The Future Normal: What if we could make food out of thin air?
One of the more eye-catching arguments in Yuval Noah Harari’s blockbuster Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind was that hunter gatherers had a better quality of life before the Agricultural Revolution, with lower rates of disease, greater diversity in their diet and less inequality. Whether or not you agree with Harari, the very fact that I'm able to write these words – and you’re able to read them – is because we're not working the land! Our entire modern societies have been built on ever-greater agricultural efficiency. Despite exponential increases in the global population, we rely on an ever-smaller proportion of people to produce our food. Indeed, in rich countries like the US and Germany, less than 2% of the workforce currently work in the agricultural sector.
Yet our vision of food production remains deeply traditional. Browse a supermarket aisle and it won’t be long before you see bucolic images of farmers ploughing open fields, with animals grazing on hills in the distance. You won’t see farmers like Ted Duijvestijn. Ted and his brothers oversee 36-acres of data-rich, climate-controlled greenhouses where they grow 15 varieties of tomatoes in basalt and chalk fibers, rather than soil. Their approach is part of a scientific approach to agriculture that has seen the country improbably become the world’s number two exporter of food as measured by value, second only to the United States, which has 270 times its landmass.
Duijvestijn and his fellow Dutch farmers are still farming what most people would recognize as food, just with a lot more technology. However if you drive a couple of hours down to Poulainville in Northern France you will arrive at a construction site. When completed, the 130 foot high warehouse will contain hundreds of millions of Tenebrio Molitor beetles, cultivated in trays stacked to the ceilings of the ‘farm’. Ÿnsect, the company that owns the land has raised a total of $425 million from investors including Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition to build what will be the world’s largest insect vertical farm, capable of producing around 100,000 tons of insect protein for use in fish farms and animal feed.
Despite –– or perhaps because of –– our successful mastery of the land, we now face new challenges. The majority of people are forecast to eat more than 3,000 calories per day by 2030, and the global population is set to continue rising to 10 billion by 2050. Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture, while more than one-fifth of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions stem from agriculture. We need another Agricultural Revolution.
Food from Thin Air?
Dr. Passi Vainikka is even more radical, more modern day alchemist than farmer. His company, Solar Foods, has developed a process that uses fermentation to produce Solein, a protein-rich flour-like powder, from water, CO2 and renewable electricity. If that sounds fantastical, then you won’t be surprised to hear that the concept was first explored by NASA in its efforts to understand how to produce food in extra-terrestrial environments without the same available resources as on Earth. The data behind Solein is mindblowing: one kilo of protein requires 100 times less water than plant-based methods, and 500 times less than beef; one hectare of land produces 60 kilos of beef-based protein, 1,000 kilos of plant-based protein, and 60,000 kilos of Solein; the carbon footprint of beef per kilo of protein is 45 kilos, of plants it is 2 kilos, of Solein it is just 400 grams!
The company plans to launch Solein in protein shakes and yoghurts initially, although Dr. Vainikka sees a wide range of uses, saying “when you cook it or add it to a pancake base, it reminds me of the taste of egg. One of my favourites is our bread, it is a bit orange and tastes a bit of carrot.” In September 2020 the company raised €15 million in order to build its first factory in urban Copenhagen, where it plans to have a demonstration food bar to enable the public to try Solein-based items once it receives its food safety licence from the European Food Safety Authority. Dr. Vainikka’s plans are that by 2023, the company will be in a position to invest in a full scale production facility and be producing 400 million meals a year by 2025.
Listening to Dr. Vainikka, it’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of a new Agricultural Revolution. Especially when you consider that Solar Food is not the only company exploring this area. Air Protein, a Californian startup founded by physicist Lisa Dyson, has created what it calls the ‘world’s first air-based meat’, a chicken substitute also made from CO2 extracted from the air. Similarly, Deep Branch is a startup based at the University of Nottingham in the UK that takes the CO2 emissions from Drax, the UK’s largest power station and recycles it in order to produce animal feed.
Before you get too excited about your next meal being carbon negative however, remember that there are some major hurdles to be overcome. First, do these technologies actually scale? There’s a big difference between a successful pilot and scaling to the 400 million meals envisioned by Dr. Vainikka. Second, while the proportion of people employed in agriculture might be at its lowest level ever, the broader structural ecosystem surrounding the industry has developed over hundreds of years. Just as there are still huge parts of our world yet to experience digital transformation, even 50 or so years after the digital revolution began, the impacts of the second Agricultural Revolution will take their time to work through the system, even if and when they become the Future Normal.
But the point of sharing these moonshots is not solely to highlight specific new approaches to our food production. It is to inspire you to ask similarly provocative questions about the future of your industry. Here are a couple to start with:
What if…
💯 Your industry was to go through a similarly radical & exponential 100x efficiency upgrade? What might that look like?
🏎 You could find alternative uses for space research, as Solar Foods did? Don’t just look to space. Try Formula 1? The military? Healthcare?
♻️ You could apply such radically circular –– and sustainable –– processes to your production?
🧪 You could perform modern day alchemy, creating value from something as ubiquitous as air?!
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They're hosting their annual Showcase night on 3rd Dec with special guests Sir Ronald Cohen - The 'Father of Impact Investing' and J.J Peterson, Head of Teaching at StoryBrand and Co-host of chart-topping podcast 'Building a StoryBrand'. If you're interested in attending, you can book tickets (for free!) HERE
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Now, have your say...
Future Normal, or Future Nasty?
This newsletter (and upcoming book) is our attempt to explore what the world might look like as we leave 2020 behind.
We'd love your feedback, tips and advice. Will CO2 be the raw material in the next Agricultural Revolution? Or is it all hype? Do we want scientists feeding us, or should we stop meddling with nature? What would it do to the global economy and workforce if food could be produced cleanly and safely everywhere?
Let us know by replying to this email or, even better, comment on LinkedIn or Medium so that others can benefit from your insights!
Next week we'll be asking "What if startup founders and VCs could exit to the community?"
See you then!
Henry & Rohit
Masters of the futurist power pose 😂