Founder-In-Residence, Re-Wilding Monoculture Systems

at  Deep Science Ventures

JOIN US AS A FOUNDER IN AGRICULTURE

At DSV, we are always on the lookout for entrepreneurial-minded individuals with technical and commercial domain expertise to solve urgent unmet challenges through venture building. We are currently seeking passionate and driven individuals to join our Agriculture sector, focusing on how to enhance the yield and profits of monoculture crops, such as sugar cane, while reducing farm footprints across the tropics. You can read more about our thesis here.

OUR APPROACH

We aim to reduce the environmental footprint of sugarcane monocultures while improving productivity, yields, and profits - simultaneously addressing the needs of farmers, agribusiness and nature. To do so, we propose a combination of post-harvest loss mitigation [11] and biotechnological advancements for high-value product creation from sugar cane [12, 13, 14, 15, 16). Approximately 30% of sucrose degrades within one day post-harvest. Reducing post-harvest losses using technologies that inhibit enzymatic degradation can therefore deliver immediate improvements in resource efficiency. Furthermore, this can be paired with both in-plant and post-harvest interventions that boost the output of high value products, to reposition sugarcane as a feedstock toward high value chemical production that offers significantly improved value capture and economic resilience for farmers. Then finally, to alleviate land use conflicts and deforestation risks that could arise for such gains, these technologies can be deployed within innovative business models that require environmental compliance for access.
While we aim to start in the multi-billion dollar sugar cane industry, we also see exciting scope for new technologies built in this space to provide a platform for extension into other crops that exhibit similar characteristics and needs. We are now looking for an ambitious Founder to make this vision a reality.

Please refer the Job description for details