Innovate Today, Nourish Tomorrow: Why Collaboration Guides Progress in Food and Agriculture

A World Food Day reflection from Cultura Technologies

October 16th is World Food Day, marking the end to the traditional harvest season, and a time to celebrate, reflect, and consider bigger opportunities for progress across the food industry.

At Cultura, collaboration starts with conversation – aligning perfectly with this year’s theme.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations stated World Food Day 2026 is calling leaders of the food industry to “Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow.” It’s a fitting theme for an industry that is focused on serving others, and everchanging in its ways of doing so. The theme highlights how innovation can help build food systems able to meet a growing population’s needs while addressing environmental, economic, and social pressures, and it encourages global dialogue as a first step toward change. 

Jordi Martí Centeno, Sales Lead at FoodExperts, and Enid Pérez-Lara, Industry Engagement at Agronomix Software, at Fruit Attraction

At Cultura Technologies, we invest in software businesses that serve agriculture and food, and that work has taught us that innovation starts with conversation. A customer shares a problem out loud, another customer validates it, and with a collaborative approach, they can find a better way forward. 

This World Food Day, we want to highlight three kinds of conversations happening across the Cultura’s businesses, and what each one is teaching us about where the food industry is headed. All so that we truly can “Innovate today, and nourish tomorrow.”  

Conversations Shared with the Industry: What Really Drives Foodservice Sales 

Foodservice manufacturers are swimming in data, yet many still struggle to answer a fundamental question: What makes an operator buy?

On a recent episode of The Food Institute Podcast, Suzanne Cwik of Tibersoft, tackled that question head-on alongside Art Bell of Kinetic12. The conversation explored how connecting commercial activity to operator behavior can help manufacturers measure what works, improve trade investments, and make smarter sales and marketing decisions. 

As Vice President of Commercial and Client Services at Tibersoft, she draws on two decades of experience across foodservice finance, trade, and sales, and understands both the fragmented data manufacturers work with and how a single source of operator-level truth resolves it. 

The takeaway for anyone in food-away-from-home is that more data isn’t the answer on its own. Trusted, connected data is. When manufacturers can see clearly what’s working, every trade dollar works harder, and that efficiency ripples all the way through the supply chain. 

Listen to the full episode: Beyond the Data: What Really Drives Foodservice Sales? 

Conversations on the Show Floor: What the Produce Sector Needs Now 

Some conversations can only happen face to face. That’s why our teams from Food Experts and Agronomix traveled to Madrid for Fruit Attraction 2026, one of the leading international meeting points for the fresh produce industry. 

Representing the Cultura portfolio on the show floor was Javier Cilla, Managing Director at Food Experts; Jordi Martí Centeno, Sales Lead at Food Experts; Enid Pérez-Lara, Industry Engagement at Agronomix Software; and Juan Martin Mancheno Remache, Investments & Collaboration at Cultura Technologies.

Over three days and hundreds of conversations, one theme stood out: the fresh produce industry is looking for simpler ways to manage growing complexity. The Food Experts team heard three needs consistently.  

The first was relief from the compliance burden. Growers and packers want less paperwork, fewer manual processes, and more automation, and there’s growing curiosity about how AI could help, particularly with paper-based and handwritten documents. 

The second was supplier visibility. Who submitted what? What’s still missing? How do you keep track of contingency suppliers? Clearer insight across the supply chain is becoming essential for everyone.  

The third was sustainability that’s truly actionable. Rather than another long list of commitments, the industry wants clear and practical steps that make a difference.  

For Agronomix, whose software supports plant breeding and seed research, Madrid was also a chance to connect with organizations across the global agricultural value chain and to reconnect with colleagues from across the Cultura family. As the Agronomix team put it: different companies, complementary expertise, one shared vision for innovation. 

Those conversations aren’t staying in Madrid. Food Experts is continuing the dialogue this autumn with a series of soon-to-be-announced webinars in English and Spanish, covering quality and customer specifications, compliance, pesticide residue analysis, and sustainability. Learn more at foodexperts.com. 

Conversations That Go Deeper: Lessons from Beyond the Barrel 

Trade shows open doors, but some insights need room to breathe. That’s the idea behind Cultivate & Collaborate, a podcast built around one-on-one conversations with the people shaping agriculture, food, and the industries connected to them. 

In a recent episode, Rich Reynertson sat down with Ryne Davis, CEO of FIVE x 5 distillery management software. Ryne didn’t start in the spirits world; he spent 13 years in healthcare running a medical billing and coding company, where he found his passion for software implementation and operational efficiency, and he now leads a team serving hundreds of distillery customers worldwide. 

Ryne and Rich, ahead of Rich’s retirement, explored the remarkable overlap between the distillery supply chain and the agriculture and food industry, and how software, data, and genuine partnership are reshaping both. From grain sourcing to traceability to the need for transparent, connected operations, the parallels are striking, and a good reminder that the challenges facing one corner of the food and beverage world often have answers in another. 

Listen now: Beyond the Barrel: Building Transparent, Connected Distillery Supply Chains with Ryne Davis 

Collaboration Connects Them All 

Look closely at these three conversations and the same themes surface every time. 

A foodservice manufacturer trying to understand operator behavior, a produce company chasing missing supplier documents, and a distiller tracing grain to glass are all facing a version of the same challenge: fragmented information that makes good decisions harder than they should be. And in every case, the path forward combines connected data, practical technology, and real partnership with the people doing the work. 

That’s exactly why conversations matter so much. The industry’s needs don’t arrive as a product specification. They show up as a comment on a podcast, a question at a trade show booth, or a story shared over a 20-minute interview. Listening carefully to those moments is how the right customer challenges get solved.  

Our Commitment on World Food Day 

Cultura Technologies exists to give specialized agriculture and food software businesses a long-term home where they can keep doing what they do best: serving their customers with deep domain expertise. Each of our businesses brings its own markets and solutions, but together we share a commitment to the people who grow, process, distribute, and serve the world’s food. 

The FAO’s call to “innovate today” is one we take seriously, and we believe innovation begins with listening. So this World Food Day, we invite you to join the conversation. Listen to an episode, attend a webinar, or connect with one of our teams at the next event. The best ideas for nourishing tomorrow are often the ones we’re talking about today. 

Happy World Food Day from all of us at Cultura Technologies.