Pádraic Flood isn’t your typical start-up founder, but neither is Aardaia your typical start-up. An Irishman based in Wageningen, the Netherlands, Padraic is a Phd holding plant scientist, domesticating previously wild crops to protect the world’s increasingly fragile protein supply. His background is as unusual as it is fascinating, spending the majority of his career in academia and the Max Planck institute, then making the jump into start-ups first at short-lived vertical farming Infarm, before finally founding his own company with co-founder Mike. Pádraic is potentially the most passionate person I’ve ever met (a feat given the number of founders I spend time with each year), incapable of staying off the topic of plants for more than a few minutes, combining a mellifluous Irish brogue with a wonderful capacity to tell stories, weave in his deep and wide knowledge of everything from ancient history to climate science, and inspire action in the process. Aardaia’s focus is replacing the starch and water heavy potato with the nutrient dense, protein rich aardaker - a tuber once enjoyed by Renaissance European populations. From here, who knows where they go, but the journey is already a fascinating one and worthy of a wider audience. I had the pleasure to meet him back in 2025, going deep on the company before eventually making a small angel investment and I can honestly say I’ve thought about the business at least weekly ever since. As such, Pádraic was a no brainer to interview as our fifth guest on Unreasonable. In a greenhouse in rainy Wageningen, we covered: Why we eat the crops we do, and how our grain obsession is largely down to taxation The importance of consistent protein supply in a rapidly changing climate What is an aardaker - the forgotten but protein rich tuber that makes its own fertiliser What domesticating a wild crop actually requires, and how novel technology can massively speed this up vs. legacy techniques His backstory: a pet pig that never was in suburban Dublin, via Germany, trips up African and Eurasian mountains, to the fields of Wageningen Why seeds are the closest thing agtech has to software, and why big seed companies wait for startups to prove new crops How head and heart interact in his decision making Failure as a feature, and why failing fields are exactly what a breeding programme needs The hope that comes through re-introducing a crop that could still be eaten in 10,000 years Timestamps: 00:00 — Who is Pádraic Flood? 00:53 — Why we eat the crops we do: beer, bread and taxation 06:29 — Food systems: victim and villain 08:35 — The Green Revolution and the time it bought us 11:29 — Meet the aardaker: a forgotten tuber that makes its own fertiliser 14:43 — Five times the protein of soy 15:55 — Speed-running 10,000 years of domestication 21:00 — Why farmers, chefs and markets care 26:39 — Why aardaker protein beats soy 28:44 — Why big seed companies haven’t done this 31:08 — The crops of the future 31:38 — New crops or better old ones? 400 million years of untapped evolution 35:36 — Growing up in Dublin: trees, botanic gardens and clothes shopping 36:41 — The pet pig that never was 38:42 — A family of tradespeople: “you’re always self-employed” 39:35 — Getting your hands dirty: lab, field and screen 42:27 — Botany, Max Planck and the mountains of Africa 45:40 — COVID, two toddlers and a change of course 49:20 — Lessons from a €600M vertical farming startup 51:34 — Head and heart: how he makes decisions 54:18 — Failure, doubt and risk tolerance 57:06 — When others don’t share your passion 1:00:20 — Finding great people in agtech 1:03:10 — Why failing fields are good news 1:05:45 — Seeing what others miss 1:07:57 — Staying hopeful: bailing water on a sinking boat 1:10:27 — What success looks like: a crop to last 10,000 years
