Farm & Food Advisory Board

Dr. Katrin Jakob is an entrepreneur, scientific and business consultant and founder and managing partner of California Business Associates LLC and mentor for the Silicon Valley AgTech incubator THRIVE AgTech. California Business Associates is a management consulting firm for start-ups and mid-sized companies with a focus on biotechnology, food and agriculture. She has more than 20 years of experience in plant and microbial biotechnology and R&D project management.

Dr. Philipp Wree holds a doctorate in agricultural economics. After working as a researcher and lecturer at the Technical University of Munich, he now works as the link between R&D and Digital Farming at Yara. He is passionately committed to scientific knowledge transfer, so that the expertise of universities and other research institutions is also reflected in practical solutions for farmers.

Dr. Katrin Kohler is an expert on digitisation in agriculture and Ag-Tech innovations with a focus on satellite imagery technologies. She has over 30 years of professional experience as an executive in the development, provision and marketing of geospatial data-based applications for farmers and the agricultural upstream and downstream industries. Furthermore, she is internationally experienced and interdisciplinary networked in the ag- and space industry. Katrin holds a doctorate in agriculture.

Prof. Dr. Peter Breunig is a professor of Marketing and Market Theory at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences. Parallel to his teaching activities in agricultural engineering, agriculture, food and agricultural management, he runs his parents’ farm. International experience he got from his time with John Deere: As Production System and Territory Manager he was responsible for marketing and sales in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.

Dr. Simone K. Frey is the founder of Future of Nutrition, a network for nutrition tech start-ups. Previously, Simone worked as managing director at Atlantic Food Labs, a food investor, and BioAnalyt. She led Bioanalyt, a nutrient testing company, from start-up phase to profitable business. Based on her 10+ years professional experience in the industry and as the founder of Nutrition Hub, the largest community of 5,000 for nutrition experts in Germany, she is familiar with the needs of industry, investors, experts and founders. She holds a PhD in Nutrition Science.

Maximilian von Löbbecke has been in charge of setting up and managing 365FarmNet Group GmbH & Co KG since 2013. He also gained sound international experience in the establishment, management and exit of start-ups, including in California. He is an acknowledged expert in the grey zone between the ecosystems of traditional industrial companies and start-ups. For more than ten years, Maximilian focused his work on digitization and its impact on different economic sectors. In 2016 he initiated the congress series Farm & Food 4.0.

Louisa Burwood-Taylor is an agriculture journalist and chief editor of AgFunderNews based in Silicon Valley. She focuses on innovation and investment in food and agriculture technology. Her career spans 10 years and involves a variety of different beats, mostly financial, including time at the Financial Times Group and Euromoney in Asia. Louisa turned her attention to agriculture nearly five years ago as the founding editor of Agri Investor, the first publication dedicated to investment in the sector.

Georg Mayerhofer is farmer of the year 2017 and advocate for sustainable agriculture. The erosion control of the soil is particularly important to the farmer, for which he is constantly developing new concepts. He also keeps an informative blog, because transparency and education with regard to the consumer are important to him. The family-owned company Mayerhofer Agrar operates traditional arable farming, pig fattening and a biogas plant. Georg studied agricultural economics at the University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan and volunteers in various agricultural associations.