We can "Magic" a Plant with Science!

Hi.  I’m Angela Ailloni, BS MIT 1992, MBA Cornell 2000.

I want to repair the world, on many levels.

I can be your Elevate Prize Hero.

Currently, I am the BizDev Lead at Calyxt, an ag biotech company with sole access to TALEN molecular scissors technology for gene editing plants.

I believe that we can: Unlock the Power of Plants to Rescue our People & Planet

My passion is to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals through combined work in climate, agriculture, the 4Fs (food/feed/fiber/fuel) and sustainability. 

I’ve worked in finance on the East and West Coast; venture capital in Eastern Europe; plus pharma, food, agriculture, sustainability and biotech in the MidWest.  I’ve worked for big companies like Nestle, small ones like the current 75-person start-up, and for myself as an entrepreneur.

I have a strong track record of success, with “Gets Shit Done” as the headline of my career.

We are standing on the precipice of a breakthrough. 

A flywheel that needs help to start turning - to kick off a virtuous circle of repair.

We need the Elevate Prize to:  Shine the Light and Focus the Beam - for Growth!

This is a unique time that I'm excited to tell you more about in future answers.

In plain English: We know that we need to grow more with less.

The Problem:  More food/feed/fiber/fuel with less water/fertilizer/pesticide/energy/land while restoring our environment/biodiversity/soil.

The Project:

a) Take the power of the MIT/Elevate Prize in name, expertise, and financial resources

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b) My contacts and experience in gene editing, agriculture, and sustainability    

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c) An education and thought campaign backed by 1 and 2 above, amplifying and teaching

= gene editing to Unlock the Power of Plants to Rescue our People & Planet

Elevating Humanity: More efficiently and sustainably feed/clothe/fuel the world

Stats: The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations:

• FAO estimates that world food production must rise 60% to keep pace with demographic change. #ClimateChange puts this at risk.
• According to @IPPC, crop yield declines of 10-25% may be widespread by 2050 due to #ClimateChange
• Currently, 1/3 of the food we produce is either lost or wasted. The global costs of food wastage ≈$2.6 trillion/yr, including $700 billion of environmental costs & $900 billion of social costs.

More efficiently and sustainably feed/clothe/fuel the world through gene-edited plants

• Limited Resources: Leverage current Covid-19 Focus on food and other supply chains to demonstrate proof of our limited natural resources to feed/clothe/fuel the world. Teach: under current resource utilization and with growing demand, we can’t support global resource needs.
• Climate Crisis: Leverage current Covid-19 Focus on ability to impact our environment and biodiversity through behavior change - to deliver the message that “it is possible and it is necessary” to avoid future similar animal, biodiversity, and environmental crises.
• Gene-editing as a Solution: Amplify respected voices in science/government/NGOs/philanthropy/business, and special interest groups to advocate, explain, advance and fund the use of gene-edited plants for food and non-food uses globally.

The Project:

a) ...Power of MIT/Elevate Prize... (as above)

Utilizing the Prize - plus MIT groups in Climate, Sustainability, Genetics & Agriculture - we will structure a thought/education campaign to demonstrate:

1) Gene editing is "just" accelerated breeding (more on this later) and nothing to be afraid of...

2) Our challenges in Climate, impact on feeding the world, biodiversity, and environment are severe enough that we need a collaborative and multi-pronged approach, e.g. public-private partnerships, electrify everything we can, circularity, reduce waste, and reduce food/feed/fiber/fuel agriculture and transportation impacts.

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b) ...My contacts/experience in GE/Ag/Sust... (as above)

I have unique access and experience.  Both of the contacts below are aware/supportive of my application for this project:

Dr. Dan Voytas (mobile:612-961-4668, email:voytas@umn.edu) Calyxt company founder, CSO, UofMN professor, Inventor of TALENs, National Academy of Sciences Member

Nick Jordan (mobile:651-895-3770, email:jorda020@umn.edu) UofMN professor, Gene-Editing Cooperative-Governance Group & Forever Green Lead

In addition, from work at Land O'Lakes in Sustainability, I have relationships/memberships with NGOs, corporations, and associations who seek this solution, but can't quite connect the pieces and funding.

By directing focus and financial resources to this project we can:

Unlock the Power of Plants to Rescue our People & Planet

The end-product, made possible through acceptance of gene-editing as a Planetary Solution, will flow across many food/feed/fiber/fuel supply chains and value chains. 

It will touch many working hands/wallets in urban and rural communities and end in people’s mouths, on their bodies, in their walls, or in their gas tanks.  They all will have input.

The project results truly could and should have a global impact, and an increasing one over time as GE continues to be approved for use in other regions for food and non-food use.

To the soundtrack of “I’m Just A Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock, imagine this little germ of an idea:

• At its origin, it starts in the lab, with your stereotypical SCIENTISTS in lab coats doing SCIENCE making a super-efficient, super-sustainable custom seed FIT FOR PURPOSE…(gets paid/recognition)
• Gets handed off as SEED to a real live FARMER to GROW and harvest the stuff SUSTAINABLY under STEWARDSHIP programs to IMPROVE CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS…(gets paid/recognition/reporting)
• MOVES with TRACEABILITY through the agriculture supply chain through grain elevators, rail cars, crushing/milling/processing facilities until it BECOMES an INGREDIENT/INPUT…(gets paid/recognition/reporting)
• …then it goes into whatever the end use product is: FOOD/FEED/FIBER/FUEL
• …Shipped/Sold to the END CONSUMER…(benefits to people/planet)

Plants are the solution to more efficiently:

• Power the Planet
• Feed/Clothe our People
• Improve Farmer Livelihoods
• Strengthen Supply Chains
• Deliver Authentic Sustainability
• Restore Climate/Environment
• Save our Collective Asses

While this project hits all three Dimensions, it most squarely delivers on #2 – building awareness and driving action to solve several of the world’s most difficult problems, simultaneously!

However, we also will have to do #1 to change beliefs and educate on science across stakeholders, from consumers to corporations to governments. 

For #3, we focus on our forgotten farmer being supported economically to grow these better crops - across the globe.

In the past several months, I have attended (virtually) MIT Climate events, McKinsey Sustainability events, Field To Market: Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture Mid-Year meeting, participated in the UofMN Cooperative Governance for Gene Editing, kept in touch with various colleagues at NGOs and Associations; while at the same time advancing Business Development for Calyxt’s R&D pipeline collaborations with major food/feed/fiber/fuel companies.

Covid-19 has made this juggling a challenge but has also provided clarity for me on the Barriers That Need Smashing.

AND, without a doubt, I am more convinced than ever that gene-edited plants are the way to proceed to solve for our climate/sustainability/food conundrum.

But, we are all distracted by Covid-19. 

Food and other businesses have been turned on their heads.

Cash that was there for R&D a few months ago is gone.

We had momentum.  We were reaching a Tipping Point.

I am applying for the Prize to Elevate this Solution at a time when I am fearful that we may slip, due to Covid-19, and not maintain the momentum.

Financial resources have dried up, risk-tolerance lowered, and long-term planning replaced by the crisis du jour.

The Challenge is Too Great To Let The Solution Slip Away.

I want my future grandchildren to see a tree. 

Not just a picture of a tree. 

Not a VR tree.

An actual tree.

The time is ripe:  The Covid-19 pandemic proves that we can do hard things, we can change behavior, if the reason is compelling enough.

We can all get on the same team - in fact, we are so interdependent, we must.

If a bee doesn’t exist, our food system is threatened.

When climate change is unchecked, we get 100-year storms annually.

Our ecosystems are at the point they are breaking. 

We have viruses hopping from animals to people.

It is time to stop and think.  Get a plan and execute.

I’m working on this every day in my job at Calyxt – it is my passion. 

Everyone is keeping the plates spinning, but the pull of the need for revenue at a start-up, even with great competitive advantage in tech, is great. 

Add in hesitation by companies that the investments will pay off and the tech will be accepted.

Throw on top the frustrations by foundations and interest groups who are trying to facilitate change, while operating on a burning platform.

We need you to Elevate.

I have been working in food for almost 15 years.  The arc of my career goes from East and West Coast finance/government/consulting, to Eastern European venture capital, to East Coast pharma, to becoming a parent (boys 16 and 18), to entrepreneurship and finally to food/agriculture/biotech in the MidWest. 

Three years ago, my mind was expanded with Sustainability/Circularity, and how it could be part of the Climate Change solution. 

A lightbulb went off above my head. 

I switched full-time to Agriculture Sustainability as my day-job at Land O’Lakes. 

I have made tremendous contacts at corporations, NGOs, Associations – all working on these topics. 

But, we were all running into the same wall.

The grower isn’t getting paid enough, or at all, for sustainability – and it’s time-consuming, data-collecting, proof-requiring work.

If the consumers/customers, investors, food/non-food manufacturers are demanding it, why not?

The supply chain has all its power in big cost-focused companies, like Walmart.

They demand a good/ingredient with a positive sustainability profile at the same price that they previously paid, or they won’t buy it.

The price/cost squeeze goes all the way back to the farmer and there’s nowhere else to squeeze, which is why we have farm bankruptcies and suicides aplenty.

And who is the most trusted profession?  The Farmer.

Covid-19 has shined a light on areas that were “broken” – the food chain and our global supply chains are two.

Let’s Elevate The Farmer, while fixing many other challenges. 

We need sunlight and funding, to Tip The Scales.

As I’ve mentioned, a major barrier is grower payments for sustainability.  Further, because food manufacturers don’t have their own growers, they don’t know where each bit of grain that goes into your cracker comes from.  They know that it’s safe, etc. but they can’t tell you that it’s grown sustainably on Jane’s farm in Iowa.

So instead, they use a proxy.  Like a carbon credit that is not a tangible good, there is a market for sustainably-grown-acre “credits” that is separate from the actual good itself.

As previously discussed, the compensation doesn’t make it back to the grower.  In 200+ words, I could explain the many ways we tried to stand on our head to do so at Land O’Lakes.

Calyxt has contract growers so we know the grain came from Jane’s farm and Jane is paid appropriately for growing the GE seed.  Calyxt also does Identity Preservation, which tracks the seed and grain along the chain.  Plus developing custom GE seed, fit for purpose, that can result in higher nutrition, better sustainability, etc.

I was sold, and moved to Calyxt after trying every way I could to prime the pump for the solution we all seek. Help me proceed!

Go To Google Maps and pull up the Land O’Lakes Headquarters in Arden Hills, MN.

You can still see my Pride & Joy 2019 PRIDE month project from Space!

Leadership: We were told that we couldn’t fly the PRIDE flag on the corporate flagpole, although other groups, such as Veterans, had been allowed to do so during their celebration month.

That didn’t seem fair, but I wasn’t winning the argument.

Land O’Lakes had named Beth Ford as one of the few Openly Gay CEOs and the only Woman. 

This was cause for celebration in my book and there had to be a creative solution.

So, I asked if we could do chalk in the courtyard…and was told yes.

The fact that you can see the chalk from space should give you a sense of the flags’ sizes.

NAILED IT!

I bet they wish they let me fly a tiny little flag for a month. ?

(I was on D&I Council and Co-Lead of the PRIDE group.)

My years of work toward D&I demonstrate a good corporate female role model – an early 90s graduate of MIT, worked in finance, was on an executive leadership team at Nestle.

Should I be fortunate enough to win the Elevate Prize, then I will formalize the role that I would have within Calyxt or otherwise.  I have applied under my consulting LLC, but would definitely continue to work with all parties previously named, such as the founder of Calyxt and inventor of TALENs for gene-editing, the team members of the Cooperative Governance for Gene Editing group at the UofMN that I’m a part of, as well as other NGOs and associations - such as Field To Market: Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, Land O’Lakes Truterra, and others.

Oh, yeah – I’ve got innovation, so glad that you asked.

What can gene-editing do?

We can “Magic” a Plant.

Suspend your disbelief for a moment and just dream with me.

Want it to:

…be shorter, taller? 

…have longer roots?

…use less water?

…grow in a different geography?

…grow in a different season?

Ooooh, those things are all exciting. 

They could help to reduce labor, improve soil health, combat climate change, shrink supply chains, reduce land use, etc

But wait, there’s more:  How about this?

Want it to

…have more of x,y,z nutrient?

…be a different color?

…be perfected to be the exact protein/fat/oil/fiber profile that you are looking for to create a food/fuel/textile/building material/compostable packaging?

Yep, we can do that.

Oooh, that could reduce waste, energy use, the need for additives, and the list goes on.

And nope, it’s not a GMO.

The questions to answer for a regulated GMO are:

• Could this have happened in nature?
• Is there any foreign DNA?

The answers with gene-editing are YES and NO.

We are taking a big ol’ pair of molecular scissors and cutting the genes.

Knocking out the ones that don’t fit the profile that we are trying to achieve.

And then they super-glue themselves back together. 

Voila!

The power of Nature.  The power of Plants.

Barriers?

Fear of regulations, consumer acceptance, financial risk, time frame.

Benefits?

A combo pack that hits food/feed/fiber/fuel, sustainability, and climate with Science.

Let’s be the HERO that’s needed to Break The Barriers.

Currently, Calyxt has 100k acres of soy used for its high oleic soybean oil, Calyno, which was developed with gene-editing.

calyxt.com

calyno.com

In one year, soy is expected to double and gene-edited improved digestibility alfalfa for grazing animals and dairy cows will launch.

The next year, Calyxt gene-edited high fiber wheat is planned to launch.

Others, such as Forever Green, are working on gene-edited oilseed and other crops.

forevergreen.umn.edu

The possibility in 5 years could be dramatic - there could be millions of acres of gene-edited crops in the US - and in other countries too, should we be successful at achieving non-regulated status for gene-editing for food and non-food use.

There is a strong possibility that there could be 5 million acres of gene-edited summer crops, such as soy for food or fuel use.  There also could be a crop rotation that includes a gene-edited winter food or non-food crop on these same acres, amplifying the power of the land.

Sooooo, IF we can use GE globally for food/feed/fiber/fuel, what does that get us?

Suspend your disbelief for a second.

Imagine a field that is growing THE BEST wheat, oat, chickpea, hemp, etc for its intended purpose.

You want a chickpea that spits out a super-efficient protein that uses less water to grow, takes less energy to process because it already meets your technical specs, requires fewer additives in the final product, and tastes better than wild type chickpea?

We can do that in a few years and for $50M or less.

On a life-cycle-basis, that is an amazing deal and has tons of follow-on benefits to environment, etc.

Why aren’t we doing this?!  We are.  That’s my job.  Every day.  Finding companies that want to do this.

As previously discussed the largest barriers are:

Financial - for Growers and for Corporations to pay more for sustainably-produced products

Regulatory - for other countries and regions to accept gene-edited crops for food and non-food purposes - to be able to grow them, process them, and use them within these countries for food and non-food purposes

Consumer Acceptance / Education - Don’t make the same mistake we made with GMOs on gene-editing products.  Educate the public.  Reduce the incredible confusion, like has been created in GMOs.  

GMO 101:

Do you know how many GMO crops there are?

26!

That's all.  And we have labeling on everything under the sun, including non-GMO water.  It's ridiculous and terrible confusing for the consumer.

Let's clear this up.

Some technical, regulatory stuff:

At this point, gene-editing (GE) is non-regulated in the US for food.  My employer launched the first GE food product in the US in 2019, the high oleic soybean oil Calyno, which has the health properties of an olive oil and 3x the fry-life for restaurant deep-frying, for example, for an additional sustainability benefit.  It is expensive, but will become less so over time as it reaches economies of scale.

Other countries regulatory processes in various regions are underway to clear GE for food and non-food use.  In Europe, GE is not allowed as it is lumped in with GMO.

For non-food use, currently GE can be grown and processed in the US and then used elsewhere.  

See geneticliteracyproject.org Gene-Editing-Regulation-Tracker for details.

With The Elevate Prize! 

And, of course, the support of all the fine institutions and affiliations that it will bring, in combination with my connections in agriculture, gene-editing and sustainability.

University of Minnesota, in various departments and functions

Forever Green

Gene-editing Cooperative Governance Group

The Nature Conservancy

Pheasants Forever

Land O'Lakes Truterra

Environmental Initiative

Field To Market: Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture

to name a few...

The goal for this project would be to receive support to advance Gene-editing for use in food/feed/fiber/fuel crops to positively impact sustainability, climate and crop-use efficiency.

• In-kind resources from MIT / Solve / Elevate and any others available within this network
  • To support the thought/education campaign on gene-editing and food/climate/sustainability crisis.
  • To support advancing regulatory frameworks worldwide to accept gene-editing for non-regulated use in food and non-food products.
  • To support the development of a consortium or other group committed to gene-editing for sustainability/climate repair.
• If possible, securing financial resources from MIT / Solve / Elevate and any others available within this network – as well as foundations, government programs, corporate sponsors, etc
  • Funding of Gene Editing R&D (pure research) for highest impact crops for food/feed/fiber/fuel
  • Direct Financial Support for the Grower
    • to grow GE crops through compensation per acre/bushel or other relevant measure
    • to use Sustainable practices through compensation per acre/bushel or other relevant measure
    • for the Labor Costs for collection of data – direct reimbursement of costs model
    • to implement for physical sustainability practices and improvements – direct reimbursement of costs model
  • Direct Financial Support for the Sustainability Tools Provider that house the data, interpret the sustainability metrics, and make recommendations for practices and improvements
• Travel, Conference fees, honorarium, other expenses to support Hero’s attendance at relevant events. 
• Potential for additional compensation for Hero and staff should this become a substantial separate effort from current employment.

I do believe that it is a matter of priming the pump, and it could be self-sustaining, especially in more developed economies.

Foundation and other program support monies, once in the hands of the grower, will start the "water" flowing at the end of the chain that needs it.

These outside supports may be needed for a while - for the research, for the hard work of growing sustainably and tracking, for carbon sequestration that farmers do naturally and should get credit for.

And these outside supporters with aligned interests will be excited to contribute since we will be able to show them real authentic data and results - contributing positively to climate change, environmental repair, biodiversity improvements, water quality, and soil health - along with feeding/clothing/building/fueling the world.

It's a Trifecta!!

I look forward to standing in the middle of a field with you all for an Elevate Prize photo op with farmers, scientists in lab coats, and folks eating the harvest of a fine gene-edited food.

$150k for two years to compensate for time working toward the Elevate Prize

Additional expenses for other aspects of compensation for growers, cost of tools, improvements, etc and work toward education and regulatory changes, as previously detailed, would need to be raised separately

Examples of Foundations:

Gates, Buffet, Rockefeller, TomKat, Bloomberg, MacArthur, McKnight, Wallace

Examples of Ag Universities:

MIT, Cornell, Purdue, U of Minnesota, U Illinois, NC State, Ohio, Texas A&M

Examples of Sustainability Universities:

Oregon, Columbia, NYU, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Examples of Climate Universities:

Harvard, Oxford, Imperial College, Duke, Stanford, Berkeley, Wageningen

Investor Community:

Blackrock, Corporate Knights, SASB

Corporations Taking a Stand on Sustainability / Climate:

Microsoft, Ikea, Nike, Coke, BP, Walmart, Nestle, Amazon, Google, McDonalds

NGOs:

The Nature Conservancy, Environmental Defense Fund, World Wildlife Fund

Govt/Standards:

USDA, FDA, NRCS, EPA, UN, IIRC, Biden/Bernie

Examples of Associations:

ESMC, Field to Market