A passion for healthy food has led a Coeur d’Alene-based entrepreneur to start a digital ecosystem, named The Ryzosphere, for professionals in the agriculture and food industry to come together under one platform.

“The goal was to create an independently owned and managed marketplace so that farmers and processors and purchasers could find each other,” says Ryzosphere developer Joni Kindwall-Moore. “It’s kind of like a dating app for food people.” 

Ryzosphere, which Kindwall-Moore refers to as a business-to-business trade network platform, expects customer access to begin in September. In the meantime, customers can join a waitlist, she says.

"We have over 500 organizations and individuals," Kindwall-Moore says of the current waitlist. "And we have over 4,000 pre-qualified leads coming into the platform."

She says Ryzosphere has federal agencies, nonprofits, local tribal representatives, academic institutions, and the food manufacturing industry all coming together to "form a mega group."

A monetized site will go live to customers at the end of September with three membership options, including one with basic community access, a premium membership for small businesses, and an enterprise level for large companies.

“We bring the community together,” Kindwall-Moore says. “We open access to free-market trade by applying things like deep tech, including artificial intelligence and blockchain transparency. But we do it for our community.” 

The company, which is incorporated under the name Green Eats Global LLC, brings together farmers, ranchers, processors, brands, restaurants, distributors, and other key players into a unified digital space where those involved can connect, collaborate, and trade more efficiently, she says. 

“It’s a gated community,” Kindwall-Moore says. “It’s literally designed for our industry to serve our industry. If you’re providing data, and opting in, you are part of the system.”

The platform is open to both organizations and individual business owners. Individual employees of organizations will have access to the site and can engage with the platform through individual profiles, Kindwall-Moore says. 

The company currently has ten remote members of its leadership and advisory team, including herself, across the US, she says. 

Kindwall-Moore, a former intensive care unit nurse, came up with the idea for Ryzosphere while running Snacktivist Food LLC, a Coeur d’Alene-based company she founded in 2015 that specializes in gluten-free, non-GMO baking mixes and frozen items.

After working as an ICU nurse, she says she was inspired to start her business when she realized that her patients were in critical condition due to complications from diet-related diseases.

Kindwall-Moore says the company found a niche using ancient grains, including millet, sorghum, and teff, to create gluten-free, non-GMO pancake mixes, bread mixes, and frozen pizza crusts, which she says had been sidelined for the sake of industrial efficiency. 

“Regenerative and bioregional farmers face a broken system (of) manual sourcing, no market visibility, and no easy way to connect with buyers,” explains Kindwall-Moore. “This forces a return to commodity farming, harming soil, growing crops with limited nutritional value, and stalling progress.”

Although Snacktivist products have reached customers across the U.S. and into the United Kingdom, a disconnect in the supply chain shifted the company’s focus.

“We realized that really what our love is is working with farmers, and we love working with researchers, and we love working with processors and manufacturers,” Kindwall-Moore says. “We decided a couple years ago that that’s where our heart is at. We really wanted to elevate ingredients and sourcing and supply chains. So, we shifted.”  

When describing the platform, Kindwall-Moore says to imagine a restaurant chain looking for french fries that are non-GMO, glyphosate-free and made from regeneratively grown potatoes.

Traditionally, she says, research would require countless calls and emails to find the right product and producers.

By utilizing AI, Ryzosphere can instantly connect the restaurant chain with farmers, processors, fry manufacturers, and distributors who align with its values, reducing research from weeks to minutes, she says.

"Within the Ryzosphere, that restaurant group comes in and says, 'where can we find a regeneratively grown potato? Where do they get processed? And do they have a partner that makes french fries that sell through big distributors?'" Kindwall-Moore says.

“They can now start to connect the dots. It’s a business-to-business platform so you can find your people,” she says. “You’ve got access to deep analysis, like AI-enabled matchmaking, and you have tools to get your transactions done right there in one place.”  

Members of The Ryzosphere, who first have to apply and be accepted, will create a profile with a picture, name, and associated organization. The tech-enabled trade network will then use AI for mapping and analysis to connect members of the food and agriculture sector, which Kindwall-Moore refers to as a $50 billion industry. 

“Our dream is that, within here, we can have people find each other,” Kindwall-Moore says.