Ryan Grant Little: 0:42

Welcome to Another Climate Tech Podcast, interviews with the people trying to save us from ourselves. I had lots of fun in this conversation with Paul Ritch, director of strategy and growth at ProVeg Incubator in Berlin. Paul is new to Berlin after having traveled the world for two years and putting his management consulting brain onto the deep questions about our food system. I've been working in Impact for a long time and the new program he and his team is launching, called Kickstarting for Good, is, hands down, the most promising program I've ever seen. I'm your host, Ryan Grant Little. I'm glad you're here, Paul. Welcome to the podcast.

Paul Ritch: 1:21

Yeah, thanks for having me excited to talk to you today.

Ryan Grant Little: 1:24

Talk about the ProVeg Incubator. Where are you based? How long has it been around? What do you do?

Paul Ritch: 1:29

Yeah, the ProVeg Incubator came to be in I think it was 2018. We're here in Berlin, Germany, and it's the world's leading incubator of plant-based fermentation and cultivated food startups. It was the first of its kind program to cultivate and support emerging startups to reduce the consumption of factory farm animal products. It's a 12-week program where participants secure up to 300,000 euros in funding and they get significant in-kind services.

Ryan Grant Little: 2:00

And you've just joined them. You've just moved to Berlin as well. So welcome to Berlin. You are from the US, from Wisconsin, but you've been basically for two years traveling around, living nomadically, so that's a long way around from the US to Germany. What were you doing before this in the US? And talk a bit about this kind of two-year nomadic lifestyle? Yeah for sure.

Paul Ritch: 2:24

Yeah, I'm from the US and before taking this time off, I was a management consultant at EY Parthenon. I was a strategy director in their food and agriculture practice and worked all across the value chain. But, most importantly for me, my main focus since 2018 was finding high leverage system improvements for the climate and the environment, and this was plant-based and sustainable protein. Without a doubt, nothing comes close. I did everything I could to push this all-protein and plant-based lever from within the system, but, as you can imagine, it's not easy and comes with significant pushback. So blah, blah, blah. We can circle back to that or interject now, but my wife and I took a career pause. We wanted to just live and exist and simply be and experience climate change up close, to experience deep poverty up close and to experience our broken food system supply chain up close. I wanted to see the real impacts that the system players and their strategic advisors choose to externalize sometimes, and for me it was to face these hard truths head on, because not many people are truly willing to.

Paul Ritch: 3:30

We went all over the globe and really roughed it, man. We slept on couches in rural train stations in India, in 20-bed bunk rooms in the favelas in Brazil, mountain tribes in Vietnam and China. And yeah, it was crazy between the 40-hour train rides and bus rides. It was super exhausting but it was life-changing. And it's super hard to put into words how valuable of an experience this was for my single one journey on Earth. And yeah, it was a time to reflect on whether I was working in the most impactful area I could for the world. And the answer was yes for plant-based, but the answer to me was no for management consulting. I wanted to be a consultant, but rather for human beings and non-human beings. I wanted to consult for the planet and society, and that kind of led to my role here at ProVeg.

Ryan Grant Little: 4:20

It's interesting that you say that you were looking at the highest leverage kind of points of interjection and that that led you to plant-based. And, of course, bain and the Guardian came out with kind of a similar recommendation or conclusion recently with the report about kind of where investment dollars are best spent to fight climate change, and I know what you mean, also that it's not always the most popular message. People don't want to hear that hamburgers are the problem and the reality is that one kilogram of beef creates 100 kilograms of CO2 emissions. It is largely the problem also for things like deforestation and I wonder, when you're looking at that and you came to that conclusion, how does that stack up? Or how do things like?

Ryan Grant Little: 5:08

We talk a lot about regenerative agriculture, about reducing methane and livestock and stuff like that, and it feels a lot of the time like these are easier messages to get across and kind of nobody, you're not upsetting anybody, but maybe that's also the problem. Right, it's kind of a bit like what ESG is to impact. Right, it's an easier feel good story. But maybe talk a little bit about that from the perspective of the consulting work you did, what the journey was to come to that conclusion and some of the types of projects, maybe, that you're working on.

Paul Ritch: 5:41

Yeah, for sure, and I think what ultimately kind of got me down this path was actually from my younger brother. When we were both in university, he was studying environmental science. This, maybe, was 2010,. 2011,. Got me very interested in sustainability and climate. There was no books on this, nobody was putting it in their job titles and this was not on product labeling or anything about sustainability. And, yeah, just read everything I could and everything tied back to food and agriculture.

Paul Ritch: 6:10

And for me, coming from Wisconsin in the US, the last thing I wanted to do was was work in food and agriculture. But I found out, hey, this is where I need to be to really solve some really very wicked problems. Let's call it, and thinking about food and agriculture. It's a function of two things it's what we eat and how we grow it. And I determined, and through data and studies and connecting the dots, that what we eat is the far more profound question and profound challenge. And, yeah, just the benefits that come from switching to a plant rich diet are just numerous. And you can eat grains, you can eat beans, lentils or the sustainable protein kind of novel products that are hitting the market, which are incredible, by the way. It's, the choice is yours, but I mean, through this one single lever we unlock land, we unlock water, we unlock so many opportunities to decarbonize.

Ryan Grant Little: 7:02

Yeah, that's an important point as well. It's not just about CO2. It's about all kinds of different things, and water quality is a massive one. I spent a lot of time in Wisconsin myself as a biogas company founder and you know seeing some of these larger operations 30,000 head dairy operations and stuff like that. The effect of them is that these are all. They're basically like mega cities in a lot of ways. Right? So with a pig farm, 10,000 pigs is equivalent to 100,000 people. But that pig farm with you know, with 100,000 people equivalent doesn't have a sewer system set up, so it's running into rivers and creating all kinds of issues that go well beyond CO2. So I'm with you on this and it's why I also got in the space.

Ryan Grant Little: 7:46

People assume that because that I'm I work in food tech, because I'm a great food lover, but I have to remind people that I'm the guy who's like eating microwave spaghetti over the sink for dinner. I don't. I don't care so much about food. I care about the system and also how we treat animals, which are, you know, sentient beings just like us.

Paul Ritch: 8:03

Yeah, super inspiring. I'm glad that you spent some time in Wisconsin, hopefully in the summer and not from Canada, you know it's.

Ryan Grant Little: 8:11

Yeah, you're even north. Yeah, I should be complaining.

Paul Ritch: 8:14

Yeah, no, I love that and maybe we'll talk about it here, but it's all a function of thinking in systems. I think I wrote something on, maybe on LinkedIn yesterday or the day before, and, yeah, we need to really reframe what's the goal of the food and agriculture system, what are the rules, what are the constraints and what are the best levers for change and sustainable protein or plant rich diets? It plays a central role and it's a huge lever for numerous issues that are important to different people. So I think when a lot of people really just sit back and ponder and think what's the world I want for me, my children, my competitors, everybody to just keep this thinking thing habitable, I think people are waking up very quickly that protein is at the center of that and it's a huge lover.

Ryan Grant Little: 8:57

Yeah, and I think you know, just going back to Wisconsin again. So you know, 2009 or so, when I was there and meeting with the governor's office and we went to see we had a box at the what are they called? The Pusser Football team again the Green Bay Packers. Yeah, we went to Green Bay Packers game and saw Aaron Rodgers' first game there, which I guess it was a really big deal, although it means absolutely nothing to me as it. I'm like this is the one where you throw the ball in the air, right, ok, so funny. But meeting with the governor's office at that time and it was important, you know they were really on side with Biogas.

Ryan Grant Little: 9:35

It's 2009, but not because of the environmental side of things so much. But if we could talk about energy security and make the case around jobs and economic opportunities, and sometimes I think in this sector, in the food tech and ag tech, we could be doing a lot more. Talking about food security, supply chain security. You know, post pandemic we saw a lot about that. We're seeing a lot of the effects of food security right now with the war in Ukraine and maybe part of it, and I'll let you talk a little bit about some of the stuff that the pro-veggers incubators doing. But part of this is also about shifting the narrative to these other things that matter to everyone and that don't require kind of necessarily values alignment on things like animal welfare, to make the tent a little bit bigger.

Paul Ritch: 10:19

Yeah, I am completely aligned. I think the conversation on food security, on fair transition for farmers, on just job growth in general across the economy, there's ripple effects from this transition across the economy. It is just so important and I'm working on some stuff right now with the Middle East to kind of make that argument and kind of discuss those talking points. But yeah, food security, there's many ways we can talk about it and food waste and ways we can talk about it. But we really need to think about it differently and what are the real levers again kind of coming back to that kind of same theme to really underpin and change that.

Ryan Grant Little: 10:54

And one of the reasons I reached out to you when I did is because I saw a lot of LinkedIn traffic about ProVeg's new kickstarting for good program, and I literally got goosebumps when I went through, when I just kind of clicked through the carousel and saw the different ideas, because they're all ideas that I've been thinking about one way or another. One of them I wrote up, basically a one pager on, and sent to a foundation over the summer to see if we could get some interest from it. So I know where to direct that interest as well and I'm very happy that I don't have to be the guy who does it. But I feel like it's so important to do some of this stuff. I wonder if you could just kind of talk about some of these different ideas, who it's for and what the impetus is for doing this now.

Paul Ritch: 12:36

Yeah, for sure. I mean, first and foremost, I'm super pumped to hear that you're excited about this. I share your passion for finance models that drive real systemic change. Technology alone is only a fraction of what's needed and don't get me wrong very important, but everyone that I'm talking to right now from investors to media to whomever is really starting to wake up to that fact that, hey, we need some work on the demand side.

Paul Ritch: 12:59

And, yeah, ryan, regarding Stealing Thunder or kind of you working on this as well, let's, I look forward to working with you on this or finding ways to collaborate. So, let's, let's find ways to get your strategies and ideas and leadership into this. It'll only enhance the program, but really quickly. Yeah, just on the impetus, it's for everybody, by the way, that's looking to change the food and protein system from different angles. The impetus is we need multiple levers moving at once, and the program aim is to help launch and grow new nonprofits, product initiatives and social startups working on fixing the food and protein system, and I'm sure we'll dig more into this. But the range of solutions is super inspiring and it's almost a sister program to our other tech incubator. This one is maybe more pressing non tech levers. It's backed by global philanthropy and, yeah, there's a wealth of mentorship and guidance from the industry network behind it.

Ryan Grant Little: 13:52

And some of the ideas that you put out there that that I don't know if these ones have backing specifically or if these are just kind of ideas. And it was kind of cool is that you're asking people to take these ideas and run with them. But one was the World Society for Plant Based Chefs, which is cool. The other, which I've seen a lot of talk about from very smart people in the industry and I think maybe this is where this has come from also is a check off program for plant based foods, which is a lot like how the beef, pork and dairy industries have funding for sort of the category to promote the whole category with these kind of inane campaigns like beef it's what's for dinner, pork, the other white meat, or got milk, which you and I will have grown up with and been in doctrine in our whole lives with you in Wisconsin. You've probably seen a few got milk commercials.

Paul Ritch: 14:40

I was gonna say one of my kind of notes here to talk about is kind of this need for a check off program. But you had growing up in the dairy state. I can't tell you how many got milk slogans I've seen and I think I even had a shirt that had it on it at one point. But yeah, the milk must, as commercials are, just they haunt me to this day.

Ryan Grant Little: 14:57

Yeah, I remember that and then I mean it says a lot, you know, like back I'm probably older than you, but going back and Jonathan Taylor Thomas was like the Justin Bieber of the era, whatever, and he's doing milk commercials, but he's also plant based at that time. So how things have changed. But what are some of the other ones? So those are two, but you've put out all kinds of different ideas. So what else are you looking at?

Paul Ritch: 15:20

Yeah, I'm not sure how much I can comment on a lot of the applications that have come in, but in terms of some of these kind of public kickstarted projects that Albrecht of Wolfmeyer and Esteem have come up with, which are super impactful they include one's an accelerator for social media influencers. One is a network that connects organizations focused on climate-friendly, plant-rich diets and schools huge potential. A marketing and comms agency to drive the plant-based movement. I think the other one I can think of is a nutritionist fellowship which will help promote plant-based nutrition influencers. All of them have a lot of potential. If you want, I can maybe comment on one that maybe is super high potential.

Ryan Grant Little: 16:00

Yeah, maybe talk. I've forgotten about the social media influencer, one which I think is also really, really important, but maybe zero in on what your favorite one of the sort of publicly announced ideas is.

Paul Ritch: 16:12

Yeah, I'm really excited about the potential of the plant-based marketing and comms agency. I just think, man, my God, do we need this? There are some superstars in our space when it comes to spreading the right messages and kind of journalism you could probably put Senali and Green Queen on that list but we need an army behind these people to counteract Just the powers at B right now. I think we need better reporting, better marketing, better communications and better design in this space. We need all of our top talent focusing time and energy here. To me, this whole system or movement would advance if we just had our top talent not pumping plastic products or animal-based sandwiches or other tech gadgets, but really centering in on this space.

Paul Ritch: 17:00

Maybe a little bit of my mindset behind it, which I actually am going to be discussing in an upcoming book that I have coming out, is that if we all sat in deep thought all of us all, 8 billion of us just sat in deep thought for just a couple minutes, we could advance this movement 30 years in a matter of minutes. The central part of that is storytelling. Storytelling is so important to kick off that deep thought. My way of talking about it, or how I like to talk about. It is just recreating these aha moments with other people, the same ahas that got us. We can think back on our own experience and share that, what made it click for us, what got us inspired. But to do this, this requires incredible talent and this requires an organization such as the one we're discussing. So I think this one's high potential.

Ryan Grant Little: 17:45

Yeah, I'm totally with you. I think one of the challenges we have in our sector is we're not great at taking complex ideas and turning them into simple messages that people can get behind, whereas kind of, let's call it, the other guys who are talking about, well, we can't call oat milk milk because it's confusing to consumers and fight that. And, as I always say, how come they're not chasing down the peanut butter industry? Then, if this is so confusing? But you know, but they're being effective, right, and the thing is, because they come up with a few talking points, they align around it and whereas we tend to kind of, on this side, focus, make things a little bit more complicated and kind of focus in on the minutia among ourselves while missing some of the big pictures. So I'm totally with you that we need this and storytelling. This is it's so clear that we have the facts on our side in this sector. But there's one thing we've learned in the last eight years or so that doesn't matter, oh my gosh.

Paul Ritch: 18:44

Yeah, no, totally, totally true. Yeah, it's. We got to be very wise about how we tell the message. But I mean, the beautiful thing to me is that this movement there's no conniving kind of hidden ulterior motive. I mean it is truly saying, hey, our system needs compassion. Even if we phase out fossil fuel, we cannot meet climate biodiversity goals without changing our protein system. I mean it's really just we all need to think about this one word, uninhabitable, and what that really means. I think people hear it but it hasn't clicked on what that means and I think just kind of rallying around a couple of key points and thinking deeply is important. But yeah, we tend to over explain sometimes. I've been there, I've done it, so I think we need to grow as an industry.

Ryan Grant Little: 19:26

One of the things I like about this kickstarting for good program is that it's open to nonprofits, and I think we see a lot of accelerators out there that are for the ultra high potential profit clean tech companies and stuff like that but we see a lot less of this where it's accessible also to nonprofits. Can you talk a little bit about the funding pot or what's available for the different initiatives, or maybe some tips for organizations that want to reach out what a successful application could look like?

Paul Ritch: 19:56

Yeah, I mean it's open to all types of organizations, nonprofits, and I agree, I think there's a space for this to kind of get these maybe non-traditional venture route kind of organizations off the ground. Anybody that's interested in finding a way through policy, through education, through some of these other non-tech realms, is open to apply. I do unfortunately think and I'll get maybe some clarity after this I think the inaugural cohort application window may be closed yesterday, but I wouldn't discourage anybody from reaching out. We had man hundreds I think it was three, four, five hundred applications, wow, coming into this, and I've had some people reach out to me on LinkedIn and and I'm brand new, I think Albrecht and some of the team. I mean they're probably getting just overwhelmed with these applications. But but yeah, no, there's great and there's room to run more cohorts here soon. But but I would say anybody that has a unique idea on how to move this forward should apply and reach out.

Paul Ritch: 20:48

I think it's an eight-week kind of high-speed program with curriculum, networking, mentorship and strategy support and we want everybody represented. We want orgs from the global north and the global south. We don't want there to be any barriers for anybody to join this program with some time here in Berlin. So I think we're offering at first like five thousand euros as a kind of a stipend or a grant to cover any sort of costs associated with the program and then post program. The goal is obviously to unlock Greater levels of funding within the ProVeg network for these organizations, starting with the demo day. We want to match these projects with investors.

Ryan Grant Little: 21:24

So, but it's open to any type of organization. So for-profit, nonprofit, everything in between and globally, is that right?

Paul Ritch: 21:31

Yes, exactly yeah, I'm sure there's a link that we can maybe share if we kind of put that on this yeah great, a lot of great information.

Ryan Grant Little: 21:39

So okay, so you're brand new at that ProVeg. What are you most excited about in the year ahead?

Paul Ritch: 21:44

Yeah, I would say absolutely excited to be an even an even stronger system orchestrator at this critical juncture in time. We've embedded systems thinking into everything we do and we want to spread that far and wide, and to us there's a few kind of key parties. We want to speak more with policymakers. I'm looking forward to working with global delegates at COP in Dubai in the fall to talk about our solutions, and then also, yeah, work with consumers. I think there's a lot of work that we can do in sharing the message better through this education and in telling this, this story and this narrative right that we just discussed.

Paul Ritch: 22:18

Yeah, to actually answer your question, yeah, I think. Just engage policymakers, work with global delegates. We have a youth board with ProVeg International. I think it's a super important voice that we need to bring to the table. So we're hoping to grow that and I'm super proud of the youth that are standing up and want to be ambassadors for the plant-based movement. Hope to grow that as well. But, yeah, there's a lot that I'm super excited about in addition to the incubator programs we discussed.

Ryan Grant Little: 22:43

You should check out the farm food climate conference coming up next Wednesday I think that's the 5th of September. We're hosted by project together, which has done some great work, especially motivating and bringing youth under the tent as well Awesome.

Paul Ritch: 22:58

Yeah, I think next week. Unfortunately, I saw that the timing is not gonna work. We're doing some kind of international strategy work those days. But yeah, hopefully they do more events and yeah, definitely Want to get involved with that. Yeah, they're a good group to get involved with what's the?

Ryan Grant Little: 23:11

you mentioned LinkedIn. Is that the best place for people to find you online?

Paul Ritch: 23:15

I would say so. You know I've always been a pretty private, low-key person. I love just kind of chill and spend time with my wife and not doing all the extra hours on being active on social media or building a apolifocus brand or anything. I would say I'm semi active on LinkedIn and I've made it a goal to be more vocal, so I'd say that's probably the best place to reach out and engage for sure.

Ryan Grant Little: 23:38

Okay, I won't publish your home address in the show notes. Perfect, but most important question so you're from Milwaukee and your big sports fan and the Brewers right now. I was a massive baseball fan when I was a kid and Brewers were one of my teams, but so they're currently in first place in National League Central. Do you think they've got what it takes to win? The World Series is here.

Paul Ritch: 23:59

Okay, you have definitely found my soft spot and the weight of my heart and it's talking about Wisconsin sports Baseball. Yeah, I think the Brewers definitely have a chance to win the Central. Probably no chance at the World Series. I say that for one reason our payroll is like a hundred and fifty million. Other teams have like 300 million, so it's almost a good analogy for our food system. I mean, we need to level the playing field and get subsidy dollars changed and then research changed and probably the same in baseball. I think the Brewers just don't have the payroll. But it is football season and Jordan Love is about to take the Green Bay Packers to the Super Bowl. You can book that and I think I'm gonna recruit you to be the latest Packer fan. You've already been the Lambeau field.

Ryan Grant Little: 24:39

Yeah, I've been there and sat in a box and I was, I think, more focused on the Ryan ginger ale cart at that point than what's happening on the Fields. But yeah, that's a great point also. I mean that you've just demonstrated your storytelling. So I asked you a question about baseball and you bring it back to the food system. So Prove Edge has done well with you.

Paul Ritch: 24:57

Awesome, awesome.

Ryan Grant Little: 24:59

Paul, thanks a lot for joining today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, talk soon. Thanks for listening to another climate tech podcast. It would mean a lot if you would subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Get in touch anytime with tips and guest recommendations at hello at climate tech pod calm. Find me, ryan Grant little on LinkedIn. I'll be back with another episode next week. Bye for now.