This is the time of year to make resolutions….and predictions. I long ago gave up on New Year’s resolutions (just don’t work well in real life), but I love predictions. Not necessarily to make them, but to read about them. I remember all those wild predictions from the 1950s and 1960s about how we would one day be able to see the people we were talking with on the phone and tool around in self-driving cars.
I’m seeing more and more predictions and actual developments about huge changes in food production—suggesting that basic foods like meat, dairy, and veggies will increasingly be produced in labs, warehouses, and manufacturing facilities via software and special combinations of ordinary ingredients driven by precise fermentation or hydroponics. As one online technology newsletter, Exponential View, put it in early 2020:
“Food disruption is driven by the convergence of massively increased performance and reduced cost in the areas of advanced computing (e.g. processing power, data storage), and synthetic biology (e.g. genome sequencing and editing). Our understanding of protein molecules has exploded, and we now have precision control over cells. This means that we can harness them as mini molecular factories to directly produce any molecule we desire, allowing us to bypass the inefficient production systems we have lived with for so long (livestock).
“We can design food from the molecule up—rather than breaking down and reconstituting bulk food products as we currently do in food processing (often through the use of heat and chemicals which can significantly reduce the nutritional quality of food). The technology also allows for mass iteration of products (the Impossible Burger is only in its second iteration—expect many more improvements over time) and for tailoring products to specific markets and end-users. We can rapidly iterate those designs for constant improvement, as well as customization.”
Here’s brief look at how this new food creation system is playing out:
-Meat and eggs: I wrote previously about burgers from Impossible and Beyond Meat. Those have been well received, in both supermarkets and food outlets like Burger King.
Now there’s a chicken version, with KFC selling “Beyond Fried Chicken” developed by Beyond Meat from wheat and soy. According to Beyond Meat, it’s met with “overwhelmingly positive response” as it’s been rolled out over the last year.
And a San Francisco company says it spent five years perfecting a scrambled-egg concoction from mung beans. Here’s how the company, JUST Egg, describes its product: “It starts with a small bean and some healthy soil. Then, the bean becomes an egg that scrambles in a pan or folds into an omelet. It leaves wild spaces wild, reduces air and ocean pollution, and builds muscle in our bodies without a milligram of cholesterol.”
-Dairy: New companies are springing up to produce ice cream and cream cheese from dairy protein created via a process known as precise fermentation. At least a few are selling ice cream concoctions that are said to taste just like “real” ice cream. A Berkeley, CA, company, Eclipse, says its ice cream made from potatoes, corn, cassava (a tropical tree), and oats, “is the first-ever plant-based ice cream that is indistinguishable from conventional dairy. It requires no sacrifice on taste, texture nor functionality. So creamy, even cows are jealous.”
These companies are making waves in the world of venture capital: one, known as PerfectDay, has raised more than $300 million, which in the world of startup businesses is a lot of money for a company without an established market. PerfectDay says it will be selling its dairy concoction to established big-food companies as a substitute for milk from huge farms.
-Veggies: Warehouse hydroponic farms continue to gain traction. One out of Ohio, 80 Acres Farms, is selling not only greens but peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers. It’s raised venture capital as well. An executive I know who works for another with warehouse “farms” in several East Coast metropolitan areas, says his company is selling to a number of the nation’s largest supermarket chains because they want to reduce their reliance on veggies from California and Arizona to reduce the risks of pathogens, which seem to periodically lead to widespread illnesses.
The big benefit of these manufactured foods is that they can reduce by a factor of five to ten times the carbon footprint of traditional agriculture—water, energy and feedstock–and require a hundred times less land. According to Exponential View, “At present 40 per cent of US land is dedicated to cows; in the move to the modern protein system, they estimate we will need just one fifth of this 40 per cent (so 8 per cent overall) going forward.”
But just because Big Ag is going to be decimated by this new food doesn’t mean small specialized dairies, cheese makers, and meat producers will be badly impacted. Many of them have thrived during the pandemic, serving consumers concerned about interruptions in the conventional system’s supplies. And I expect these smaller outfits will continue to thrive after the pandemic as more people become accustomed to good healthy food.
Finally, I’d offer a less obvious benefit from this transformation: the opportunity to substitute good paying jobs and benefits in urban and suburban areas for the seasonal and often dangerous work of the Big Ag commodity economy in rural areas, which relies on transient workers and often dangerous working conditions (think chicken processing plants). Such a shift might even help moderate our increasingly polarized political situation, reducing economic tensions between well off blue states and less well off red states.
Yes David, I too recall those predictions… and I frowned on them, not because they were unlikely to happen but rather on the sustainable and healthful nature with respect to their deployment and use. If we are truly concerned about balance in nature and nutrient dense, healthy foods then we are heading in the wrong direction. That said, since cheap food policies and a controlling mentallity are the order of the day, I suppose your described technologies will increasingly end up on the menu.
Why must we nickel and dime food production for the sake of improved efficiency and a so-called improved carbon footprint when the construction of innumerable extravagant model homes (many of which are being built on prime agricultural land), fast cars, recreation facilities and extensive travel etc. continues to forge ahead unabated? You can be certain that the latter are not constructively contributing to the Oxygen, nitrogen, water, and carbon cycle that is fundamental and instrumental in maintaining balance and assisting all healthy life forms. Because matter is never created nor destroyed, these substances are recycled and reused again and again within every biome. Indeed, and we dare not lose track of the fact that the microbiome is also instrumental and actively involved in the above to the point that if interfered with, as human beings tend to do with all their toxic control measures, the process would break down. In fact, I would go as far as to suggest that if we were to abandon all of our disruptive and toxic control measures the environment and life would improve exponentially.
The new lab grown cultured meat product requires bovine fetal blood as it’s growth medium so not exactly a substitute for those trying to avoid harm to animals.
Bob, do you have a source on the bovine fetal blood requirement? I’ve not seen mention of that on any of the sites. For example, Impossible Foods says it gets the red-meat flavor by extracting heme from the root nodules of soybean plants.
https://www.impossiblefoods.com/heme
For the dairy products, it seems as if they begin with actual dairy molecules–not clear if those are from animal dairy products like milk or yogurt.
https://slate.com/technology/2017/07/the-gruesome-truth-about-lab-grown-meat.html
This is the cultured meat product recently approved in Singapore, not the vegetable based products in your grocery stores. As stated at the bottom of this article, they say they are searching for other growth mediums so perhaps they have found a non-animal medium of chemicals.
Yummmy… wow, Roundup and Dicamba, & neonicotinoids. And then there are the individual insecticides, eg, esfenvalerate, chlorpyrifos, and zeta-cypermethrin all of which produce crops that you must not feed to livestock. (But it’s OK to sell em for human food!) And that’s only the soybean component. Then there are the pesticides for the other field crops that would go into fake food.
As for all those cattle grazing on land that’s too steep or rocky or dry to grow crops on, shame on those farmers for trying to make a living!!! I’m sure the environment will be SOOOO much more natural and alive when humans only eat plants grown on huge industrial farms. Here’s what the landscape can look like with oh-so modern farming: https://www.krugerseed.com/en-us/agronomy-library/roundup-ready–xtend-crop-system—soybeans—early-season-.html
Not ugly like a modern beef farm: http://greenpasturesfarm.net/about/
Oh, what’s this? Just in…
https://thecounter.org/dicamba-damaging-trees-across-midwest-and-south/ https://investigatemidwest.org/2017/10/09/complaints-surge-about-weed-killer-dicambas-damage-to-oak-trees/
Dear me, looks like maybe a cloud the size of a man’s hand on the horizon……
“Purina human chow”–that’s cute. Hope it’s not at that level, but who knows. As these new foods come to market, it will be up to consumers to learn as much as possible about use of herbicides and whether they are GMO. In looking over the sites of the new-food producers I mentioned in the post, most specifically commit to using non-GMO and organic ingredients. That doesn’t mean they will continue to do so, or that all others will do the same. But the requirements for the manufactured meats and dairy will be similar as for natural meats and dairy: know your farmer/producer and know what they are feeding their animals.
Oh well, may as well copy a few bits of those articles, for you to read while you sit in your apartment eating Purina Human Chow and looking out your virtual window into the world as Gooogle and you-tube allow you to see it. After all, so many of you have been prevented from going outside for months because of the lurking Boogey Man:
In recent years, farmers have been spraying an increasing amount of volatile herbicides – namely dicamba and 2,4-D – that are causing widespread damage to trees, native plants and natural areas across the Midwest and South.
Forest health experts said trees are being damaged from Indiana to Kansas, from North Dakota to Arkansas. Cupped up leaves, the most easily recognized symptom, can be seen in towns miles away from agricultural fields, as well as in nature preserves and state parks set aside as refuges for wildlife, experts said.
“Symptoms are showing up in backyards, school yards, cemeteries, forested lands, prairies, land enrolled in taxpayer funded conservation programs, orchards, vineyards, and even over large areas of small rural towns,” said Kim Erndt-Pitcher, habitat and agricultural programs specialist at Prairie Rivers Network, an Illinois-based environmental nonprofit that has conducted its own monitoring program over the past couple years.
In some areas, the damage is so severe that tree mortality is higher than from the Emerald Ash Borer, an insect that has killed tens of millions of trees across 25 states, experts said.
“Our No. 1 problem on our trees is herbicide damage,” said Laurie Stepanek, forest health specialist with the Nebraska Forest Service. Stepanek said the damage has no boundaries, ranging from urban communities to native forests to tree nurseries. “We’ve got it everywhere, unfortunately. It’s so widespread and affecting so many trees.”
Trees that used to shade cemeteries in Arkansas have less foliage. In Central Illinois towns, iconic trees that were around at the time of Abe Lincoln are being harmed year after year. Nurseries in the St. Louis suburbs can’t sell their trees because the plants are too deformed.
More than 60 areas managed by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, including state parks and nature preserves, reported herbicide damage in 2018 or 2019, according to records obtained by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting via the Freedom of Information Act. Some of the parks reported widespread death of mature oak trees.
Surveys of trees in Arkansas and Missouri also found damage to state and federal conservation areas.
State parks and wildlife refuges matter because they provide rare, critical habitat, said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity.
“These protected areas, these refuges, are so few and far between. They’ve dwindled so much over the years, and have increased so much in their importance. Any damage is magnified to that extent,” Donley said. “Refuges are generally supposed to provide a refuge, and they do in a lot of cases, but you can’t separate the habitat from dicamba poison. Once it’s in the air, it’s going to drift wherever it decides to go, whether that’s a soy field or a refuge that provides essential habitat.”
In 2010, a New Jersey farm with degraded soils from years of cropping to corn and soybean was newly planted to permanent pasture to graze dairy cows. This new farm, called Bobolink Dairy, produces, sells pasture-fed raw milk cheese.
Starting in spring 2011, and every year thereafter, I visited this farm to collect a sample from the surface 0 to 6.7 inches of soil. The soil samples were sent to Soil Test Lab to determine soil organic matter content.
The initial soil organic matter level was 2.5%, which is a rather low value for a silt loam soil. The soil organic matter contents as measured from samples collected in years 2011 to 2020 were as follows: 2.5%, 3.3%, 3.2%, 3.4%, 4.2%, 3.4%, 4.6%, 3.9%, 3.9%, and 4.1%.
The soil test results show that organic matter content increased rapidly in the first 5 years, and thereafter plateaued to a level of about 4.0%.
The carbon content of soil organic matter is roughly 58%. By calculation, the carbon content of an acre of soil (6.7-inch depth) holds 29,000 pounds of carbon when the soil organic matter content is 2.5%. And when the organic matter content is 4.0% the soil holds 46,400 pounds of carbon. In such case, each acre of farmland when converted pasture, put 17,400 pounds of carbon in the soil.
Imagine what would be possible if many more corn and soybean acres were converted from plow to pasture. Conventional thinking promotes cover cropping and no-till farming. Yet it seems to forget that pasture is a cover crop. And it is also a way no-till farming. What better way than pasture to put carbon in its place.
Reference: The Soil Profile Newsletter: https://njaes.rutgers.edu/soil-profile/pdfs/sp-v25.pdf
Joseph, I’m not sure what effect converting corn and soybean acres from plow to pasture might have on CO2 emissions, or if this could shift the seemingly inexorable rise in CO2 levels in the atmosphere since 1960. Here’s a site that monitors CO2 emissions showing a nearly straight line up. We’re at 415 ppm, heading toward a threshold of 450 ppm, from which recovery may be nearly impossible.
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu
My point is that converting row crop land to pasture is an effective way to put carbon in a good place – the soil. Cattle can produce meat and milk 100% grass/hay fed. No need to feed corn or soy.
For further discussion read book/watch film Sacred Cow: https://www.sacredcow.info/
David? Lab produced food and Hydrophoics, Really?
What do you think will be missing from these products? Most of the natural goodness; the trace minerals and biological enzymes we get from eating wholesome food is all. And that will lead to new nutrient deficient illnesses given long latin derived names and ‘treated’ with new even more expensive, non-biological drugs.
I do not like this Brave New World you seem to be endorsing.
Steve, the matter of trace minerals and biological enzymes is definitely an important point, and should be monitored. My sense at this point is that many of the veggies and much of the meat and dairy from CAFO farms are deficient in key nutrients because of poor soil or because CAFO animals don’t spent any time on real pasture. So I’m not sure we’re going to see a decline. And because the founders of the lab-food companies seem to be sensitive to issues like nutrition and health, it could be their products are a big improvement over the commodity farm stuff being produced.
For a return to real food check out the Real Organic Project: https://www.realorganicproject.org/
David,
Sorry to burst this bubble and discussion of the virtues of Lab Food.
We do t see any evidence in the whole food community that supports the notion of a positive trend for Lab Food. Our experience in the nutrition and whole food community shows quite the opposite. Learned People are demanding whole unprocessed foods directly from farmers. All of my zoom calls on various organic committees report the same thing.
I think what you are seeing is a well financed Wall Street funded stock offering that is pushing pseudo innovation to answer the concerns brought by modern highly processed foods that are hurting people.
Our research partners note that every nutritional change that is adopted by man changes Our genomic biome little by little. These Modern changes impact our ability to be resilient and adapt to threats.
To the contrary. I have great hope for the continued return of Real Wholefoods.
Mark, I may not have said it as well as I should have, but I’m not proposing lab food as a substitute for whole food. I see it as an enticing replacement for CAFO meat and dairy–offering the possibility of more nutrition at lower cost, with a reduction in environmental damage. As I said toward the end of my post, I expect real foods, whole foods, produced by smaller farms will thrive through the expected transition to lab food, as they have thrived through the last ten months of Covid, amid the problems exposed by commodity foods (unreliable delivery chains, unhealthy processing, nutritional deficiencies leaving many people more vulnerable to Covid.
A movie based on history of journalism and starvation in Soviet Union under Stalin.
Here is the movie trailer to Mr. Jones:
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=mr+jones+trailer&view=detail&mid=CC7718C610B2C1285FB5CC7718C610B2C1285FB5&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dmr%2bjones%2btrailer%26form%3dANNTH1%26refig%3d0acfa7e12517419398c3ff7077239826%26sp%3d-1%26pq%3dmr%2bjones%2btrailer%26sc%3d3-16%26qs%3dn%26sk%3d%26cvid%3d0acfa7e12517419398c3ff7077239826