Coffee from the reactor and bread from algae, what does the future of food look like?

The war of aggression in Ukraine has shown how fragile global food security is – and how quickly it falteres. But not only geopolitical ‘food shocks’, but also global warming and the growing world population will sooner or later force us to change the paradigm of agricultural policy. The question is how?

In 2021, more than 828 million people were malnourished – that’s about 10 percent of the world’s population. People in Africa and Asia suffer the most from hunger and malnutrition. It is mainly a distribution problem, because enough food is produced for everyone today – but there is a big but.

Hunger has increased considerably in recent years due to wars, conflicts, the climate crisis and Corona. Welthungerhilfe assumes that food security will deteriorate further. On the one hand, global warming poses major challenges for agriculture, which also contributes to global warming, especially through greenhouse gas emissions. As a result of drought, water shortage or salinized soils, researchers expect yields to decline worldwide in the coming years.

On the other hand, the world’s population is growing. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) estimates that by 2050 there will be ten billion people living on the planet – and that more than 50 percent more food will be needed than is available today.

However, a change in diet is not only of great importance for humans, but also for the environment and animals. After all, agriculture today mainly means intensive management and bio-industry. And this form of agriculture pollutes the soil, drinking water and biodiversity and causes enormous animal suffering.

So how can a growing world population be fed in the midst of multiple crises? This is the question that nutrition researchers from all over the world are asking themselves. Ideally, an alternative food system can produce food with a high nutritional value, sustainably and in sufficient quantities.

A term for future technology is called: vertical farming. The basic concept is not to grow plants horizontally in fields, but above each other in high-rise buildings. This means that not only can the demand for arable land be reduced, but also transportation to large cities can be eliminated, yields no longer dependent on the weather, and natural habitats for animals and plants can be restored. In many cases, the concept goes hand in hand with other innovative solutions, such as drip irrigation, to save even more resources.

Does it sound too good to be true?

In fact, there is also a dark side: the high energy requirement. What is available in nature must be artificially created indoors – instead of using sunlight, the plants grow through the illumination of LED lamps. Urban farming also requires a wind machine and air conditioning. If the power supply fails, a crop failure cannot be ruled out.

Indoor farming is still in its infancy. The investment costs for the complex systems are high. A city that can afford it and where vertical farming can be considered useful is Dubai. The desert city is not exactly destined to practice conventional agriculture. The largest city in the emirate has high hopes for its skyscraper farm — and opened the world’s largest vertical “farm” last year. In the near future, the 12,000-square-foot facility will produce up to 3,000 kilograms of fruits and vegetables per day.

However, the hunger for animal products has not yet been satisfied with vertical farming. The fact is that animal products have by far the worst climate footprint. Substitute products are popular, but the consumption of animal products in Switzerland is increasing every year. To approach the taste of animal products as closely as possible, researchers have been working for years on artificial food – made from cells.

But why should lab-grown foods better imitate conventional ones? Let’s take a closer look at artificial beef. A small piece of muscle tissue is removed from a living cow with tweezers to generate stem cells. In a nutrient solution – i.e. in a bioreactor – consisting of sugar, minerals, vitamins and a growth serum, the cells multiply even faster than in the animal.

This process is called cellular farming, including animal products such as fish, milk, eggs and gelatin, without the need to kill or exploit animals. Not only would factory farming become an anachronism, researchers also see great opportunity in cellular agriculture in terms of environmental balance. On the one hand, the reactor can also produce products with a lousy ecological balance, such as coffee or avocados. On the other hand, there is no “waste” because only what is actually eaten is produced.

The process was already described by Winston Churchill in his essay “Fifty Years Hence”: “We will get away from the absurdity of raising a whole chicken to eat the breast or the wing.” There are still a few hurdles in development and mass adoption. The first laboratory hamburger was launched in 2013 by Dutch Prof. Dr. Markus Post – and cost an exorbitant 250,000 euros.

But the investigation is progressing. For example, a few years ago there was no non-animal growth serum required for the production of laboratory meat. The serum came from the blood of live fetuses. For this, the mother animal and the fetus had to be killed. The serum is now made from algae and mushroom extracts.

In the future, algae may not only be important in the production of cultured meat, but also as food. Algae are considered indispensable to the climate and ecosystems – but not in our Western diet. This can change quickly. Because algae can hold more than just sushi rolls together. Algae are healthy and low in calories – yet filling. They score with a high content of protein and omega-3 fatty acids and contain essential vitamins and minerals.

However, this property alone does not make algae a food of the future, but the fact that algae are present all over the world, grow quickly and naturally – and can be used in many ways. For example, algae can replace part of the grain needed for bread or pasta. This would not only make the food healthier and lower in calories, but also more sustainable.

Insects are considered another promising food source of the future. There are about 2000 edible insect species. Insects are already considered one of the most important sources of protein for more than two billion people, mainly in Asia, Africa and South America.

Their protein content is between 35 and 77 percent. In comparison, beef, chicken or pork contain only about 20 percent. The ecological balance is also convincing: the protein bombs require hardly any water, feed or land.

After so much cake in the air, back to today’s food: legumes. Chickpeas, beans, etc. will probably play an increasingly important role in the future due to climate-friendly cultivation. Since the roots of legumes enter into a symbiosis with nodule bacteria, soil fertility is increased. In this way, legumes take care of the fertilization themselves, as it were – and they need little or no synthetically produced nitrogen fertilizer.

Improving the humus – so not the humus to eat, but the dead organic matter in the soil – also plays a central role in permaculture. In essence, this breeding method, which was developed as far back as the 1970s, is about creating an ecosystem with natural processes that can survive almost without human intervention.

The surface is used as best as possible, ie fruit and vegetables are grown close to each other, below and above each other. Monocultures and the use of artificial fertilizers and pesticides are avoided, which promotes biodiversity and improves soil quality.

Little is known about aquaponics – a polyculture that combines fish farming and vegetable production in a circulatory system. The name, like food production, is an amalgamation of aquaculture and hydroponics. Aquaculture is the cultivation of all organisms that live in water, especially fish, mussels or algae. Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in water instead of soil.

In concrete terms, this means that fish grow in an aquarium, for example – the water contains valuable fertilizers for plants due to fish farming. The plant beds are supplied with the nutrient-rich water by means of a water pump. The water is cleaned – and can be returned to the aquarium.

The biggest advantage is the low water consumption: Aquaponics uses about 90 percent less water than conventional agriculture. In addition, vegetables can be grown on shelves, just like with vertical farming, and are therefore space-saving. The biggest drawback: the fish grow up in a small habitat.

There’s a lot going on. All over the world, alternatives to traditional agriculture are being researched, tested and perfected. There is no mood of unrest yet, as many technologies are not yet mature or require huge investment costs. One of the biggest hurdles is probably acceptance. Because traditional agriculture and the food it produces has a lot to do with our identity and culture.

But who knows, maybe one day our descendants will be surprised that certain foods were once only available seasonally, didn’t come from reactors – and we ate animal flesh.