China's Big Food Gamble
State of Agritech -27th May 2026
1/ What can India Learn from South Africa?
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that South Africa’s agricultural sector supports roughly 960,000 jobs. What is South Africa doing right? What is the counter-intuitive truth about the way India regulates its agricultural markets? Although India’s agrarian predicament is unique, what can India learn from South Africa?
2/ Making Sense of StrainX Bioworks’ $13Mn Fundraise
Is StrainX Bioworks addressing the missing messy middle between lab-scale synthetic biology and commodity-scale biomanufacturing ? In contrast to China, has India really moved the needle on industrial fermentation unit economics? How does Industrial Fermentation Stack look like? What could be the two ingredients StrainX Bioworks is likely to commercialize in the near future? I speculate based on the clues given.
3/ Surely, ITC Spices Must Be Joking!!
ITC recently claimed to be “leading exporter of organic spices”. Shall we peel the onion layers with the help of their Q4 FY26 results? Organic spices constitute 0.39 percent of India’s spice export volume and 0.96 percent of export value. It is like saying you are the largest EV maker in a country where total EV sales are 0.5 percent of the auto market.
4/ China’s Big Food Gamble
China doesn’t want to take more land from staple grain; rather, draw more calories and protein from forests, grasslands, oceans, and bio-tech. What are the hidden trade-offs behind China’s Big Food gamble? Is China ready to let go of resilience in frenzied pursuit of control variable?
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