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Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030: The Second Domestication of Plants and Animals, the Disruption of the Cow, and the Collapse of Industrial Livestock Farming
We are on the cusp of the deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago.This is primarily a protein disruption driven by economics. The cost of proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar. They will also be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. This means that, by 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal derived products they replace.The impact of this disruption on industrial animal farming will be profound. By 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50% and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt. All other livestock industries will suffer a similar fate, while the knock-on effects for crop farmers and businesses throughout the value chain will be severe.
152 pages, Paperback
Published March 20, 2020
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February 11, 2021
Livestock industry will be on the verge of bankruptcy by 2030 because they will be disrupted by innovations – “Precision Fermentation” (PF, the “the process that allows us to program micro-organisms to produce almost any complex organic molecule”) – in the protein market. This is the prediction by think tank RethinkX authors Tubb & Seba.
What sounds like a hyperbolic extrapolition is narrated as a very enjoyable and accessible piece of popular science. The report has an interesting tension arc, blowing most of its steam in the very first couple of pages where it works towards credibility. The story goes like this:
Humans have always used microbes to support their diet – beer and cheese production used them since forever. In more recent days, insulin, natural vanilla, orange flavoring, vitamins and the likes are produced industrially and are far cheaper, and more reliable than their natural equivalents. Starting from proteins produced for medicine (Insulin, growth hormones), via cosmetics (Keratin, Collagen), engineered proteins will soon become competitive in food production:
Cows are a mess: they burp methane, adding thereby significantly to Greenhouser Gas, produce lots of waste harming the soil. Industrial livestock farming is problematic to say the least. Burned rainforests to produce soy in order to feed the cows is just one part of the livestock ecosystem. On top of all that, cows’ efficiency of 4% to produce proteins is ridiculous low.
Replace that with microbes producing the needed proteins at a very high efficiency rate of more than 50%, and you might get cheaper proteins, far less ecological impact and a vast area of unused lands.
“But I still want my steak on the grill” I thought first. And I’ll have it even after 2035, because disruption doesn’t start with meat but with substituting ingredients for milk products in the B2B market.
The idea of disruption is that it happens extremely fast, once it is able to scale, following a S-curve like adoption.
So, milk is what will start this trajectory. The milk industry is already under heavy price pressure. Proteins only account for 3.3% of milk’s composition. PF only needs to disrupt these 3.3% and the collapse of the whole cow milk industry will come.
Only later on, cow meat will be disrupted, starting with ground meat which is easer to replace, and starting with the very important market of pet food.
Alternatives for leather and other materials will follow, and so will other livestock disruptions go for pigs, chicken, and fish.
One might be sceptical about adoption by consuments (“steak on the grill”, “real food”), but the technology is nearly there and highly probable.
One critic has to be brought up though despite all the convincing analysis and near future scenarios: sources for figures are often not cited and I cannot validate them easily. It’s a matter of belief after all, and the report can sound hyperbolic in parts. This cost the report one star.
The best thing about it is that you can read it for free online.
What sounds like a hyperbolic extrapolition is narrated as a very enjoyable and accessible piece of popular science. The report has an interesting tension arc, blowing most of its steam in the very first couple of pages where it works towards credibility. The story goes like this:
Humans have always used microbes to support their diet – beer and cheese production used them since forever. In more recent days, insulin, natural vanilla, orange flavoring, vitamins and the likes are produced industrially and are far cheaper, and more reliable than their natural equivalents. Starting from proteins produced for medicine (Insulin, growth hormones), via cosmetics (Keratin, Collagen), engineered proteins will soon become competitive in food production:
Cows are a mess: they burp methane, adding thereby significantly to Greenhouser Gas, produce lots of waste harming the soil. Industrial livestock farming is problematic to say the least. Burned rainforests to produce soy in order to feed the cows is just one part of the livestock ecosystem. On top of all that, cows’ efficiency of 4% to produce proteins is ridiculous low.
Replace that with microbes producing the needed proteins at a very high efficiency rate of more than 50%, and you might get cheaper proteins, far less ecological impact and a vast area of unused lands.
“But I still want my steak on the grill” I thought first. And I’ll have it even after 2035, because disruption doesn’t start with meat but with substituting ingredients for milk products in the B2B market.
The idea of disruption is that it happens extremely fast, once it is able to scale, following a S-curve like adoption.
So, milk is what will start this trajectory. The milk industry is already under heavy price pressure. Proteins only account for 3.3% of milk’s composition. PF only needs to disrupt these 3.3% and the collapse of the whole cow milk industry will come.
Only later on, cow meat will be disrupted, starting with ground meat which is easer to replace, and starting with the very important market of pet food.
Alternatives for leather and other materials will follow, and so will other livestock disruptions go for pigs, chicken, and fish.
One might be sceptical about adoption by consuments (“steak on the grill”, “real food”), but the technology is nearly there and highly probable.
One critic has to be brought up though despite all the convincing analysis and near future scenarios: sources for figures are often not cited and I cannot validate them easily. It’s a matter of belief after all, and the report can sound hyperbolic in parts. This cost the report one star.
The best thing about it is that you can read it for free online.
Displaying 1 of 1 review