The Highlight Reel
Prime Future 231: the newsletter for innovators in livestock, meat, and dairy
Y’all, I love the end of the year. It’s the perfect natural excuse to look backward and reflect and to look forward and cast vision. Like a calendar-induced street crossing, it forces the savvy traveler to pay attention and look both ways before crossing from one side to the other.
As a recovering over-achiever, one of my favorite ideas from The Gap and The Gain is to always measure backward. The idea is that focusing on the distance between where we are today and where we want to be leads to frustration and striving that drains energy and slows progress, aka living in the gap. But measuring how far we've come compared with where we started generates energy and momentum to go further faster, aka the gain.
While this idea can be applied in many contexts (financial, fitness, etc.), I’m applying it here in the context of Prime Future. While likes and shares are great, the way I define success for any individual essay is whether or not it sparks compelling conversations.
Yes, it’s still early December but because I’m in full 2024 reflect-and-capture-learnings mode, today I’m sharing the ten editions that sparked my most valuable conversations this year — whether ardent agreement or vehement disagreement — in hopes they will do the same for you.
But before we get to those, I'd love to know what topics you'd like to see in Prime Future in 2025 – more on agtech? Specific themes? Insights from producers? Downstream dynamics that could impact upstream?
Drop a comment or hit reply to this email to let me know.
When I started Prime Future in 2020, I worried I would quickly run out of interesting topics. But the intersection of strategy and innovation with livestock, meat & dairy is endlessly fascinating — and the more we explore, the more interesting questions we uncover about the gargantuan global animal protein business and all of its gazillion quirks and quandaries.
I'm excited about where our curiosity will lead us in 2025, and I'm thrilled you're part of the journey.
With that, the top ten Prime Future editions from 2024:
Despite ~$54 billion in venture capital over the last decade, we can’t point to one fallen giant incumbent. Four hypotheses about what disruption might actually look like in our modern agricultural economy:
The Elephant Trap is real for agribusiness and agtech companies, here are 3 ways to avoid mistaking the part of the elephant for the actual elephant:
How often do we not offer our customers a choice because we chose for them? And we chose what was better for us as suppliers?
"Agriculture is less about the business of commodity production and more about the business of real estate." A debate about that quote, and its implications if true:
With learnings from 23andMe, the four conditions necessary for data products to have enduring success:
A discussion at the intersection of big brand promises and economic realities of food:
Why the best data players in agriculture might be the ones implementing the RenTech model in their own animal protein category, and what it takes to pursue this path:
"It’s worth remembering that it’s the capital that ultimately designs the game that everyone else plays." Here’s how that quote plays out in agtech:
What must be true for beef supply chain transparency to gain real traction in the US?
And finally, a look at how Saudi Arabia is strategically leveraging wealth from oil into food security with its global investment thesis:
Great job as always - international trade perspectives- disease (HPAI, NWS), tariffs, etc....genomics & supply chain linkages, and perhaps a BxD revisitation :). Thanks for all you do. Happy Holidays!