According to a new report by the Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return (FAIRR) initiative, a global investor network that aims to put factory farming on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) agenda, animal agriculture is deeply unprepared for the transition to a sustainable food system. But there is one interesting silver lining: 28 out …
What do the marmalade you put on your toast and the vitamin you perhaps take at the same time have in common? Both have an ingredient called citric acid, an ubiquitous, weak organic acid. Indeed, citric acid is the molecule that led to the technology which enabled the mass production of penicillin. Citric acid is …
There is a roadmap to the disruption of food. Here we explore some of the market opportunities for disruption and what these first products will look like.
Today, we are on the cusp of multiple disruptions in food and materials. So why now? In a previous blog we discussed how precision fermentation (PF) has been around for 40 years. We know this because we can pinpoint the first product commercialized from PF – human insulin. Human insulin is an illustrative example of how PF created a superior product that led to a rapid disruption of an incumbent product.
Throughout history, technology has been the driving force behind major structural changes to the food system. The plough, fishing nets, irrigation, fermentation, canning, fertilizers, tractors and refrigeration, to name just a few, have enabled us to transition from hunter-gatherers to small-scale farmers to industrial food producers on a massive scale.
In Part 1 we discussed why Covid-19 has impacted industrial livestock farming. Here we discuss the rise of the new protein industry in a post-Covid-19 world. Covid-19 is accelerating the collapse of the old system and the growth of a new one.
In Rethinking Food & Agriculture, published in 2019, we predicted that there will be 50% fewer cows in the US by 2030 and that by 2035 the livestock industry will be all but bankrupt.
