies have the power to transform the food system, yet we have not had a system-level breakthrough since Clarence Birdseye first invented freezing technology in the 1920s. Our CO2-based technology has the potential to change that.”
On top of that, restaurants and food-related industries can use these cheaper solutions to save more money and have space for more food products. Freezer and refrigerator real estate can become something of a higher value, and more fancy and higher-quality foods can be made.
In the end, everyone wins. It’s amazing that an ambitious tech startup developed in Ithaca, New York, and based in Rochester, New York was able to come up with such an amazing plan. Only time will tell if this technology benefits the consumers, the farmers, the supply chain people, and even the whole planet.