Ronald Meeusen

Background

About Ronald Meeusen

A UC Berkeley Ph.D. in plant physiology lead to a 43 year career bringing novel innovations to food and agriculture. The first 25 years was spent leading corporate R&D, teams which produced the first insect resistant GMO corn, healthier and more shelf stable canola oils, and many new varieties of vegetables. That path included leading R&D for Rohm and Haas (now Dow), Sandoz Crop Protection and Northrup King (now Syngenta), Seminis Vegetable Seeds (now Bayer), and Dow AgroSciences (now Corteva). Along the way it included advising the US Office of Technology Assessment on the regulation of biotechnology, as well as drafting and defending some of the first GMO crop patents. In 2005-6 as CSO of the NGO BioCrossroads I lead the analysis of Indiana's ag economy which was adopted by the Dept of Agriculture, and identified the need for venture capital in agtech. In 2008, with Andy Ziolkowski, I founded one of the first pure-play institutional agtech venture funds, the Midpoint Food and Agtech Fund. Two further funds followed In 2013 and 2017, raised with the Sandbox Industries group in Chicago, Overall $280 million has been raised in the three funds, with 34 technology investments out of over technologies evaluated. Along the way I've served on the boards of 11 startups.