Is alternative protein really a distressed industry, or are we simply judging a decades-long transformation on a Silicon Valley timeline?

How does a nuclear startup with about $1.2 million in revenue and no commercial power plant become an $8 billion publicly traded company sitting on $3 billion in cash?

What if the most abundant protein on Earth has been hiding in plain sight inside green leaves? In this episode of Business For Good, Paul Shapiro sits down with Ross Milne, CEO of Leaft Foods, to explore how a new approach to food production could unlock massive amounts of high-quality protein directly from plants.

What if one of the most effective ways to improve women’s autonomy, reduce unintended pregnancies, and ease pressure on the planet didn’t require new technology, venture capital, or government mandates, but simply more men stepping up?

On this episode I’m joined by Jan Dutkiewicz and Gabriel Rosenberg, the authors of Feed the People, a new book challenging some of the most comfortable assumptions in the debates around food sustainability. Their core argument is provocative: the global food system isn’t “broken” in the way it’s often portrayed by its most well-known critics, and pretending it is can actually make things worse.

If you’ve been reading food and ag tech headlines lately, you might think alternative meat is collapsing. Startups shutting down, layoffs, funding drying up…doom everywhere. 

Most of us look at a field of rice and see…rice. But some people see something very different. Instead, they see the future of building materials and a pathway to fight deforestation, all wrapped inside one of agriculture’s most overlooked waste streams: the humble rice hull of which billions of pounds are burned or landfilled annually.

If you’ve ever checked the ingredients on a baked good, you know how ubiquitous eggs are. They bind, they lift, they emulsify, they hold moisture — they’re simply the structural engineers of cookies, cakes, and muffins everywhere. But they’re also volatile: prices spike, supply chains break, and for anyone with an egg allergy or who’s avoiding eggs for animal welfare or environmental reasons, eggs aren’t exactly a welcome ingredient to find on the ingredient deck.

If you’ve ever checked the ingredients on a baked good, you know how ubiquitous eggs are. They bind, they lift, they emulsify, they hold moisture — they’re simply the structural engineers of cookies, cakes, and muffins everywhere. But they’re also volatile: prices spike, supply chains break, and for anyone with an egg allergy or who’s avoiding eggs for animal welfare or environmental reasons, eggs aren’t exactly a welcome ingredient to find on the ingredient deck.

In this episode, I’m talking with Ben Dell, the founder and CEO of Chestnut Carbon — a company that’s raised nearly $400 million, including $250 million of that in 2025, to turn farmland back into thriving native forests across the United States. And he’s already forging major carbon removal deals with the likes of Microsoft and Mercedes F1.