Climate breakdown threatens to cause what scientists call “ multiple breadbasket failures”, through synchronous heatwaves and other impacts. Several impending disasters are converging on our food supply, any of which could be catastrophic. But I believe it comes in the nick of time. This means multiplying particular micro-organisms, to produce particular products, in factories.I know some people will be horrified by this prospect. After 12,000 years of feeding humankind, all farming except fruit and veg production is likely to be replaced by ferming: brewing microbes through precision fermentation. Before long, most of our food will come neither from animals nor plants, but from unicellular life. While arguments rage about plant- versus meat-based diets, new technologies will soon make them irrelevant. We are on the cusp of the biggest economic transformation, of any kind, for 200 years. If, as the company intends, the water used in the process (which is much less than required by farming) is electrolysed with solar power, the best places to build these plants will be deserts. Everyone on Earth could be handsomely fed, and using a tiny fraction of its surface. And because it will be brewed in giant vats the land efficiency, the company estimates, is roughly 20,000 times greater. But because only part of a plant can be eaten, while the bacterial flour is mangetout, you can multiply that efficiency several times. The hydrogen pathway used by Solar Foods is about 10 times as efficient as photosynthesis. The first commercial factory built by Solar Foods should be running next year. The carbohydrates that remain when proteins and fats have been extracted could replace everything from pasta flour to potato crisps. Other tweaks will produce lauric acid – goodbye palm oil – and long-chain omega-3 fatty acids – hello lab-grown fish. When the bacteria are modified they will create the specific proteins needed for lab-grown meat, milk and eggs. In their raw state, they can replace the fillers now used in thousands of food products. Such flours are likely soon to become the feedstock for almost everything. It tasted … just like a pancake.īut pancakes are not the intended product. They set up a frying pan in the lab, mixed the flour with oat milk, and I took my small step for man. I asked them to make me a pancake: I would be the first person on Earth, beyond the lab staff, to eat such a thing. But the scientists, working for a company called Solar Foods, were allowed to give me some while filming our documentary Apocalypse Cow.
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