From climate volatility to food insecurity and antibiotic resistance, the global food system is at a breaking point. Industrial agriculture contributes up to 25% of global emissions, drives biodiversity loss, and strains farmers with volatile prices and precarity. 

It’s clear we need to change how food is made, not just how it's consumed: one bold solution is clean agriculture.

In this week’s episode, Felicia speaks with Jim Mellon, entrepreneur, investor, and executive chairman of Agronomics, a company backing cellular agriculture and precision fermentation to create meat, dairy, eggs, and oils, without animal cruelty, deforestation, or ultra-processed additives.

Agronomics is invested in companies such as Meatly, BlueNalu, Liberation Labs, and Clean Food Group, aiming to industrially replace high-impact ingredients such as palm oil, dairy proteins, and even bluefin tuna with bio-identical, lower-impact alternatives.

In this episode, we unpack what clean agriculture really means, and why it’s fundamentally different from plant-based food and from GM. We explore its potential to cut emissions, reduce antibiotic use, ease pressure on land, and stabilise food prices in an era of growing volatility. 

Jim Mellon why new fermentation infrastructure is critical, what investors often misunderstand about this emerging sector, and how dogs might just be the unlikely bridge to a cleaner, more sustainable future for meat.

Whether you care about emissions, animal welfare, farmer livelihoods, or just the price of chocolate, this episode makes the case for why clean agriculture might just be the food system moonshot we need.

Reading materials:

• Studies on clean agriculture

• Palm oil and biodiversity

• Why clean meat is not “fake” meat

• Moose Law: Jim Mellon's book on cellular agriculture

• How climate shocks affect food prices

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