By Tony Hunter, food futurist
Synthetic biology (synbio), genetically redesigning organisms to give them new capabilities, is one of the key technologies for achieving a sustainable global food system. It’s now accelerating its journey to commercialisation and revealing its long term impact on the global food system. Some significant signals of change in the space include:
Plant molecular farming (which involves inserting the gene for a substance into a plant, growing the plant and harvesting the desired substance):
- Alpine Bio have harvested their largest crop yet of casein containing soybeans. They’ll extract the casein to make cheese without the cow.
- Moolec Science have just released their first commercial batch of their omega-6 fatty acid Gamma Linoleic Acid (GLA). Their Glaso human supplement product is made from a high-GLA safflower variety and contains some three times more GLA than natural sources.
Precision fermentation is also showing significant signals of change including:
- The Every Company, Cauldron Ferm, Perfect Day and others have just received grants from the US Department of Defence to design high volume commercial production facilities.
- New Culture, making casein proteins to create mozzarella, has inked a strategic partnership with Korean biomanufacturing giant CJ CheilJedang to scale its product,
These are just a small sample of what’s happening in new technologies that will re-shape our global food system. We need 50 to 70% more food to feed the growing global population of 9.7 billion and middle classes of 2050 sustainably, healthily and fairly. And let’s not forget their 1.3 billion pet cats and dogs, all eating nearly as much protein as a human.
We can’t just simply scale our current global food system to meet this need. There’s no solution in just doing more of the same, not without deforesting the entire planet, and that probably won’t end well!
New technologies like synbio which use less resources like arable land and fresh water and pollute less are going to be an essential part of the solution.
As I say, “You can’t solve todays’ problems using yesterdays’ technologies.”
Tony Hunter is a global futurist, food scientist, speaker and foresight strategy consultant. He consults and speaks globally, using his distinctive combination of scientific qualifications, business experience and detailed understanding of exponential food technologies to deliver a unique perspective on the future of food.
