With its earth-friendly protein, Farmless wants to dramatically outperform animal agriculture

dutch startup no farm today announced that it has raised a €1.2 million pre-seed equity round at an undisclosed valuation to bring protein created without the need for traditional farming operations to our tables. The climate crisis means that it has never been more pressing to develop alternative sources of food to protect our planet and feed its ever-growing population effectively and sustainably. Farmless Founder and CEO Adnan Oner believes that Farmless’s novel approach to protein production can bring about positive change in what we eat and how we produce it.

“A couple of years ago I was wondering how to make the biggest impact with my next startup,” Oner said, speaking exclusively to TechCrunch. “I found that there are very few people who make food production that much more efficient in terms of land and resource use. Efficient food production is crucial if we are to reverse centuries of agricultural expansion and reforest the world in my lifetime… I was very excited when I discovered that there is a much better path to food than traditional agriculture: fermentation based on renewable electricity.” .

There are quite a few non-animal protein alternatives already available, but Farmless reckons it’s in for something quite different with its fermentation approach. Its production process does not depend on sugar but on a liquid raw material made with CO₂, hydrogen and renewable energy. This means that it not only requires 500 times the amount of land compared to producing animal protein, but also 10-25 times less land than other types of plant-based protein.

“With our fermentation platform, we aim to dramatically outperform animal agriculture and reliably produce low-cost protein on a planetary scale,” Oner said. “We believe this technology has the potential to end industrial agriculture, regenerate our planet, and reduce gigatons of carbon.”

Farmless has raised its €1.2 million pre-seed round from co-leaders Revent, Nucleus Capital and Possible Ventures with participation from HackCapital, Sustainable Food Ventures, VOYAGERS Climate-Tech Fund, TET Ventures and angels Jenny Saft through the program Atomico Angel, and Ron Shigeta, Martin Weber, Rick Bernstein, Nadine Geiser, Joy Faucher, Michele Tarawneh, Alexander Hoffmann, and Christian Stiebner.

Oner spoke to TechCrunch about the short- and long-term possibilities that this funding has unlocked.

“With this round, we were able to find microbes that taste and act like animal proteins, set up a laboratory, and formed a team of scientists dedicated to fermentation and food,” Oner said. “We are currently developing our initial product prototype, which is a complete amino acid protein with high functionality.”

In addition to implementing these essential business-building requirements, the funding should help expand Farmless and push the limits of what can be achieved with synthetically produced protein.

“We are also pushing the limits of the performance of our fermentation process,” Oner said. “The next steps would be to move to larger fermentation vessels, build out our supply chain, get regulatory approval for our first product, and bring it to market with the right partners.”

In the long term, Farmless has high hopes for its protein alternative.

“The Farmless fermentation platform can potentially create a whole new food repertoire, producing proteins, carbohydrates, beneficial fats, vitamins and minerals from the bottom up,” Oner said. “We are building a new interface between food and electricity, which means we are domesticating microbes selected for their nutritional properties and their ability to grow on renewable energy-based feedstocks.”

From Farmless’s perspective, it has the potential to generate revolutionary developments in the next 10 years.

“If all goes to plan, we will bring food fermentation into the mainstream in the next decade,” Oner said. “Our ultimate goal is to free up animal food production and farmland, so we can give back vast amounts of land to rebuild our planet, pull carbon out of the atmosphere, and free animals from the food system.”

Despite the positivity flowing from both Farmless and its investors, there are some potential regulatory hurdles in their journey toward fermentation-produced proteins, as Oner explained.

“Within the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the procedure for novel foods generally has two phases; one is the food safety part, which is great,” Oner said. “However, after receiving a favorable opinion from EFSA, all member states can vote, making it a highly political and unpredictable process.”

As a consequence of regulatory restrictions, Farmless could face some problems in producing a protein alternative that people actually want to eat.

“At the moment, public tastings of fermentation-based products are not allowed under any conditions in the Netherlands,” Oner said, “which makes it a more complicated process to get customer feedback before going through the regulatory process”.

There are also potential funding bottlenecks on the horizon for Farmless, and indeed any other business that relies on the infrastructure.

“Typical venture capital wants a high return on investment, which is not matched by infrastructure projects,” Oner said. “These bridges need to be filled with project financing, ideally with government support to ramp up the transition to a more sustainable and affordable food system, just as we did with renewable energy and electric vehicles.”

As difficult as it is to pursue this and other technologies, Farmless considers it absolutely essential that humans develop a viable alternative to animal protein. And if it’s not too intensive in arable land, that’s even better.

“Animal agriculture belongs in the same category as the fossil fuel industry,” Oner said. “It causes so many bad things: loss of biodiversity (>90% of tropical deforestation), CO₂ emissions, disease, rising antibiotic resistance, pesticide use, freshwater depletion, soil erosion, algae blooms – the list goes on and on.”

Oner and the Farmless team are delighted to have the backing of investors who share their sense of urgency and potential.

“We are proud to be backed by this great group of experienced climate technology investors who share our radical mission,” Oner said. “They are as eager as we are to find a reliable way to produce low-cost protein on a planetary scale, end factory farming, and rebuild our planet.”