Dateline: May 27 2024
Since early 2020 we’ve seen a steady uptick in food prices, and now it has reached crisis proportions. Not only are food staples becoming unaffordable for poorer communities, but there just isn’t enough to go around. Four years ago there was an abundance of food; now more than 1-billion people are staring famine in the face.
How did this happen? Gradually, then suddenly. Covid-19 and climate change disrupted supply chains and bumper harvests; then the war in Ukraine and sanctions blocked grain exports and fertiliser supplies, while sending energy prices soaring. In a perfect trifecta of disruption, full silos could not be emptied, gas for fertiliser became scarce and costly, and fuel for planting, harvesting and shipping surged.
Within months, 25 countries had banned the export of various food products, seeking to protect their domestic food security, which only made the global situation worse, while super-exporters such as Brazil enjoyed a demand bonanza. Depressed yields due to flood or drought on three continents added to the crisis.
“This is a worse catastrophe than the Covid-19 pandemic,” said UN secretary-general António Guterres, “and all countries must solve it together. We must start by ceasing the production of biofuel and biodiesel, and drastically reducing the grain we feed to [farm] animals.”
Reducing meat consumption and promoting vegetarian diets will go a long way to alleviating maize shortages, but cultural habits take a long time to change. More effective hi-tech solutions are available, such as indoor and “vertical” farming, and producing protein with precision fermentation. Gene-editing crops can increase yields and lower fertiliser requirements.
All these remedies come with a cost, and the poor will suffer the most. But if we collaborate on a global scale, ramp up the technology, and fight this crisis the way we fought Covid-19, perhaps we can create the “good future” together.
And everything will be back on the menu.
• Published on May 26 2022
Smart Nutrition beats Animal Farm
Engineered protein means steak without the slaughter
Dateline: July 1 2030
The focus on electric cars and solar power has not achieved global climate action targets. With greenhouse gas emissions from animal farming far exceeding those of transport, the leverage point was never really going to be with planes or trains.
In 2024, once the coronavirus pandemic was finally brought under control, the EU and US could pay attention to global warming again, and threw their full weight behind cultured protein. Instead of defending animal farmers, lobbyists busted their chops to draw attention to the health and environmental benefits of a non-animal diet.
The idea of eating animals as food has simply lost its social licence, in the West at least. And the idea that clearing forests and destroying wetlands for traditional crops is a good thing, is fading fast. Why turn vast areas of nature into sterile maize and wheat fields, when you can produce genetically superior — and healthier — alternatives indoors? With far less waste and resource depletion to boot.
It’s not like people quit cold turkey, but every year the sales of engineered protein began eating more and more of slaughtered protein’s market share. With extreme weather making it is increasingly difficult to deliver on time and within budget, farmers kept losing to the lab technicians and food factories.
Not all consumers prefer “fake” food, but the price point has forced them to make the switch. A “real” burger patty is now a guilty luxury, if you can find one. As for sheep and cattle farmers, like chicken and pig farmers, they’ve switched from raising animals for slaughter to hi-tech precision fermentation. That’s how you produce Smart Nutrition™ — the new food.
In the words of More Than Milk CEO Valerie Bouchard: “We can count our chickens now, because they’ve hatched: it tastes the same, it smells the same, it looks the same and it feels the same. Lab-grown protein is bringing home the bacon and it might just save us. And the world.”
• Published on July 15 2021
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.