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Planet Based Foods Provides Update on Regional Operations

Planet Based Foods Global Inc. (CSE: PBF) (OTCQB: PBFFF) (FRA: AZ0) ("PBFG", "Planet Based Foods" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company has expanded its western regional operations in the state of Colorado. This announcement follows a pair of news releases earlier this month where Planet Based Foods confirmed distribution partnerships with KeHE Distributors, United Natural Foods, Inc., and DPI Speciality Foods, as well as a partnership with renowned supermarket retailer, Kroger (news releases dates November 9th and 15th respectively).

King Soopers is a supermarket brand of Kroger, with headquarters in Denver, Colorado. Planet Based Foods and its products will now be available at 140 Kings Soopers' locations across the Centennial State. Ten years ago, Kroger expanded its Fresh Fare style of supermarkets into the King Soopers brand, introducing the first Fresh Fare King Soopers in Englewood, Colorado. The primary objective of the Fresh Fare concept was to offer an upscale meal experience, where it could offer more organic and health-conscience foods, while still selling traditional groceries to its patrons. This campaign inevitably aligned with Planet Based Foods product line since the Company is the first and only company to produce nutritious plant-based meat with sustainable hemp as its number-one ingredient.

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Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”