2030 Finance | September 9, 2019

Cooks Venture secures $12 million to scale up regenerative animal farming

Jessica Pothering
ImpactAlpha Editor

Jessica Pothering

ImpactAlpha, September 9 – Cooks Venture launched in April to provide consumers with better quality meat through the climate-friendly practice of “regenerative agriculture.”

Unlike industrial livestock, poultry and crop farming, regenerative farming can have a positive environmental impact because it relies on a balanced ecosystem of animals and crops that nourish each other. This process in turn restores soil health and sequesters carbon.

“Our soil is our greatest natural resource; [the U.S.] more top soil than any other nation in the world,” the New York-based company states. “That will not be the case for long unless we protect it through regenerative agriculture.”

Cooks Venture’s model is centered around an 800-acre farm in Arkansas, where it raises heirloom chickens to sell online. It sources feed from other farms and works with a team of scientists that measure and track the farms’ soil health and carbon content over time.

The company was started by the former COO of Blue Apron and has been in the works for a decade. Its $12 million funding round, led by agri-investor AMERRA Capital Management, helped finance a poultry processing facility that will allow the company to produce 700,000 chickens per week.

Cooks Venture also plans to sell beef, pork and fresh produced that it raises, according to its website.