Bramble’s Chris Mitchell shares a vision for the future of UK health and agrifood

The UK’s agrifood strategy is a bit like a mosaic, says Chris Mitchell , partner at VC firm Bramble Partners (Bramble Partners) and managing partner at its food systems advisory arm Bramble Intelligence (Bramble Intelligence). The various tiles are all there but have yet to be fully joined into a clear picture.

But after more than a year of government announcements around sustainable farming, the obesity epidemic, banning junk food ads, and serving up more money for agtech innovation, the tiles may finally be falling into place.

“The 10-year health plan, the Good Food Cycle, everything the government is doing in terms of farming and nature are all pretty exciting,” says Mitchell. “I can’t remember a time where so many different topics seem to be converging at the same time.”

Bramble Partners invests in Series A to growth-stage businesses across the food system, usually with a health or environmental benefit to their offering. Bramble Intelligence, meanwhile, helps big food companies, NGOs, governments, and many others solve food system-related challenges.

Mitchell recently chatted with AgFunderNews about what excites Bramble most these days in terms of food system development and how the UK government’s agrifood strategy is shaping up.

AgFunderNews (AFN): What is Bramble most excited about right now in terms of developments in agrifood?

Chris Mitchell (CM): One is the extension of appetite suppressants [such as GLP-1 drugs] and the value of that within the NHS [National Health Service].

It’s still quite restrictive in terms of of the BMI and physician guidelines around when they can be prescribed, but if those regulations are loosened, then I think this is a pretty amazing game changer. Already, the adoption rates on appetite-suppressant drugs outstrip SSRIs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] and statins, and people pay out of pocket £1,500 to £2,000 per year. 

The second exciting thing is the mandatory food sales reporting, which is part of the Good Food Cycle government strategy. A lot of what we do on the Bramble advisory side is get companies ready for this, because they’ve never looked at, say, their fiber balance sheet. They’ve never cross-tabulated the profitability of products with the greatest amount of fruit and vegetable servings.

Now they’re having to look at things very differently, and there’s implications for ERP systems, for new product development.

In the UK grocery sector, about 50% of the volume of sales is white label, so these retailers are almost pushing faster than Nestlé or Mondelez, which don’t want to change formulations because they’re trying to serve as many markets with the same product as possible,

Retailers, on the other hand, are saying, “Hey, people don’t want ultra-processed food, I don’t want to have to report out bad data in terms of my entry and profile measure, so I’m going to reformulate.”

The downside is that right now it’s just reporting. Retailers have talked about setting targets, but before that can happen, everybody needs to understand the scoreboard. So I don’t think the other shoe will drop quickly in terms of the government affecting the food system through reporting, but it definitely is getting companies to be thoughtful and move in that direction.

AFN: Is the UK government doing anything to address the behavioral aspect of health/diet/weight loss?

CM: The big thing this government is pushing in this 10-year NHS plan is an NHS app.

For the past 20 years, the UK has spent billions of pounds on architecture for the NHS, but that’s all been about digitizing patient records.

What’s different now is [the government] is saying, “We need to interface with the public and push out information to them.” And the number one thing they need to do is change their diets.

The app means that anybody who’s going to get appetite-suppressing drugs has to have a companion or digital assistant.

There are others, like Darius Mozaffarian at Tufts, who say these drugs are great, but they’re terrible unless you get the nutrition coaching alongside, and then we’re actually kind of hitting two birds with one stone.

AFN: How is regenerative agriculture progressing in the UK?

CM: In the UK, there’s not a Regenerative Organic Alliance or Patagonia Provisions or anything quite like what you have in the US. The Groundswell community is big: 7,000 participants this year versus 4,000 last, so the enthusiasm for regenerative agriculture (whatever that definition is) is growing.

Retailers are also saying they want to lead on regen. Part of the challenge is that the UK imports 83% of its fruit and 50% of its veg. So you can be very enthusiastic about regen, but you’d have to have influence over Egypt, Spain, Morocco, Kenya, Peru, and Senegal [to name a few] to lead on regenerative agriculture in the UK.

The really long lever is actually around foods sourced from animals, which is the largest single component of land use in the UK. What does regenerative agriculture mean in that context? If it’s not an arable farm, what does it mean?

I think the fifth principle of [soil health pioneer] Gabe Brown’s five principles is integrating livestock, which is just not the farming system we have in the UK today, where only 8% of farming is mixed.

AFN: How much does the average consumer know about the regen ag-human health connection?

CM: I don’t think consumers are thinking a healthy soil is a healthy biome that creates a more nutrient dense product that’s going to give better health.

I think we’re a little bit away from that, but we’re closer than in the US because the success of the book “Ultra Processed People,” [by Chris van Tulleken] has made people think more about the gut microbiome.

If you’re curious about that, you get to soil health pretty quickly. Within the Waitrose, M&S demographic who care about this stuff, I would say there is a pretty broad understanding of the farming system and the benefits to consumers. Also, from the king down to the landed gentry, about 50 families control an unbelievable amount of land in the UK, and they’re all quite environmentally oriented.

AFN: What specific areas does Bramble focus on right now?

CM: We’re focused on five big factors.

A high disruption scenario is this fast-emerging microbiome research that links low-fiber diets and additives to specific diseases, which drives bans [on ingredients] and stricter standards, and rapid reformulation, and demand for fiber-rich crops.

Maybe one step adjacent to that is the fact that if something is grown in a regenerative way and there’s more life in the soil, the microbiome is richer. That’s when people start to say we have to ban glyphosate, we have to move away from traditional pest control measures in agriculture.

Not only is there a microbiome, there’s actually a whole bunch of other chemical compounds that we haven’t even really understood before.

Now that links to the second major thing we focus on, which is artificial intelligence—but not the large language models. It’s the large computational models.

Especially here in the UK, we think artificial intelligence will be to biology what calculus was to physics. Suddenly we have an understanding of the biochemistry and food in a way that we didn’t previously.

So focus areas one and two are quite linked.

We’ve talked about appetite suppressants. We speak to a number of leading doctors in the UK, and they are very excited and say that in five years, you won’t really remember that they were originally for diabetes or obesity.

If these appetite suppressants prove to actually have broader benefits than the way in which they’re being prescribed today, it could be an incredible change in terms of health care. And with everybody taking them, people will eat less and eat more mindfully. So the impact on the food system could be just massive.

AFN: And the remaining two focus areas?

CM: We’ve talked about the fourth area, which is government action. I don’t think they’re going to be super aggressive on the timelines, but I do think that the government is shining a light on [food system problems]. Things like this NHS app, if it can ever get off the ground and people actually use it, could be quite game changing for nutrition coaching.

The final focus area is on all the supply chain disruptions we’re seeing across almost all globally traded commodities, and unprecedented price volatility. The volatility in global supply chains leading to a huge amount of capital being invested in innovation is also very, very exciting.

When you put them all [these things] together, it creates potentially a step-change opportunity across the food system. I can’t remember a time where so many different topics seem to be converging at the same time.

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