Marc Arts called the company he founded in 2014 GreenFood50 because the world population grows by 50 million people a year. Arts, who previously worked on food ingredients at DSM, came across a WUR quinoa project in Chile. After communicating with the Plant Sciences Group, which was breeding this superfood, he decided to develop quinoa-based ingredients on the Wageningen campus. And in 2019, his company took over the production chain for this crop from the Dutch Quinoa Group.
Quinoa seeds are protein-rich and gluten-free, and contain a lot of iron, vitamin E and unsaturated fatty acids. Moreover, WUR has bred the crop so that it no longer contains the bitter substance saponin.
The quinoa seeds we supply for baby food are inspected on 600 points
All this makes quinoa an interesting ingredient for sports nutrition – GreenFood50 is working with Papendal Sports Centre – and for plant-based products, health bars and granola. GreenFood50 buys quinoa seed from about 30 Dutch arable farmers and supplied food companies in 20 countries – including Danone – with quinoa-based ingredients.
The company employs four permanent staff and four WUR undergraduates. Arts does projects with the Field Crops group at WUR and with farmers, who currently produce between two and three tons of quinoa seeds per hectare. He works with Wageningen food technologists on processing the quinoa into ingredients. All the quinoa farmers work without pesticides. ‘That is necessary because the quinoa seeds we supply for baby food are inspected on 600 criteria points.’