Over the last couple months, I wrote a number of articles about some of the technological aspects of food production.
A great deal of this involves the concept of "meats" that are produced in a bioreactor. It is a more efficient way to go about food production while also, hopefully, reducing costs.
There are many reasons to be optimistic about this process. We are now still in the proof-of-concept stage but ight be moving rapidly towards production.
We are seeing a number of projects that are offering promise to this new model.
The first lab grown chicken was set to go on sale in Singapore on Saturday. It will be the first of its kind that people consume in a commercial setting. The price $23 for the meal.
Eat Just is the company that is putting it out. It was founded in 2011 and now has a valuation of $2 billion after the latest round of funding.
At this price, the company is still losing money. The claim is that it costs a lot more than that to produce the meat.
Nevertheless, these are the very early stages of the development of this technology. It is here where people are optimistic about what is taking place. As the technology advances, prices should drop rapidly.
It is highly possible that we see the same pricing trend that took place over the last 40 years in computers and processors.
Maren Caruso/Getty Images
There is no reason to stop at meat. We are seeing similar innovation within the dairy industry. Cows are not only raised for meat but also dairy.
The process is still the same, slow and inefficient. It requires a long time to create an adult cow, one that is ready for milking.
Remilk is trying to develop "clean dairy" just like other companies are working on clean meat. The idea is to generate the milk through a similar process whereby the money and resources required to bring a cow to maturity are eliminated.
Remilk’s process uses something called microbial fermentation in which milk proteins are reproduced in a tank to create real dairy that’s functionally identical to cow milk without the need for a cow.
“It can take just two to three days until these microbes multiply enough to fully fill the tank,” Wolff said. “We’re talking about hundreds of thousands of liters. In only a few days you have an enormous amount of microbes, and each one of them is actually a milk factory because it’s able to create those proteins. You only need to feed them with the most basic nutrition that you can think of. At the moment, we’re using a basic sugar molecule, but we’re working on a model that will be able to feed those microbes with agricultural waste. We’re going to literally use waste to create fully functional proteins.”
The company seeks to make a full line of products out of the milk. The goal is to get them on the shelves of stores by the end of next year.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/remilk-lab-grown-dairy/
Here is another example of disruption potentially appearing before our eyes. Of course, for this to happen, not only do prices need to drop, they need to get passed the different groups representing the meat industry.
Food producers are not the only ones who are being affected. We also are likely to see an impact upon land. Think about all the acreage that is used for ranching, both for meat and daily production. This could free up millions of acres of land for other uses.
It is possible that, by 2030, the way the food on our plate is produced will have changed completely. At the same time, we will likely realize how primitive our present methods are.
In short, we will be able to produce a great deal more proteins for a lot less money. The speed and pace of change that is taking place will send prices plummeting.
This will be the end of ranching as we know it.
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