Tag: Food Technology

“It is not what you eat that causes diseases; it is what you don’t eat that is the problem.” 

What is a Bioactive Compound?

If you want to live to be 100, a key strategy is to eat two servings of fruit and three servings of vegetables daily. We at D2D wanted to know: WHY?

The answer: It is all in the bioactives – the keys to a healthy life. One of the most innovative advancements in nutrition is using bioactives – a group of naturally occurring compounds that significantly affect the human body. They are naturally occurring and are found most densely in fruits and vegetables. Now, with the support of artificial intelligence, nutrition researchers and technology can uncover and harness the full potential of these compounds, leading to better health outcomes for everyone.

You have heard of them. Terms such as curcumin, resveratrol, flavonoids, ascorbic acid, and even caffeine to name a few. These, plus thousands more, are tiny molecules that have an effect, usually good, on a living organism, tissue, or cell.  Compounds like these keep your heart ticking, immune system ready, muscles strong, cells rejuvenating, and diseases at bay.

Blueberries are truly a great example of a superfood, packed with a variety of essential bioactive compounds. Just a handful every single day have been shown to support cardiovascular, cognitive, and metabolic health. Hence the term, ‘superfood’. But you need to eat them for this to happen….

Their most notable compounds are flavonoids, a type of polyphenol, particularly anthocyanins, which give blueberries their distinctive color. Evidence has shown that these compounds are the ones that can support your heart and your brain. But that is not all. Blueberries are packed with antioxidants, which protect our bodies from damaging free radicals, thereby bolstering our immune system.

Quercetin and Myricetin fight against free radicals and support cardiovascular and overall health. Blueberries are also abundant in essential vitamins like C, K, and E, and vital minerals including manganese, zinc, and iron. Finally, blueberries contain dietary fiber. You can see why they are a superfood.

Though it’s crucial for us to get the multitude of health benefits from fruits and vegetables, sometimes we have to eat a lot to get what we need.  For instance, it is suggested that we get 500 mg of quercetin a day. But you would have to eat about 33 cups of blueberries to get that same amount as they have about 15 mg per cup. We singled out blueberries as a prime example, and my favorite fruit, but every single fruit or vegetable has its own unique family of bioactive compounds.

Plants not only give us food but also clothing, fuel, materials, personal care, and medicine. But we only know about 1% of all the natural plant molecules. The rest are considered the ‘dark matter’ of plants. But imagine if you had a database of the remaining 99% of all bioactives and their health benefits. Imagine if you could utilize artificial intelligence to match bioactive compounds with a solution to a specific human health issue.  That is exactly what Brightseed is doing.

What is Brightseed?

Brightseed, a San Francisco Bay Area startup, is on a ‘mission to restore human health.’ They are considered the pioneers in discovering bioactive compounds and developing innovative ingredients to fuel the proactive health movement. Brightseed is known for their novel and innovative approach using their proprietary artificial intelligence technology, Forager. Forager combs two databases to match a bioactive compound solution for a human disease.

Brightseed scientists begin by examining edible and medicinal plants used by populations worldwide. This includes mining existing databases and producing original data by sourcing specimens from around the globe to feed into Forager.  They then identify the plant compounds and load them into the Forager database. By 2025, this database will host the largest natural compound library in the world.

To date, Forager has mapped 4 million plant compounds – which is 40x more than what is known in published scientific literature – and has identified more than 30,000 predicted bioactives across 22 health areas. Built on their machine learning platform., Forager works in three parts: it predicts bioactive plant sources; it predicts the health benefits triggered in the body;  and it predicts which plants contain each bioactive compound solution for human disease.

Brightseed uses this computational intelligence to ‘illuminate the world of plant compounds’ at a much deeper level and much faster than human research capabilities.  Forager takes the guesswork out of where to begin for clinical research. As a result, the discovery time is 10x faster than traditional research, with a hit rate of 100x higher than pharmaceuticals.

What is in the pipeline?

Brightseed’s Bio Gut Fiber

For instance, the team at Brightseed will ask a question such as, “What bioactive compound can support a healthy gut barrier function?” After inputting the question into Forager, it searches for a match. In this case, Forager found a bioactive compound in the waste stream of hemp to strengthen human gut lining in order to support a healthy gut barrier function.

95% of Americans don’t eat enough fiber, so you may have heard of ‘leaky gut’? Digestion breaks down our food into nutrients to be used by our body to keep us healthy and strong. These nutrients are absorbed through the gut lining into our bloodstream. Think of a screen with very tiny holes. ‘Leaky gut’ is when those holes get too big and more than just nutrients flow into the blood, like bacteria or pathogenic organisms, neither of which you want in your blood.

Forager isolated two compounds: N-trans-caffeoyl tyramine (NCT) and N-trans-feruloyl tyramine (NFT). Why are these important?  They are bioactives found in Brightseed’s proprietary Bio Gut Fiber that gives integrity to the gut lining, helps fill in the leaky holes, and keeps the gut lining strong.

After further research, Brightseed created their proprietary Bio Gut Fiber that can be added to a protein bar, fiber supplement, or even a cookie that can support gut health if eaten daily.

Time to go to sleep

‘What bioactive compound can be isolated to help people fall asleep and stay asleep?” Sleep disorders affect between 50 to 70 million Americans. The older one becomes, the harder it is to sleep, especially for women. Many sleep problems are related to stress- thinking and worrying about the day’s events.

Pharmavite, a supplement company with the purpose of ‘to bring the gift of health to life’ wanted to bring a natural healthy supplement for restorative sleep to market. They collaborated with Brightseed to find a bioactive compound to help sleep and manage stress. Forager found 11 high-efficacy candidates for improving sleep and 16 for stress.  As of this writing, they are in the testing and trial phases.

This is not just limited to human nutrition. Harnessing the power of bioactive compounds can benefit industries such as pharmaceuticals, consumer health, food & and beverage, agriculture, personal care, and animal health. Some of their partnerships today include Danone, Pharmavite, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ocean Spray, Archer Daniels Midland, and Food Ingredients First. These partnerships are leveraging the power of bioactive to target chronic health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, gut health, and cardiovascular disease.

Getting the Word Out

Brightseed is committed to raising awareness about the important role of bioactives in human health. They have formed a ‘Bioactives Coalition’ with food and health system leaders as advocates for bioactives. They would also like to educate on the scientific evidence to promote these compounds in functional foods, beverages, and supplements.  Their goal is to make them a part of everyday conversation and dietary guidelines.

Bioactives on the Plate

But if you are still unconvinced about eating your plants, here’s a snapshot of some additional research about why we need to eat our fruits and vegetables.

Cranberries: A study published in the journal Advances in Nutrition highlighted the potential health benefits of cranberries. A powerhouse of bioactive compounds, cranberries contain a myriad of phytonutrients, including phenolic acids, proanthocyanins, anthocyanins, flavonoids, and triterpenoids. These compounds exhibit potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, which can combat oxidative stress and inflammation – two underlying factors in many chronic diseases.

Black Garlic: A review article published in Molecules discussed the impact of black garlic and its bioactive components on human health. Pre-clinical trials have shown promising effects that black garlic can prevent several diseases. Most of these benefits can be attributed to its anti-oxidation, anti-inflammation, anti-obesity, hepatoprotection, hypolipidemia, anti-cancer, anti-allergy, immunomodulation, nephroprotection, cardiovascular protection, and neuroprotection.

Strawberries: A study published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences revealed that strawberries, particularly their achenes (seeds), are a significant source of antioxidants and other bioactive compounds, contributing to the prevention of inflammation, oxidative stress, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, and obesity.

Tomatoes: According to a review in the Foods Journal, tomatoes are rich in various bioactive compounds, including antioxidants, which play a role in preventing degenerative diseases, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, eye disease, and cancer. Tomatoes can also improve blood circulation, reduce cholesterol, detoxify toxins, reduce inflammation, and prevent premature aging, among other benefits.

It All Starts with Ukraine

Our readers already know the important role played by Ukraine in major commodity markets. We have covered the effect of the disruption to production and export of grains and oilseeds, fertilizers, petroleum, and other products from Ukraine. The devastation of battle is taking its toll.

We’ve shown how the end of Ukraine exports early this year risked hunger for millions of dependent customers across the Middle East and Africa. We outlined the run-up in commodity prices and inflation around the world. We helped explain the damage to the intricate ballet of international ocean shipping and the harmful effects of the disruption to post-Covid efforts to restore the efficiency of the supply-chain system. We’ve looked at the enormous effort being made to restore Ukraine’s ability to resume exports and avoid further damage to global food security.

But the D2D staff is unanimous in its judgment that the Ukraine conflict is the story of the year for food and agriculture. It is a story that reaches far beyond the borders of Ukraine, with implications that ripple across the economics of our food system, our continuing climate and environmental needs, and a whole host of simple day-to-day events important to how our food system performs.  Let’s consider just a few examples.

What makes the Ukraine conflict an economic story?

• Simple laws of supply and demand. Ukraine is a major player in global markets for corn, wheat, rapeseed, sunflower oil and other commodities that are cornerstones of the modern system. The sudden subtraction of millions of tons and billions of dollars worth of commodities from the market saw prices skyrocket – wheat up by more than a third, corn by more than 20 percent.
• Energy is fundamental to food production. Ukraine conflict also helped drive sharp increases in energy costs around the world – and nowhere no more so than agriculture. Fuel costs for driving equipment, crop drying costs, sharply higher prices for nitrogen-based fertilizers – all these energy-related farm expenses cut deeply into farmers’ bottom lines. Transportation costs to deliver food around the world also increased.
• High prices beget even higher prices. Even as commodity prices drifted lower as the conflict continued and some exports resumed, the overall trend upward remained. Food manufacturers had to pay more, inevitably showing up in prices at the grocery store for consumers. Food inflation during the year reached levels not seen in 40 years, with predictions of an annual increase of 11 percent led by rises in beef, poultry, eggs, dairy, fruit – virtually every major food category.

The Climate

Climate change remains one of our world’s top priorities. Perhaps no other public policy issue has consumed more time, energy and money in recent years, and 2022 saw that focus grow even more intense.

This year’s Convention on Climate Change brought together more than 100 heads of state and government for intense discussions on climate priorities, metrics and timetables.

While a lack of some specific commitments disappointed many, the conference nonetheless marked a major reaffirmation of the global community’s commitment to facing up to the challenges of climate change.

Similarly, a collaborative international effort to assess progress in corporate efforts in Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) maintained pressure on the private sector to address climate and other issues deemed important to responsible corporate behavior.

This year’s report examined records from 350 companies and found greatest progress in Europe, followed by Asia. The United States and Australia trailed those leaders but showed noteworthy compliance levels nonetheless. Agriculture is one of the most active and committed sectors in the battle. In 2022, producers, processors, and CPG companies increasingly embraced better farming techniques and new technologies designed not just to protect the water, soil and air but equally to enhance them.

Farm, commodity groups, academic institutions, the private sector, investment groups and other funding sources converged in a shared effort to deal with food waste, greenhouse gases, improved water management, new technologies for every segment of the food chain – and more.

Regenerative agriculture became a newsworthy movement. No till, cover crops, crop rotation, and carbon sequestration is becoming a practice to enhance the soil, protect crops from drought and flooding, and increase yield.

2022’s notable events

• Supply chain renewal. The pernicious effects of the Covid pandemic lingered through 2022, in many ways. One of the hidden stories of the year may well be the quiet, relentless effort to restore the smooth functioning of our food supply system. Few headlines were devoted to such things as efforts to add more trained labor, incorporate more innovative new transportation and handling technologies, rethink operational systems, rebalance a severely disrupted ocean freight market, and more.
• Technology investment. It’s an old cliché: Food may nourish the world. But money makes it grow.  During 2022, enormous amounts of money were invested in developing new technologies appropriate to a completely revitalized global food system. Major areas of focus include such areas as crop health, animal health, crop protection and operational management, controlled environments, data science, automation and robotics, just to name a few. Estimates of investment across the spectrum vary and almost defy precise definition.  But with venture capital investment alone last year exceeding $11 billion, estimates of hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into ag technology seem very plausible.
• Diversification in all its dimensions. Much of the innovation growing throughout 2022 centers on finding new and better uses for agricultural commodities, and the development of new ways of serving emerging societal needs. A recap of the year should not ignore the continuing efforts to advance development of alternative proteins, biofuels, non-chemical plant nutrients, improved seed varieties and other important elements of an evolving global agricultural system
• It’s the science, stupid. A prominent U.S. politician once gained widespread attention by reminding voters of the key issue in the upcoming election: “It’s the economy, stupid.” 2022 may be the year in which a paraphrase of that sentiment began to gain real traction. Around the world, sometimes small news reports began to track a shift in sentiment among more people and many institutions, away from suspicion and emotion toward acceptance of scientific fact and reality. More and more stories began speaking of the need for intelligent and responsible use of good science as a critical tool in meeting growing food demand. At Dirt to Dinner, we view that trend as one of the most significant positive signs from 2022 for agriculture and consumers everywhere.

What about 2023?

Hard as it may be to believe, we at Dirt to Dinner don’t have a magic crystal ball that tells us the future. But we work hard to pay attention to what’s going on in the world of food and agriculture. We try to anticipate what is important and newsworthy – topics that might help our readers to know more about our global food system and to make better decisions about the food we all eat.

We have some ideas about what lies ahead in 2023, and we will be keeping our eye on a number of events, trends and noteworthy efforts at innovation and accomplishment across the food chain. We welcome your ideas about what’s to come, and what you would like to see us cover.

To help spur your thinking, let’s wrap up this special year-end review with a very short list of some of the things we’ll be watching in 2023.

• Resolution of Ukraine conflict. How do we get back to where we were before all this started?
• Regenerative ag. How is this important new approach to making agriculture a pro-active agent in addressing environmental concerns progressing?
• Biofuels. What role can agricultural play in reordering our energy system to reduce dependence on fossil fuels?
• Water management. How do we make smarter use of water?
• The Farm Bill. Where are we placing our priorities for the future? How does such a proven successful mix of policies need to adapt for the future?
• Alternative proteins. We need so much more protein for a healthy world. How are we going to produce it?
• China and its food security challenges. China is front and center in major global agricultural markets. But the country faces enormous food security challenges – rising population, softer economy, climate and land use issues, growing political tensions, and more. What should we watch for?
• Ag’s stake in labor, immigration and migration issues. Where re we going to find all the people we need to make our huge agricultural system work?
• Trends in human, animal and plant nutrition. What’s the best way to think about how we provide all the different kinds of nutrients involved in our food system?
• Trends in food consumption. What are the emerging trends, issues and interests shaping the food decisions made by consumers?
• Unpredictable but newsworthy events. Holy cow, I never saw that coming. But I better pay attention.

On the run? LISTEN to our post!

Rule Britannia

This summer, the United Kingdom took the issue of biotechnology and genomics out of the shadows and back into the public limelight. The Tory government introduced legislation that would effectively exempt certain crops and animals from the stringent regulatory constraints currently in force regarding CRISPR.

The U.K.’s action is made possible by its exit from the European Union, where what many consider the draconian regulations severely inhibit the development of new plant and animal genetic advancements. In the E.U., the Genetically Modified Organism Directive issued in 2001 still applies, allowing any of the more than two dozen member states to completely ban the growth of GMO crops or imports of GMO organisms. The University of Dusseldorf’s Sarah Schmidt recently told Science magazine that getting a crop through the E.U.’s regulatory maze “would take years and about $35 million.”

But even outside the E.U. regulatory framework, the proposed U.K. changes to genetic regulation have renewed the same intense opposition. Opponents of the U.K. legislation cite familiar fears of unintended environmental consequences, economic harm to farmers and rural communities, too much market power by commercial interests, lack of transparency to consumers in product labeling, and more.

Genetic optimists hold that despite the clamor, the public opinion pendulum is swinging in what they consider the right direction. Opposition to GMOs remains strongest in Europe, while America and many other countries seem to be moving – at a snail’s pace to many – to recognize and gently embrace the potential within gene editing, CRISPR in particular.

They also point to the willingness of some countries in Africa and other areas most in need of increases in agricultural productivity to consider broader use of GMOs. The threat of imminent food insecurity seems to be a powerful pro-science motivator.

GMOs and CRISPR      

While GMOs and CRISPR are both gene editing tools, they differ in their technique. GMOs take a gene from one organism and insert it into another organism. CRISPR edits the gene within an organism. CRISPR offers a way to cut and paste genes within a plant or animal to correct flaws or mistakes or improve how the organism functions. It promises to be simpler, cheaper, and faster than other, more radical approaches to wholesale genetic manipulation and monumentally faster and less haphazard than natural selection. It also requires less cumbersome regulation when compared to GMOs.

Perhaps most appealing to many scientists, it seemed to undercut the hyperbolic fears of “Frankenfood” along with social and environmental degradation and general predictions of universal doom and midnight gloom advanced by anti-science critics.

And all the while, farmers could boost productivity and profitability, while hungry consumers everywhere could reap the benefits of more plentiful and nutritious food. Crops could be developed with characteristics that advance the growth of eco-friendly biofuels and plant-based proteins. Animals could be bred to be more productive, more resistant to disease, and less needy of antibiotics. Farmers could expand production into specific crops and animals important to all sorts of additional uses, including answers to climate change challenges. The highly efficient, productive, responsive, sustainable, resilient global food system everyone from Albania to Zimbabwe most wanted seemed tantalizingly close.

Source: bio.org

Promises, Promises

But a decade on, the promise within gene editing still seems more elusive than many would like, especially in global agriculture.

The Philippines last year gained attention when the country approved Golden Rice – a genetically modified rice variety bred to provide additional nutrition, including vitamin A to combat childhood blindness. (Bangladesh also is closely examining the value of allowing Golden Rice to be planted.) At the same time, the Philippine government also approved the use of Bt eggplant for food, feed and processing.

Previous efforts to introduce something this simple prompted violent street protests and burned crops. The intensity of the resistance puzzled many scientists and politicians alike, especially in the Asia region, where rice makes up as much as two-thirds of the daily diet of the average person (and even more among the poor).

The slow pace of adaptation isn’t unique to The Philippines. Gene editing – whether it is GMO or CRISPR – remains the source of animated and often extreme opposition from dedicated cadres of those adamantly opposed to genetically modified organisms in any form. Many environmental groups are at the forefront of opposition, citing fears of unforeseen environmental damages, economic threats to producers, and as yet unrecognized health issues, among other matters.

Many scientists and politicians see rays of sunshine peeking through the gray clouds of doubt and cynicism spun by anti-science factions. Global food and health organizations cite the slow but steady expansion of the roster of nations growing GMO crops.  

Find more details on GMO crops around the world here.

The Data Tell the Tale

Advocates also point to the recently updated genetically engineered regulatory standards from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. After a multi-year review process, the USDA in 2020 issued a new rule called SECURE – the Sustainable, Ecological, Consistent, Uniform, Responsible, Efficient rule – that relaxes some of the more onerous requirements of previous regulations, but far from all of them. (There is no indication which took longer – the review of the genetic science, or the creation of the tortured acronym.)

The new regs sought to give greater developmental leeway for organisms with low-risk levels – those where conventional breeding techniques have demonstrated an acceptable level of safety.

GMO proponents also cite a recent letter from 110 Nobel laureates and over 3,500 scientists worldwide calling on GMO opponent Ice International to “re-examine the experience of farmers and consumers worldwide with crops and food improved through biotechnology; recognize the findings of authoritative scientific bodies and regulatory agencies; and abandon their campaign against GMOs in general and Golden Rice in particular.”

Adapt…Or Else

Britain is…doing something good for the world. It all adds up to a cause for optimism to most people. Our food system is in the midst of an important era of continuing adaptation to meet a more complex and demanding set of expectations.

It’s a lot to ask. But science – as CRISPR and GMOs in general indicate – can help us create the optimal food system. We want our food system to do far more than simply feed us. We want it to sustain and regenerate our environment. We want it to provide food that continues to become safer, more nutritious, and delivered in ever-greater choices that match our changing lifestyle.

We want the food system to be fair to all involved, and transparent for all to see how what they eat is produced, processed, and delivered. We want our food system to fight climate change, not contribute to it.

On the run? LISTEN to our post!

Imagination is a wonderful thing. It is even more incredible when you can realize your dreams. Did you ever think you would eat meat and get your protein from air…yeast…peas…and even mushrooms? These are new sources of protein that replicate the livestock, fish and poultry many of us eat every day…and they taste like the real thing, too.

Which would you choose?

Most consumers don’t yet realize that there are three different types of alternative proteins that achieve the desired amino acid profile.

Plant-based Proteins

Most people are familiar with plant-based burgers such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat.  Impossible is sold everywhere from Target to Starbucks to Walmart to your local grocery store. The perception is that it is healthier than regular meat because it is made from plants. In truth, it depends on the burger, how it was made, the nutritional profile introduced, and the number of ingredients.

Despite all the marketing, the consumer places alternative burgers slightly behind your traditional black bean and veggie burger which may be why Morningstar Farms has the largest unit sales in the frozen section. Chicken alternatives like Daring and Abbot’s Butcher come in third. Interestingly enough, of those surveyed, 66% of consumers prefer to get their alternative meat when they buy their groceries.

Cultivated Proteins 

Egg whites without chickens, fish without the fins, and meat without the animal are all examples of cultivated protein. Instead of being raised on a farm or in the sea, scientists take cells directly from an animal, or bird, or fish, and grow the cells in a lab bioreactor. It is a complicated and safe technology that puts together the animal cells, mixes it with the right speed, and then adds in aeration and various nutrients. These added nutrients are expensive and there are many: glucose, 20 essential and non-essential amino acids, fatty acids, phosphate, trace minerals, and various vitamins, hormones, and other growth factors.

Some of the benefits touted for these proteins are that there are no pesticides, antibiotics, or any ingredients associated with feeding animals. The knowledge and technology are prolific at various companies and university labs all around the world.  Although it could take quite a few years to scale up enough cells to feed 10 billion people eight ounces of protein each day for the same cost as animal-based meat.

Despite its challenges, Singapore’s FDA equivalent was the first regulatory agency to approve cultured meat grown by Esco Aster in partnership with Eat Just.

Fermented Proteins

In this case, it is milk without the cow, or fermenting mushrooms to make dairy, meat, protein powder, and food ingredients, or turning sugars from grain into burgers, chicken, noodles, and snacks. Fermented protein technology is difficult, but the concept is as old as the the creation of beer, wine, sauerkraut, and yogurt.

In ancient times, fermentation used microbes in food, and still uses that same method today. And to make protein alternatives it ferments a variety of live microorganisms to make anything that can be made from an animal, plant, bird, or fish.

What does the future hold?

Each year the technology gets stranger and more real. According to Pitchbook, since 2010, alternative protein start-ups have raised $11 billion, with $8 billion of that raised in just the past two years.

By 2035, Boston Consulting, and other firms, predict that there will be $290 billion invested. That is more, as of this writing, of the market cap of two large protein companies: Tyson and JBS combined. However, these proteins make up less than 1% of the total protein we consume. According to Statista Consumer Market Outlook, the average U.S. per capita consumption was about 0.6 pounds a year, projected to go to 1.7 pounds a year by 2035.

Governments and NGOs are embracing it with investments. The Good Food Institute, a nonprofit is ‘reimagining meat production which is building a world where alternative proteins are the default choice.” In addition, the USDA gave $10 million to Tufts University to develop cultivated meat. The USDA has also given $2.7 million for five alternative protein projects. The National Science Foundation gave $3.5 million to UCLA for their cultivated meat program. The Netherlands announced $65 million for cultivated meat and precision fermentation. Given that Mark Post, one of the originators of cell-based meat is in the Netherlands, this is no surprise.

Another hairy audacious goal

Getting rid of animals entirely? It is one thing to have the technology, it is another thing to change consumer behavior. It will be challenging to ask billions of people to fundamentally change their dietary patterns and habits that consumers know and enjoy. Will alternative protein burgers and steaks still sizzle on the grill for the summer barbeques?

Alternative meat companies – and the financial supporters – are enthusiastically promoting new meat technologies. Patrick Brown of Impossible Foods has said that their mission is to replace the use of animals as food by 2035. ReThink, a think tank, also predicts the demise of the farm animal. Their premise is that by 2030, precision fermentation and production called ‘food as software’ will supersede the animal production system of today.

So what does the consumer say?

We turned to Mintel, a consumer research company for the answer. In Europe, the U.K. and the U.S., many have incorporated plant-based meat into their diet but they still eat animal and bird based protein. For those who choose alternative proteins, they eat according to their values.

The environmental and personal health concerns bring consumers closer to the lab. According to YouGov surveys, 48% of consumers eat meatless meat about once a month and do so because they think it is healthier for them and better for the environment.

According to Mintel, consumers are worried about sustainability and 70% of US consumers agree that food/drink companies/brands can be leaders in protecting the environment.

In addition, Mintel continues to stress that consumers need to feel that they get value for their protein. As inflation rises, alternative protein has to beat animal protein on the price. For instance, Alpha Foods is promoting their plant based Chik’n Nuggets as less expensive than regular chicken to draw people to their category.

But having said all that, 52% of Americans have never tried it.

How does this scale?

This won’t be a simple light switch change as technologies, infrastructure, and supplies must match current production. To create proteins from air, or chickens that don’t live in a hen house, or meat made in a fermentation tank will take years to scale.

Mintel analysts went on to stress the importance of innovation: “meat alternatives will be challenged to deliver not only on health, taste, and price but also attract consumers with hyper-convenient offerings beyond burgers and sausages.” Fermentation technology, and eventually cellular agriculture, will be important solutions to addressing meat alternatives’ taste and texture challenges and meeting the protein needs of the growing global population.

The size of the global protein business is massive. In 2018, the world ate 69 billion chickens and turkeys, and 304 million cattle and pigs. As consumers around the world increase their income they naturally eat more protein. In 2020, that was about 467 million metric tons of animal protein. That would be about 93 pounds per human on earth. In the United States, we have held steady for the past three years eating about 225 pounds of protein per person, per year. That is a lot of protein!

What does the future hold? Both!

Today’s consumers, regardless of their age, are not ‘either/or’ on their protein. Consumers are still excited to eat animal protein as well as look forward to including plant or alternative proteins in their diets. Initial innovation and acceptance will mostly be in Asia-Pacific. This is no surprise due to their high population growth and need for food security.

Will the animals that feed us today become obsolete in eight to 13 years? Probably not. But will technology keep improving and the ability to scale become easier? It is in the human DNA to keep improving and striving forward. We have come a long way from cooking brontosaurus burgers over the fire.

The United States arrests two foreign nationals months after largest cyberattack on American infrastructure.…

The U.S. Department of Justice announced this week it arrested two men, one a 22-year-old Ukrainian national, the other a 28-year-old Russian national, for their role in the cyberattacks in June that disrupted businesses and government entities in the United States. The DOJ says it also seized more than $6 million in ransom traced back to the hackers.

The arrests come on the heels of two new cyberattacks on agriculture. In September, the cyberhackers hit farm cooperatives in the Midwest, Iowa-based NEW Cooperative and Crystal Valley in Minnesota. Both entities were attacked by what experts believe is the same group that launched the ransomware attack against JBS SA, the nation’s largest meat processor, in June. This comes less than six months after President Biden said he told Russian President Vladimir Putin 16 categories of business, industry, and critical infrastructure in the United States are  “off-limits” to Russian hackers.

Food & Ag in the Crosshairs

At the summit with Putin, President Biden did not reveal what the 16 categories were, but experts believe they are likely the same ones designated as “critical” by the Department of Homeland Security, as shown below.

That’s why alarm bells went off when, after Biden’s warning, the hacker group, known as “BlackMatter”, hit NEW Cooperative for $5.9 million and Crystal Valley for an undisclosed amount? American news outlets report the Russian group posted that they didn’t think NEW Cooperative had enough volume to be a critical company.

New Cooperative disagreed about their volume, telling Modern Farmer the company “provides software to 40 percent of American grain production, as well as feed scheduling for millions of livestock animals.”

The arrests could signal to cyberhackers that future attacks won’t be tolerated.A hit on any part of the food and agricultural sector can not only harm our ability to feed ourselves but to our economy as a whole. The American food and agricultural system accounts for approximately 20% of our nation’s economy. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) reports food and ag consist of over 2 million farms, almost 1 million restaurants, and more than 200,000 “registered food manufacturing, processing, and storage facilities.”

Many people first heard of cyberattacks, ransomware, and anonymous Russian hackers hitting America’s critical infrastructure when the hackers’ work generated major headlines this past June. But this type of technology terrorism has been around for a while. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has been keeping a detailed timeline of cyberattacks. CSIS says crimes of this nature have been happening since 2006. They only track cyber hacks that hit world governments, defense, high-tech companies, or other economic crimes that cause loss of more than 1 million dollars. That certainly includes the recent attacks on the co-ops as well as the attack this June on JBS SA, the world’s largest seller of meat.

Targeting the Big Players

The Wall Street Journal reports JBS SA paid the hackers $11 million dollars in bitcoin to stop the attack and prevent further damage not only to their company, but to their clients as well. “It was very painful to pay the criminals, but we did the right thing for our customers,” JBS CEO Andre Nogueira told the Journal. In a statement the company released to the press, Nogueira added, “we felt this decision had to be made to prevent any potential risk for our customers.”

Security experts estimate that JBS SA was one of 800-1,500 businesses to be hit by cyberattacks this summer. The hackers also targeted the Keystone pipeline and other government infrastructures. CNBC reports in 2020 that these attacks cost companies $350 million in cryptocurrency, a more than 300% jump from the year prior.

Breakdown of a Cyberattack

Here’s how the cyberattacks work: hackers, mostly from Russia, break into a company’s technological infrastructure using sophisticated software and take their data hostage. The hackers then threaten to cause disruptions, release private information, or delete it unless a ransom is paid (hence the name “ransomware”). These attacks are different from physical attacks on infrastructure in that it is the threat of damage, not the damage itself, that gets companies and governments to react.

Few Americans had ever heard of JBS SA, NEW Cooperative, or Crystal Valley before this year or likely understood how high-tech and sophisticated farming has become. In America, there can be a nostalgic view of farming. Farming has come a long way from the horse and plow. Farmers have tractors working off of GPS, sophisticated technology that enables them to manage their crop inputs, and access to markets to assess the futures market at harvest time. That means our ability to keep grocery store shelves filled with affordable food could be more impacted by technological disruptions than extreme weather events.

Bringing in the Experts

Cybersecurity experts, such as Susan Duncan (right), predict this is just the beginning of ransomware attacks on our nation’s critical infrastructure, with food and agriculture being a high-value target for hackers.

Susan Duncan is the Associate Director for the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station and Director of the Center for Advanced Innovation in Agriculture at Virginia Tech. Her work is focused on technology and innovations developed and used in agriculture, food, and nutrition.

D2D interviewed Duncan to understand how the food supply chain is recovering from this summer’s ransomware attacks, how vulnerable agricultural technology is, and what’s being done to limit disruptions from hackers.

D2D: Did the ransomware attack carried out in June against JBS surprise you?

Susan: I wouldn’t say [the ransomware attacks] surprised me in the sense that all of us are vulnerable. Also, it wasn’t the first one that happened. Over the past several years, other agriculture and food companies have had ransomware attacks. They just didn’t receive as much publicity, and the general public was less aware of them.

D2D: Now that the average consumer is more aware of the threat, how should we understand the role technology plays in the food we find in the grocery store?

Susan: You are asking about the connection of technology with our food supply, grocery stores, and the restaurants where we typically find our food. Of course, we all recognize that apples come from orchards, bread from wheat, and the meat cuts in the refrigerated unit at the supermarket came from an animal, but what you might not recognize is that we have the technology behind all of that. Those products likely had some form of technology used on the farm, such as drones, robots, sensors, computers on tractors, computer-controlled irrigation systems, and guided technology for managing animal feeding.

These technologies on the farm level generate data, which can be analyzed and translated into information to alert farmers or help them make decisions about how to manage their farm, protect the environment, and protect their crops and animals from extreme weather events like frost or drought. [It can also tell farmers] when to harvest and sell their crops or animals, so the quality and productivity is the highest. They are using technology to watch for weeds and pests growing in their field crops.

D2D: How vulnerable are these technologies? How secure are the systems?

Susan: Great question. We think incorporating agricultural technologies is safe and needed, but some changes are happening that introduce risks that we haven’t previously thought about or focused on. The connectivity of technology, the increased opportunistic and malicious players that seek access to data and computer-controlled equipment, the lack of awareness for protecting the equipment, computers, and software [all] increase vulnerabilities.

The agriculture and food system is huge, complex, and very diverse. As we saw, major companies, like the meat producer and processor JBS, have vulnerabilities. If you operate a small farm with one computer used to manage your business, store your drone data, analyze your crop data, you may not have sufficient financial resources, personal capacity, and experience to secure your computer. But at the same time, you most likely will not be a target. Cyber thieves are looking for targets with a lot of assets. Farmers should continue to use data and technology – the benefits still far outweigh the risks.

D2D: What questions should the farmer be asking upfront when they purchase technology then?

Susan: If [a farmer] purchased an inexpensive drone, what do you know about the security of the data? If there is backdoor access for control where the data from the drone may be used by a company in other way? How could a cyberattack affect your capacity to manage your business operation? Can you trust the drone data? Is the data corrupted or modified, and how might that influence your decisions for the appropriate management of your crops or animals?

These are all hypothetical questions. We don’t see this happening in the marketplace right now. However, I ask these questions so farmers know to read the fine print on all their technology and make sure they know how their data is being used. Overall, we want farmers to continue to use technology and we believe the benefits outweigh the risk by a significant amount.

Farmers using their technology resources and how to use them is just a smart protection measure. I compare it to wearing a seatbelt while driving. Overall, our risk of a car accident is very low, but we still wear a seatbelt. Well, that’s what we advise farmers to do. Read the fine print, understand how your data is collected, used, and secured. It’s precautionary and wise.

As agriculture is increasingly influenced by computers and becomes more reliant on digital data, we want to address the gaps in awareness and skills that are created. These are the most significant sources of vulnerability.

D2D: There is a need then for more education and awareness for farmers?

Susan: Awareness is important. Knowing the technology vendor and what the small print of the contract says is essential. The data you generate from the tractor, drone, sensor, or other technology may actually be owned by the company, and you don’t own your own farm data. Older systems probably need software upgrades to improve security. You know we all went through that experience with our computers. Haven’t we all experienced the situation when our old computer or smartphone couldn’t use the new software or apps? Old software, with its outdated security and coding systems, may not work on our new computer. It’s best to check on the security and get updated software and security systems on computers.

D2D: What else do farmers and processors need to think about as they deliver their products to market?

Susan: We have to think about how the organization or farm transfers information and knowledge to other entities within the food supply chain. There’s that gap between what you did in your company or what your farm might need versus what the upstream or downstream companies might be introducing.

Are you prepared to accept the risks imposed by the company that you work with if they are not attentive to the security of their technologies and computers? The security of our technology is really dependent on the age of the system. It’s also dependent on the amount of expertise within the company, how much they focus on security, and whether or not they’re willing then to take steps so that they have at least that fundamental baseline security process in place. Because most of the agricultural network comprises small and medium-sized farms and companies, they don’t necessarily have all those resources.

D2D: As farmers become more aware and ask the right questions about their technology, what is being done in the agricultural industry to prevent and protect from cyberattacks?

Susan: Several years ago, a colleague who had worked for years in national security talked with us about cyber biosecurity, which is a developing domain at the intersection of cybersecurity, biosecurity, and cyber-physical systems with applications in the life sciences such as agriculture. That introductory conversation has led to a pretty intensive and expansive engagement for us and at a significant time for our country. This is relevant to securing our production agriculture, biotechnology, and food supply chain and making certain that U.S. consumers and people worldwide do not suffer from a lack of food due to malicious cyber-attacks. Academia, the private sector, and government agencies at the state and federal levels are all working together to ensure our farmers and food can remain safe. It is a continuing effort and not one that has a specific beginning and endpoint. There is also not one solution but a myriad of options from better data management to security to preventing the attacks altogether.

D2D: How safe then is our food supply system?

Susan: Our agricultural food system is extremely safe. It’s not just safer from food borne illnesses, but we are building the technology and public/private infrastructure to address these cyberattacks. Sure, these attacks are scary. But the agricultural community has been through worse, and we’ve always come up with solutions. While bad actors will always be in the world, American farmers are responsive and adaptive, and we are tackling this problem head-on. Farmers and consumers should know there is large community of private and government entities working together to address the vulnerabilities in our food system.

Crusonia Forum Brings Together the Changemakers Driving the Future of Food

“We are here to showcase a new wave of companies that are effectively applying technology to improve, disrupt, and transform agriculture, food and health for the better. We have no idea if a future Amazon is in our midst today, but looking back on it we really had no idea that Amazon would be what it has become.

“In 1996, we just stuck to our belief that the effective, focused and thoughtful application of technology was going to lead to something very big, something very important, and most importantly something better. And we were right.”

With those words, Crusonia executive producer Paul Noglows kicked off Crusonia Forum BKLYN 2021, which brought together the investors, entrepreneurs and thought leaders transforming the global food system.

From the roof of Brooklyn Grange, one of the largest rooftop farming companies in the U.S. with 135,000 square feet of cultivated rooftop space across New York City, Noglows and the iSelect team spent the day discussing food innovations, changing consumer demands, new agtech products and more, with presentations from 15 companies working on solutions in each of these areas and more.

This is all happening because, in the U.S., the cost of treating food-related diseases has begun to exceed the cost of the food itself. We spend about $1.6 trillion a year in the United States on food. We spend between $500 billion and $1 trillion on nutrition-related health care. We’re eating ourselves to death and then trying to medicate ourselves out of it, and it’s not working. Diet-related diseases like diabetes, obesity, heart disease and more are among the leading causes of death every year with no signs of slowing down.

The good news is that consumers are clearly ready for change: 39% are actively trying to incorporate more plant-based food into their diet and 67% are open to changing their eating habits that adversely impact the environment. But transforming the global food system for the better can only be accomplished through increased innovation, education and investment.

As iSelect CEO Carter Williams explained: “The world’s population is going to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, and that’s happening because people are living longer. We’re also seeing billions more people moving into the global middle class, and when that happens they want to eat differently. They want to be healthier. They don’t want to eat carbohydrates all the time any longer, they want protein. But protein production is not terribly efficient — two and a half pounds of protein needs to go into the pig to give you a pound of pig to eat.”

That’s just the beginning of the inefficiencies of today’s food system. Based on healthcare spending for diet-related diseases, buying a hamburger today for $1.70 could turn into a lifetime cost of $1.90 for the impacts of that burger over time. The disconnect there shows up in the debate around “fixing” healthcare.

That will reduce the need for expensive healthcare down the road and create a $3.6 trillion market that is going to be transformed over the next 20 years, as today’s small startups grow into the leaders of a new food system.

Here are some highlights from the forum, as well as the presenting companies offering solutions in the space: 

The Next Investment Arbitrage: Food Is Health

Carter Williams: “We have two food systems in the United States today. The first was the very practical system established after World War II. The goal in those days was global stability and feeding a growing population by producing vast amounts of food cheaply, largely based on corn and soy. The second system is more focused on fresh, nutritious foods but access is limited because it costs so much to produce those products today.

“The notion of the future food system is one that is high yield, tasty and nutritious — so that people will want to eat it — but it has to be able to scale. So the question is: how do you get the price down? Innovation is a fundamental, deflationary force that will drive down those costs and create a system that is better and cheaper, more protein-dense with fewer carbohydrates.”

How Did We Get Here? Food System Evolution

Nancy Roman, President and CEO, Partnership for a Healthier America: “We are in the midst of a dynamic, societal revolution in food that will no doubt bring changes to American life as big as the cotton gin and the steam engine. But, as with every transformation in human history, along with new possibilities come consequences, some intended and some unintended.

“We are aware of the incredible power of food to build or destroy our health. I know that those of you who are together today are coming at this from different angles. Some of you lead food companies, others are investors, but all of us are thinking about the future. I challenge you, wherever you sit, to not go into this next decade of change without asking what you can do to keep the connection between food and health front and center.”

Food is Health: What’s Your Fix?

Robert H. Lustig, M.D., M.S.L., Professor emeritus of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco: “You probably know that Dannon and Unilever underwent a sugar reduction exercise in the last year and they both touted their success at removing 14% of the added sugar from their portfolio. Well, I’m working with an international food conglomerate called KDD, Kuwaiti Danish Dairy, and they sell sugar in various forms. They sell it in yogurt. They sell it in ice cream. They sell it in juice. They sell it in tomato sauce. As part of my work with them, we have convened a scientific panel and we have determined that we are going to be able to get 78% of the added sugar out of their products by next year. 

“And the reason we can do that is because KDD is not on any stock exchange. It’s privately held. That’s the reason. We’re going to serve as a model for the rest of the food industry. Any food company can do this, but you need data science to analyze every single item in the catalog in order to figure out what’s actually in the food. What do we have to fix? Do we have to get rid of cadmium out of the cocoa? Do we have to get rid of rBST? Do we have to get rid of mercury glyphosate? What sugars need to come out?”

Investing in Food Is Health: The View from Wall Street

Brian Holland, Managing Director & Senior Analyst, Cowen: “I think education is the biggest key. An example that comes to mind as far as a segment that has differentiated itself is plant-based beverages because there’s a need state there. Upwards of 80% of consumers in Asia, for instance, are lactose intolerant. So there’s a need state that exists. There’s a value proposition. And that’s ahead of plant-based meat from a merchandising and quality standpoint. Certainly, the plant-based meat space has made tremendous strides to improve the quality in the past decade, but plant-based beverages have been a little bit ahead of that.

“And then again, it goes back to size and scale. Until we get to a point of mainstreaming we can’t think about the consumer treating these products differently or consuming them differently.

“Right now I know these products are cleaner. I know they’re more sustainable. I’m making a decision based off of that myself. When we start to see that happen more broadly is when consumers will start to look at these products as being different from the incumbents.”

Panel on investment opportunities and challenges in Food is Health. Left to right: Carter Williams, CEO, iSelect; Sanjeev Krishnan, Chief Investment Officer, S2G Ventures; Matt Crisp, CEO & Co-founder, Benson Hill; David Lee, President, AppHarvest.

Learn more about Crusonia Forum and register for future events at CrusoniaForum.com.

On the run? LISTEN to our post!

I just got out of the lake this morning after a long swim. It was lovely…blue skies, a bit of early morning breeze, and a loon calling nearby. Afterward, I am always starving, so I dutifully made my post-workout smoothie. As I blended my easy and quick protein powder mixed with milk, hemp hearts, yogurt, avocado, and fruit, I started to think of the new technology on the block – Synthetic Biology.

Moving beyond the lab…

What if my milk and yogurt didn’t come from a cow, an almond, or an oat, but really from fermented yeast? What if the steak I planned to cook for dinner was made from mushroom roots? The same food we know and love, but just made a different way. But make no mistake about the term ‘synthetic’.

The word ‘synthetic’ can make people fear companies are making ‘fake’ food…but that is not what is happening at all. It is really taking food proteins and putting them through the fermentation process. Similar to Kombucha, or the beer we drink on the weekend, fermentation technology has been around for thousands of years. Today, we have just adapted fermentation to the 21st century. Though there are about four different methods of synthetic biology, for the purposes of food, we are mainly talking about the fermentation process.

So how can these innovations be used in food and agriculture to feed the growing population sustainably and nutritionally? Synthetic biology seems to have some of the answers. So much so, that by 2030, it is predicted that most people will have eaten, worn, or used something created by synthetic biology. McKinsey predicts that the annual direct economic potential ranges between $2-4 billion, with around $1 billion of that attributed to material changes in agriculture, aquaculture, and food. Markets and Markets has an even higher prediction; that by 2026, the market will reach $31 billion.

The SynBioBeta report ranks the food and food ingredients industry as the second-highest in the number of investments, behind therapeutics and before life sciences, agriculture, and energy.

Solutions in agriculture range from fully utilizing the soil microbiome to aid in sustainable and increased agricultural production.

And solutions in food are replacing traditional meat, poultry, and seafood with meat created in a lab either by growing cells in a petri dish or fermenting bacteria or yeast.

Some of the companies that create these unique products state they are more sustainable for the environment and can address animal welfare issues.

…and into your fridge

If any of you have eaten the Impossible Burger, then you have experienced food made with synthetic biology. Remember when you took a bite and it was red and juicy, just like a hamburger? This was accomplished by isolating the leghemoglobin protein in the soybean plant that carries oxygen to the root nodules via the protein heme.

In animals, hemoglobin is essential and carries oxygen from the lungs to the cells. That is the part of the hamburger from a cow that ‘bleeds’. Scientists at Impossible Foods make the heme with the leghemoglobin and fermenting it with genetically engineered yeast.

Let’s say you want to make ice cream or cream cheese, but not use milk from a cow. A company called Perfect Day teamed up with agricultural company ADM to create milk proteins without the milk.

Perfect Day orders the necessary milk proteins, whey, and casein from a company with a genetic database that can send you actual genes in the mail. Scientists at Perfect Day combine these proteins in a fermentation tank with a specific synthetically-engineered microflora that ‘supercharges’ the proteins. Then the substance we think of ‘milk’ is created. They even have a non-fat ‘fat’ called Epogee to make the ice cream taste delicious without the calories.

Who would have thought fermenting fungi could create an edible protein? The company Enough also uses fermentation technology to create a meat-like substance, called ABUNDA, by fermenting fungi with sugar feedstocks from grains. This fermented meat substitute has fiber, all nine essential amino acids, vitamin B12, zinc, and iron.

Broadening synthetic applications

Of course, cows produce much more than just meat that we eat. At least 47% of the cow is used for leather, garden fertilizer, jet engine lubricants, tallow…the list is endless. Much of these synthetic materials replace the traditional cow hide, alligator skin, or spider silk. In one case, even jet engine lubricants.

The leather coat you wear, or the belt, even the shoes, all come from an animal – most likely cattle. Modern Meadow, however, is replacing animal-based leather with biofabrication using bio-engineered proteins and fermentation. They grow their protein cells with a yeast culture into collagen which, in turn, goes into making various materials (check out their very interesting process here).

A backpack out of mushrooms? Ecovative Design grows material using the familiar button mushrooms. By fermenting the mycelium – the root structure of the mushroom – they can turn proteins such as cellulose, lignin, collagen, or non-spider silk into strong, soft silk, leather, or even whole-cut meats.

The interesting phrase here is ‘whole-cut meats’. Normally, cell-based meats (those made in a lab) or plant-based meats lack the ‘scaffolding’ to hold it all together. That is why most of the alternative meats are made into a ‘hamburger’. But these fermented mushrooms from Evocative Design can grow into a structure that can help create a steak or a specific cut of meat.

Working in conjunction with Bolt Threads, the British fashion designer Stella McCarthy created a ‘leather’ purse out of the mycelium. Bolt Threads has created manmade spider silk ‘stronger than steel and softer than a cloud.’

Synthetic biology can now supercharge your vegetables, too. For instance, we all know that broccoli is good for us. Today, that saying has never had more meaning. Scientists in Singapore used synthetic biology to restructure a common and benign form of E. coli, Nissle, that is found in our gut. They engineered the bacteria into a probiotic that attaches to the cell of a cancerous tumor in the colon. These bacteria then secreted an enzyme – found in broccoli – into the cell. This concoction became an anti-cancer agent killing up to 75% of tumors in mice. In the future, this could be used as colon cancer prevention or a way to ‘mop up’ cancer cells after surgery, something just plain old broccoli can’t do.

Unfolding and reconstructing DNA

We have come a long way from Gregor Mendel when he began experimenting with crossbreeding pea plants in 1865.

DNA is the blueprint for every single organism. Synthetic biology can rearrange DNA to make whatever material or organism we want. This may sound confusing but let’s start with the basics.

We are familiar with computer coding using a combination of 0s and 1s. It always amazes me what you can do with just two numbers. Well, take four chemical building blocks identified primarily as their letters: A, C, T, G.

These chemical building blocks, called DNA, come together to form genes that instruct our cells to function how we want.

Our genes give us the color of our eyes, our height, and all the genetic codes that make us human. Remember Legos? You could build whatever was in your imagination: an airplane, a motorcycle, a spaceship, the list was endless. Think of the four letters in DNA as four different colored and shaped Lego pieces. Synthetic biology allows us to recreate the DNA in our food and other materials, essentially making our own Lego designs with whichever instructions we choose.

Mail-order genes?

What makes this easy – relatively – are companies that specialize in synthesizing and selling genes. They have what is called a genetic library. We used to go to a library to check out books. Now we look online to find the gene we want and get it delivered to our lab or office.  Twist Biosciences “gives you the flexibility to get the DNA you want, the way you want it. Think bigger, expand your design scope, and accelerate discovery”.

Illumina is sequencing the genes of all living organisms.

If someone is designing and building new products, Illumina provides the infrastructure to figure out the genetic pattern of the A, T, C, & Gs. Like the Legos, you need to make a structure so Illumina will tell you which genes you need.

A company like Ginko Bioworks will restructure the ‘Legos’, or genes, into what you want. But you can’t make the Lego airplane without knowing which pieces you need.

A company doesn’t need to have the technical skills to be a gene sequencer or a protein builder to make milk or meat – they only need certain starter feedstocks, usually sugars that come from grains. Then it goes through the fermentation process to make the desired proteins. For instance, if a company is an expert in fermentation, then they can order the genes they need from a company like Ginkgo Bioworks to make any kind of meat, milk, fabric, or building material.

The world needs protein!

Synthetic biology can synthesize parts of DNA to make plants more resilient to disease, have greater nutrition, and be resistant to climate change.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most well-funded companies in the synthetic biology space are all focused on feeding people. A high-protein diet is more than a new eating craze — it’s essential to our health. Protein is essential not just after we run, jump, swim, or left weights.  It is the basic building block of life that “keeps the lights on” in our bodies.

Our growing world needs to fuel itself with protein. As COVID-19 continues to rage, it’s more important than ever that humans produce and consume enough protein to boost their immune system, heal from illness and injury, and move and store nutrients throughout the blood.

That is probably why the amount of protein consumed by the world is such a staggering number. The world eats about 467 million metric tons of protein a year. If you put all that meat in rail cars, how long is that train? It would go around the Earth’s equator almost two times.

And by 2035, those 532 million metric tonnes of protein will go around over two times, which is essentially adding a train of railcars going from coast to coast 2.5 times across the United States. The world needs to grow a lot of protein!

Precision fermentation won’t replace all protein, but it will certainly help fill up the rail cars. While we just focused on protein, the market has significantly more potential via the broader technology of synthetic biology.

There is a race between Europe, China, and the U.S. to have the most competitive technology and capture the most of the potential $31 billion in global revenue. That competition will spur excellence, innovation, and an expediated timeline.

This means sooner, rather than later, we may soon have our broccoli spears fighting cancer and grown in a lab down the road.

On the run? LISTEN to our post!

I love a good piece of beef. Maybe a steak on special occasions, or just a hamburger off the grill in the backyard. But I’ve also been known to chow down energetically on Mom’s Sunday pork roast, and I still say her fried chicken is the undisputed Food of the Gods. There are probably a few dried-out, half-gnawed chicken nuggets under the driver’s seat in my car, too.

Yup, I’m a carnivore. 

I’m also intelligent enough to see the merit in all the hoopla about meat and its role in health and the environment. I’m not what most folks would call a ‘woke’ kind of guy, but I’m not exactly ‘sleepy,’ either. I understand the importance of making smart choices about the proteins in my daily diet for my own good and that of the planet. I accept that moving forward, plant-based proteins – and plants in general – are likely to play a much larger role in the choices I make about what I eat. I find myself asking a lot more questions about the proteins I consume and where they should come from. I have choices to make.

Right off, I could choose to stop eating meat altogether. Ain’t gonna happen. 

It’s a personal choice. I like meat. It tastes good and gives me a happy, warm feeling and a sense of after-dinner contentment. It provides essential amino acids, some very difficult to find in plants, and satisfies many other nutritional needs.

What’s more, I still struggle with the idea of where all this will end. The beef industry obviously is in the cross-hairs of a lot of people, and it’s already having an effect when profit-minded retailers and restaurants make marketing hay out of a very public decision to no longer sell or promote beef products. Pigs and chickens require water and feed and create environmental issues, too. Maybe not as much as cows, but there are a helluva lot more of them than there are cows on the planet.

Do we simply accept the logic of the argument and say animal protein’s day on the consumer’s plate is over?

To me, all of life has an environmental cost of some sort, animal and human alike. Our day-to-day lives are not perfectly aligned with the environment. For instance, most of us discard our mattresses after a couple of years – and doing so makes up 450 million pounds of waste a year. Since the beginning of Covid, we are all now addicted to hand-sanitizing gel that degrades slowly and accounts for 60% of all drugs in sewage and wastewater.

The question is the value created, measured against the price we pay. I’m happy to listen to all arguments and sides on the issue. I’ll consider your case. But I reserve the right to make my own choice – to find my own balance point in the debate. But my second option is much tougher…

Do I increase the non-animal portion of my caloric consumption? 

I can make vegetable-based and laboratory-produced protein products part of my personal menu. I’ve tried lab-grown meat products, as well as some produced solely from plants, all in the name of intellectual curiosity and discovery. Some of them were okay. I might eat more of them from time to time. But I just couldn’t shake the sense that I was eating something artificial, something more lab-based than nature-based. 

The smart side of my brain says this is most likely the best course for me moving forward. But I still have a few mental hurdles to get over before I go all-in on this option. Remember, I still have nightmares from time to time about the movie Soylent Green, and whoever came up with the damning label “Frankenfood” is a stone-cold marketing genius for the anti-meat, anti-GMO, and anti-science crowds. Enough said about the psychology of the fear of food.

I didn’t blink at all when I read about the report at the elite World Economic Forum in Davos that cited weeds as a potentially significant source of food for a hungry world. I’d already seen promotions from various back-to-the-earth groups (and maybe a few survivalists) making the same point, some offering actually to sell me weed seeds, presumably, so I could get a head start on the trend and avoid having to scrounge on my own along roadsides, in ditches, and almost everywhere in my neighbor’s lawn.

I couldn’t help but think about all those hours I spent as a kid destroying this invaluable food source when my parents made me pull weeds from our backyard garden for hours on end, either to build my character or punish some filial sin or probably both. 

Maybe I think even bigger and go all European in my approach.

The European Union’s food regulatory agency recently issued approval to the use of mealworms in animal feed – and as a human food. Other parts of the world embraced insects as food long ago. Nothing says “oh, yum!” to me more than a heaping plate of grubs, maybe with a side of worms and a nice side salad of dandelions and other home-grown weeds.

In our childhood – age 14, actually – my younger brother once ate three worms on a dare, and we all know how that turned out. He still can’t do eights and nines in the multiplication tables. 

Going European also would make it easier to leap to the next level of protein management.

Why not just man up and go vegetarian or vegan?

Put aside a Pavlovian liking for meat that goes back to the Eisenhower Administration. What kind of plant-centric diet should I follow?

Start with the basics. Vegetarians consume some animal-derived food products, such as milk and eggs, and vegans don’t. But I’m not exactly au courant on the ins and outs of vegan eating, so let me do a quick search in cyberspace and see if that offers any helpful guidance.

Right out of the Google gate, there’s what’s called the Whole Food Vegan Diet. This diet allows me to eat fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. The Raw Vegan Diet also seems to involve no animal products – I suppose meaning fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, and so on, only not cooked. Except for some foods that are allowed to be cooked to 104 degrees, for some reason. One set of Raw Vegan devotees apparently follow the diet up till 4 p.m. every day. After that, I suppose, anything goes.

A so-called Gluten-Free Vegan Diet just adds gluten to the list of what not to eat. Next, my search engine gives me the Fruitarian Vegan Diet, in which I’m supposed to avoid plants and eat only fruits, nuts, and seeds. Except some Fruitarians also prohibit the consumption of seeds since they contain future plants. 

The Paleo Vegan Diet restricts me to the pure and unprocessed foods consumed by my Paleolithic ancestors. That would let me eat lots and lots of fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, seeds, and nuts, but no grains or legumes, since they weren’t around as food options for the Stone Age connoisseur. 

And a Freegan Diet permits consumption of processed vegan foods, including mock meats and vegan ice cream, whatever the hell that is.  

Try as I might, I suspect my efforts at plant-centric eating would leave me underfed, undernourished, and underwhelmed. 

Maybe I just avoid the whole subject with others…

…my friends, relatives, coworkers, church members, LinkedIn communities, Instagram and Twitter followers, neighbors, extended warranty salespeople, therapists, and anyone else I ever meet. If trapped into some comment on the subject, lapse into the double-talk and non-sequiturs I sometimes use to convey senility, or if absolutely necessary say all the politically correct things needed to get me out of the immediate pickle.  

I then retreat to my basement or my garage or my two-man tent in the backyard or my sofa-cushion fort in the rec room, where I surreptitiously chow down like the hungry dog I am on year-old frozen meatloaf, Slim Jims, Vienna sausages, Spam, BBQ chicken wings, and any other meat product I can hoard.

I join the growing legions of the Meat Underground, secure in my knowledge of the secret handshakes and high fives its members use to connect with like-minded but guilt-ridden meat junkies. There’s no 12-step program for us, so we just have to do the best we can, one day at a time.  

Maybe I just stop eating altogether.

My health plan is pretty good, so maybe I could simply opt for regular intravenous feedings of essential nutrients. That sounds like a pretty efficient, Spockian way to deal with the matter. 

I can’t face the final years of my life as a social pariah because I made the wrong choice about what kind of protein I consume. And it sure seems right now that any choice I make – short of not eating at all – is going to be morally offensive, irresponsible, perhaps sinful, environmentally callous, unscientific, irrational, politically charged, or just flat-out wrong to all the experts so eager to guide me to the truth on questions of food, nutrition, the environment, social responsibility, humanism, science, and morality.  

I just don’t know what to do. Other than, of course, grilling a hamburger while I ponder the matter further. And maybe a nice cold beer would help, too.

Let me get back to you on this one. 

On the run? LISTEN to our post!

The best part of the conversation with my friend was her honesty. “Lucy when I think of how we get our meat, I think of Yellowstone, the TV series. It’s Kevin Costner and a bunch of hot cowboys rounding up cattle under a gorgeous setting, herding the cows into a warehouse where they come out the other side as my Bubba burgers. So I’m pretty unaware of how technology plays into this”.

After we got done laughing, I realized that was a fair point. After all, the food supply chain is not visible to most and the technology used in ag is not something people think about on a regular basis.

I assured my friend the cyberattack did not make our food unsafe and that there wouldn’t be any shortages. I told her I would use this week’s blog post to explain the entire cattle-to-meat process, the role technology plays, and what the ransomware attacks did. And, I even promised to sneak in a photo of those hot cowboys from Yellowstone.

What Happened to JBS?

Let’s start with the basics. Brazilian-based JBS, the largest meat supplier in the world experienced a ransomware attack. The FBI believes that REvil, one of the most advanced Russian cybercriminals in the world, hacked into JBS computer systems and either encrypted its files or shut its system down in all U.S. beef plants, as well as its meatpacking facilities around the world.

In return, the hackers wanted money; JBS ended up paying them $11 million in ransom. The payment was in bitcoin.

In the past, criminals kidnapped people in exchange for money. Today, it seems that kidnapping computer systems in return for U.S. dollars or cryptocurrency is a more lucrative business.

What Does Technology have to do with Cattle?

Think of processing cattle like an auto assembly line, but in reverse. When a car is made, 30,000 parts must be assembled before it gets shipped to the auto dealership. Cattle, on the other hand, get taken apart into over 1,000 SKUs. We eat about 63% of the animal and the rest goes into just about every other industry imaginable. Most people don’t think of cattle when imagining the ingredients used in medicine, pharmaceuticals, soaps, fine bone china, leather, and even asphalt.

It’s Very Complicated

In the United States alone, more than 100,000 cattle are processed six days a week. JBS produces between 20%-25% of global volume — further evidence of South America’s rapid growth in livestock production. The technology involved to create the assembly line of 1,000 SKUs is intricate and complicated.

First, the cattle need to be trucked from the grasslands or the feedlot to the processing plant. An inventory management system is needed to purchase the cattle. As they are waiting outside, they are individually tagged and identified. Each animal has its own identification code that follows the various body parts at every stage. For instance, a particular code is associated with the ground beef you buy at Walmart and the steak at Kroger’s. And the tongue that is sent to Japan. And the liver that winds up in Egypt.

After the hide is stripped off the animal, the carcass goes into a washing station. Think of a car wash. It gets cleaned and the goal is to remove and kill all pathogens. Computer settings control the amount of water, spray, and heat. After the wash, USDA employees use computer-driven scanners at each processing plant which inspect for pathogens, grades each carcass and make sure the facility meets strict HACCP requirements.

Technology is critical to managing the 2,000-plus employees in the facility. Each employee in these meat-processing plants stands next to a large, precise, and sophisticated assembly line. The line keeps moving so each worker has to keep pace by cutting their specific parts such as the tenderloin, ribs, and strip loin, etc. The technology tells the plant manager how many workers are present, how productive they are, and if there is any wasted meat.

Quiet on the Set

As in Yellowstone, the typical meat plant is much like a movie studio, with hundreds of people all doing different jobs to create the final product, a polished cinematic gem. Everybody has a part to play and a carefully crafted script to follow, and that script is run by technology.

If the lights are wrong or the sound isn’t perfect, or the sets or costumes aren’t completed or the actor flubs a line, the whole process grinds to a halt. Cattle processing demands the same coordinated ballet.

Plant managers depend on computers for that coordination and control – to pull dozens if not hundreds of actions altogether, effectively, and efficiently.

After this incredible coordination of processing the animal –where does all the beef and the over 1,000 different SKUs go? Managing and sending all those parts is definitely not executed with an Excel spreadsheet and a fax machine. Complex automated inventory management systems send each item boxed and shipped around the country and throughout the world. In the average meat facility, about 5,000 animals go through the system every day.

And each animal produces about eight boxes of beef which must be invoiced and sent to the right locations. While there are giant coolers that hold about 100,000 boxes of beef, the product can’t sit there for more than 24 hours. Every day, about 60 trucks come to the facility to pick up the 40,000 boxes that must be trucked out to their customers.

Every step from the ranch and/or feedlot through the processing plant to the grocery store or restaurant is handled with a complex data management system. When that breaks down as it did in the case of the JBS hacking, it halts the entire beef production – from steaks to animal feed. This time the hackers picked an exceptionally good time to infiltrate JBS’s system.

For the next three months, beginning on Memorial Day, meat consumption is at an all-time high, and the number of cattle that get processed each week increases by about 10%-15% to meet the needs of worldwide grilling, barbecues, and overall summer fun. It is very encouraging to see how quickly JBS was able to respond and get its systems up and running.

Keep Calm and Carry On

According to NPR, REvil has indicated that the agricultural industry will be a target. So far, Mondelez, Molson Coors, Campari, Arizona Beverages, MGP Ingredients, Wendy’s, Huddle House, Caribou Coffee, Dunkin’, and Sonic have all had cybersecurity incidents within the past few years.

It looks like this is just something corporate America has to live with. Given that these were not as well-publicized as the JBS attack, we can assume that this will be an ongoing issue where the company will handle it and keep its business operational. It is a matter of who has the better technology.

On the run? LISTEN to our post!

Grocery delivery has boomed since COVID hit. Gone are the days of waving at the milkman from the kitchen window as he dropped your glass milk containers off for the week. Recent innovations will soon allow online supermarkets to bring food to your door in a sophisticated, temperature-controlled, bacteria-killing environment. How will they maintain perfectly chilled meat, produce, dairy, and other perishables?

The New “Big Box”

Walmart offers an option: together with HomeValet, they are testing temperature-controlled smart boxes that can be stationed outside your home so your groceries are delivered contact-free at any time of day, even without having to be home. According to HomeValet, the UV-C LED disinfection method creates “an inhospitable environment to microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, molds, and other pathogens.”

To the right: the smart box technology uses a UV-C light inside the box, where items are sanitized before removal to ensure cleanliness before you bring them inside.

Like HomeValet, many grocery retailers are experimenting with different ways to meet growing consumer demands, like providing online ordering, mobile apps, and QR (Quick Response) codes that let consumers pick up goods curbside, drive-through, via same or next-day home delivery, or even in secure lockers at convenient locations. While these options are exciting to see and are a welcomed change in efficiency and safety, they have significant implications for the greater supply chain.

Supply Chain Disruption Demands Flexibility

Here’s some context: shifts brought on by COVID-19 have put tremendous pressure on (and new opportunities for) our food supply chains. According to a customer research study, 54% of consumers bought fresh food online this past year, and 70% of shoppers intend to continue online grocery shopping for the foreseeable future.

What’s more, over 100,000 restaurants and bars in the US have closed permanently due to COVID, according to the National Restaurant Association. Fewer restaurants, lower bar-food demand, rising demand at the grocery store, and new delivery options create a market where grocery supply chains must be more flexible than ever.

Flexibility needs to come in many shapes and sizes: personal shoppers must know how to pick out the perfect tomato, shipping and packing technologies should be designed to handle last-minute shifts in distribution networks, and inventory planners need to keep track of what will be stocked in-store and what can ship directly to consumers. It is surmised that this need for elasticity will remain a critical component of a successful supply chain, even long after Covid has gone away.

E-grocery businesses can only be effective if automation at the warehouse and distribution centers have the capability to shift from a business-to-business channel to a direct-to-consumer model. With 80% of consumers having grocery-shopped online since the start of Covid, being able to shift from one channel to another is critical. Significant automation is needed for delivery as well. With over 40% of essential items now being ordered online (think toilet paper), the delivery portion of supply chains has to accommodate larger volumes, as well as extra hours for cleaning and sanitizing.

A Look at Several Solutions

Now picture yourself picking up your favorite soup, and it’s the last one on the shelf. Behind you comes a little self-driving robot, scanning labels on shelves, checking stock levels, and alerting employees of low inventory. That is exactly what Simbe Robotics has developed. Schnucks Markets in the Midwest is one of the first to use the technology.

Meantime, Broad Branch Market — in partnership with Starship Technologies — has integrated their automation system with six-wheeled self-driving robots that have sensors aiding delivery to customers.

Almost 2,000 Walmart stores use Brain Corp’s robots to clean and sanitize, opening up employee hours for the workforce to focus on stocking and shipping online grocery orders.

Knock, knock! Who’s there? Robots with your food order!

Some major grocery chains are partnering with inventory management kings to help with grocery shipping and fulfillment. Amazon assists with same-day delivery at Whole Foods and Kroger’s, which are both rapidly expanding their networks to meet rising grocery delivery demands.

Other fulfillment solutions include the expansion of robotic handling. Albertsons Co., for example, has created a series of “micro fulfillment centers” providing a scalable model for rapidly filling thousands of grocery orders daily. These are large warehouses with integrated picking, packing, and shipping robots that provide more efficient work than human workers can offer in-store. The centers store popular items that have historically bottlenecked at a shipping level due to shipping delays. Having this type of inventory in an automated store warehouse has helped to avoid that bottleneck and helped turn the product around to consumers faster.

Thank goodness I can find my two-ply and burger meat in-store anytime now!

Narrowing the Transit Window

For the first time, in 2019, a self-driving truck delivered goods from Cupertino, CA to Quakertown, PA, almost 3,000 miles away. Plus.ai, based in California, has developed this truck to help out when there’s a shortage of drivers and provide a touchless option.

Much like the fulfillment challenges, narrowing the time to get products from the processor to the warehouse to the distribution center to the grocery to the consumer has created logistics strains. With next-day air shipping raising expectations for greater speed and “panic buying” necessitating a need for quick processor-to-retailer turnaround to keep shelves stocked, the previously ‘easy’ delivery planning is a thing of the past. Having speed-to-shelf also depends greatly on having inventory in the right locations, and having those locations align with available trucking capacity.

The ground-based transportation industry, which moves goods from processor to retailer to consumer, is under unique stress. They are dealing with staffing challenges due to nationwide emergency drivers needed elsewhere, drivers leaving the industry for higher-paying jobs with better benefits, and drivers making important decisions about pausing their employment to preserve their health amid Covid concerns. Trucking connects all links in the food chain.

Agility with Inventory

The key to addressing each link in the chain is to have end-to-end inventory visibility. This allows the entire supply chain to react quickly to demand without chain-wide disruption. A major component to this is labor flows and resource allocation—or identifying how to be most efficient. This will allow for our food orders to reach us faster and increase our likelihood of reordering. One way grocers are doing this is by cutting their product offerings. Because consumer brand loyalty has all but gone out the window with COVID — with over 75% of consumers having changed brands during the pandemic due to convenience, or availability — consumers are now just taking what they can get as grocers are implementing a more streamlined product offering.

According to a report cited by Food Dive, “the average number of product offerings in grocery stores declined 7.3% during the four weeks ended June 13 … The drop came across a range of product categories, with frozen down 8.5%, deli slipping 7.7%, meat posting a decline of 7.1%, and dairy falling 6.6%.” For example, some grocery stores now offer only four choices of toilet paper, where prior to COVID they carried about 40 varieties.

By trimming away less profitable products that may be more complicated to produce and/or ship, factories and distribution networks can cut down on labor and time. Room on grocery store shelves is then opened up to products and inventory that is more reliable and can quickly meet consumer demand. A good example of this comes from PepsiCo, which decided to stop producing one-fifth of its products during COVID for efficiency reasons and will maintain a 5% reduction in its Frito-Lay snack division.

On the run? LISTEN to our post!

I have been working in the agriculture industry for a long time. Over 30 years to be exact. But it wasn’t until I entered the highly-perishable fresh produce sector a decade ago that I gathered a true appreciation for how complicated – and how powerful – a transparent supply chain can be.

For many deep-rooted and emotional reasons, consumers have a close relationship with their fresh produce, scanning the produce aisle high and low for just the right piece of fruit to take home. And if at a farmer’s market, they’ll often quiz the farmer on how the product was grown, what crop protection products were used, and when was it picked. Arguably, the consumer’s relationship with fruits and vegetables is the most complicated one in the supermarket.

Different Views on Produce

When I speak to consumers about transparency, they reflect with varied responses. Some will say they want to get to know the specific grower that produced the beans or apples. What type of land was the crop raised on? What chemicals were sprayed, if any? What similar products can I purchase from that particular farmer?

When I speak with growers, transparency means building deeper loyalty with retailers and the consumers they serve (with hopes the loyalty is returned). But equally important, it’s a way to keep track of the product in case of food safety inquiries and also ensuring the quality of food arriving at its final destination — a nudge for growers to improve transparency.

A Push for Transparency: Savings & Security

Like with most technologies, there must be a benefit for increased transparency to become more ubiquitous. The most tangible benefit is financial, of course. That could come in the form of cost savings by eliminating a portion of the supply chain, or through increased margin at the checkout stand demanded by a premium label.

At the same time, it could also be an opportunity to protect market share. We’ve all seen the many recalls for romaine lettuce. We’re told of a few brands and bar codes to be aware of, but how do they know? The ability to trace-back a product to a particular warehouse or field is very important for a retailer and the consumer.

In the case of a food safety incident, quick trace-back can mean the difference between a small recall involving one or two growers, or a larger investigation that involves tens of millions of dollars of impacted product. And, if consumers fall ill from the incident, a bruised reputation for the retailer or brand, regardless of the outcome.

A Tool for Telling a Story

According to a 2020 study by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and Label Insight, shoppers have higher expectations for transparency when shopping online compared to in-store. Think back to the early days of COVID-19. According to FMI, online grocery purchases soared to 27% of all grocery spending for the March/April period of this year, compared to 14% in February.

This increase in online sales will undoubtedly drive consumers’ interest in a more transparent system. Why? In the store, you can look and feel the product you are about to purchase. Online, you need something more to tell the complete story of a product – how it was grown, when it was picked, size, and other quality attributes. That’s where transparency fills the gaps.

When you go to a grocery store, what do you want to know about your fruits and veggies? Why would you pick a particular brand of berries over another? Or what is it that you like about a particular store’s produce section? We often look for certain benefits when we purchase a product. It starts with the basics of getting a good product at a fair price. But beyond that, transparency helps the consumer make a purchase.

A Demand from Millennials

The effect of transparency on purchase decisions is even starker among the Millennial generation. According to a Snacking Trends Report, this demographic is increasingly making purchasing decisions based on “the tenets of self, society, and planet”, which feeds into sustainability.

Millennials have a real connection to the betterment of the planet, and brands need to be careful not to miss this. They must embrace the new level of transparency that Millennials have elevated. Just “talking the talk” will no longer cut it.

Farmers Demanding Price Visibility & Insights

Farmer acceptance of transparency technology is growing for multiple reasons. In the case of fresh produce, transparency allows the grower to look for efficiencies in the supply chain. Not only with their operation, but in the part of the chain above and below them.

Going the other direction in the supply chain, a grower may be able to directly access consumer insights on their products and brand. In the past, that information may have been maintained by retailers or distributors that, in turn, passed it along to the grower. The net result of this shift is quicker and better-informed decisions about what to grow.

And more importantly, they can look for particular attributes to provide the highest return from the marketplace. Similar to the consumer, it often comes down to economics: can I increase my revenue or lower my costs through the use of new technology that pulls up the shades somewhere else in the supply chain?

Promising Technologies in the Works

New technology has a way of telling the story of ‘what’s possible’. Here are two promising examples:

Founded in 2013, a Californian company called safetraces developed DNA “barcodes” that can be added to fruits and vegetables via a liquid spray or wax. What’s so special about that? The company takes a small piece of synthetic DNA from organisms not typically found in the produce section – like seaweed – which they mix with trace amounts of sugar and create a sprayable solution. According to the company, the spray is odorless, tasteless, and poses no food safety risk.

If a problem with the product arises, the DNA on the surface can be swabbed and identified within minutes. Placing the DNA barcode directly on fresh produce significantly reduces the potential for traceback information to be lost. Produce boxes, which traditionally carry the tracking information, are discarded long before anyone catches on to a problem.

In a different twist on innovative traceability technology, software company HarvestMark partnered with iFood Decision Sciences to create a solution that allows consumers to not only view each step along the supply chain, but to provide feedback and reward those brands they feel are doing the best job of transparency.

The product information is collected and shared with the consumer on an item-level basis. The consumer has instant feedback linked to the product’s age, origin, and location. This allows the grower to see how a specific product performs on the grocery store shelf and then make short and long-term production decisions.

In addition to the quality and analytical measurements provided to the grower, like temperature control, inventory monitoring, and supplier notifications, this traceability system also provides a mechanism for product recall in case there is a food safety incident.

The real power of the HarvestMark technology comes through the integration of both the consumer and analytical supply-chain feedback. A highly perishable raspberry variety, for example, might have great flavor and visual appeal according to consumer feedback. Through the analytics of the traceability software across the supply chain, the grower can maximize the shelf-life of the raspberries and reduce perishability at the store level. The result is increased income for both the grower and the retailer…and a happy customer who returns for repeat business.

The promise of this technology will be optimized even further using blockchain applications, which enables the industry to share data up and down the supply chain while maintaining the integrity of the data at each source.

In the small-town South where I live, it’s not just expected but almost obligatory that you speak to anyone who passes within 30 feet of you. It doesn’t have to be anything profound – just an acknowledgement of the importance of simple human contact as a civilizing force in our existence.

So I never gave it a second thought when I walked out of my locally-owned and operated food store and strolled past two well-dressed, well-groomed ladies of a certain age, standing between their two late-model SUVs, locked in animated discussion on some topic or another, each with one hand on the other’s arm, as all Southern belles used to be taught is only polite.

“Find something good to eat?” I asked benignly. Not a particularly creative conversational gambit, I admit. But standing outside the premier local source of organic foods, it seemed as safe and appropriate as anything else I could think of.

“Good…and healthy, too,” the one dressed in green chirped, as they both turned to me with the same beatific smiles my mother used to bestow on those who crossed her path.

Then things took a very different turn.

“And not a GMO in any of it,” the other dressed in blue added.

“Oh, you don’t like GMOs?” I decided to play this one carefully.

“Who does,” came the response. “They are the worst things in the world for you, you know.”

“And how did you learn that,” I asked.

“Oh, everyone knows that,” green lady responded with a small chuckle. “It’s all over the internet.”

I asked where on the internet such wisdom could be found, and to my surprise (maybe shock), the pair began reciting a list of websites that they assured me would set me on the path to enlightenment, and probably a lot longer and healthier life.

Now, I’ve been around the discussions and debates over which foods are healthy and which foods aren’t. There’s lots of information about that subject, and opinions will differ. You have to respect other people’s point of view, and the decisions they make about food, and pretty much everything else in life, too.

“So I guess that means you don’t think GMOs have any place in our food system,” I observed as non-judgmentally as possible.  “Are they really that evil?”

“You have no idea how dangerous they are,” the lady in green observed.

“Or how much they have taken over our food supply,” the one in blue added.

“What do you mean?” I asked. It seemed the obvious question to ask as a follow-up.

Green lady jumped at the chance to teach: “Do you like corn?”

“Sure,” I replied. There’s nothing better, especially straight from the garden. (Hey, it’s the South. We all have gardens here.)

“Well did you know that the FDA doesn’t even define corn as a plant anymore,” she informed me authoritatively. “The FDA says it’s a pesticide.”

Wait, a crop is a pesticide? I could no longer hide my surprise. Or my suspicion, I suppose. “How is that possible,” I asked with genuine and profound interest in hearing her answer.

Here’s the answer I was given. Honestly, this is it:

“Our corn supply has all been genetically modified. It’s called ‘RoundUp Ready’ corn. It’s been modified so it produces its own RoundUp as it grows. That means all those chemicals are in the corn – just growing and growing and growing as the corn matures. No one want us to know that. But I’ve read it on some websites. Go to these sites, and you’ll see.”

At this point, my childhood lessons in southern civility kicked in, overpowering my sense of incredulity at what I had just heard. I thanked the ladies for helping me understand more about food. They beamed with satisfaction at having done their good deed for the day, and one of them actually reached out and touched my arm. That’s more of that belief in the power of actual human contact at work.

I knew the odds of having any kind of counter-argument or divergent point of view was probably a lost cause given the array of web-sourced expertise already on display. But I still thought it worthwhile to stir the pot, if only just a little.

“You know, I read a few websites about food, too,” I casually mentioned. “You gave me several to look at.  Maybe you’d like to see some of the stuff I’ve read, too.”

I mentioned a couple website I consider fairly balanced and truly credible on food, like Cornell University’s Alliance for Science, Genetic Literacy Project, The World Health Organization, and a few others that might begin to tell a different story about GMOs and the important role played by genetics in feeding our world. I doubt seriously any of them will succeed in changing the minds of these two fine ladies who crossed my path today.

But I smiled anyway and excused myself with the honest truth that my pick-up pizza was waiting for me. But as I walked to my car, something came over me. I’ve got to at least try.

I turned on my heel and called out to them, both still deep in conversation in the soft late-afternoon sunshine.

“Be sure to look at a website called Dirt to Dinner,” I said. “They write a lot about food, and GMOs. You might like it.” That last part was a stretch, I know, but it seemed the polite thing to say.

“Dirt to Dinner?” the green lady called back. “That’s easy to remember. We all need dirt, don’t we?”

They tittered at the wit of the response. Or maybe it was me they found funny. Doesn’t matter, as long as they remember the site name.

Public opinion –the level of understanding held by the average person – matters in building a sustainable food system. We just can’t afford to accept a common public dialogue on food based on this level of knowledge and opinion. There’s just too much at stake to ask the public – the voter – to help set food policy when perfectly normal people walk the streets thinking RoundUp Ready corn is a pesticide, rather than one of the bedrock crops for a global food system.

My long-suffering spouse listened patiently as a I recounted my parking-lot adventure and brought me a paper bag to breathe into. Just calm down, she advised. If you don’t like what you heard, go tell the story you think needs to be told. If you don’t, who will?

She’s no doubt right.

Long live Dirt to Dinner.

Burger King recently ran into a surprising problem: it ran out of burgers.

Well, not exactly. The restaurant still had plenty of ground beef and other traditional ingredients on hand, but at the end of June, the burger chain was running low on the new, meatless burgers from Beyond Meat that had been added to its menu last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

What’s changing? Consumers.

And Burger King wasn’t alone. Burger chain White Castle, which added Impossible Foods’ meatless burgers last year, reported similar shortages, as did restaurants including TGI Fridays, Del Taco, CKE Restaurant Holdings’ Carl’s Jr., Red Robin, and others.

That’s right, consumer demand for alternative meat products has officially arrived.

In fact, White Castle leadership credited the 4 percentage point increase in same-store sales to its Impossible Sliders. As of this spring, a full 15% of U.S. restaurants offered meatless products, according to market research firm Technomic, accounting for nearly 20,000 locations nationwide, a figure that was up 3% year-over-year.

Younger shoppers, in particular, are looking for healthier, more sustainable alternatives to the usual meat-and-potatoes menus of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations. According to Technomic, 71% of consumers now eat seafood at least once a month and 50% eat vegetarian or vegan dishes at least once a month. Meatless burgers and other alternative proteins are one way for restaurants to reach these diners.

These findings line up with what Chris Kerr, Chief Investment Officer with New Crop Capital, a venture capital fund focused on investing in plant-based alternative protein technologies, has been seeing on an anecdotal basis in the market for the last year-plus. In Kerr’s view, it all comes down to awareness, price, taste and convenience, and we’ve reached the tipping point on all four.

R&D advancements in recent years have led to massive improvements in alternative protein taste and texture. That’s attracted new investment capital to support marketing and product design efforts. And that has brought about new consumer awareness and interest.

And that fact matters a lot, because the leading global food providers are large, diversified corporations that can make or break new markets like these.

Consumers demand taste and variety

Buyers today are more concerned about their health, more socially conscious and aware of where their food comes from. Because of this, they are more accepting of alternatives to meat, dairy, eggs and other proteins than previous generations as a result. However, taste is still king, and without it, these products won’t succeed.

Explains Kerr, “If taste doesn’t drive this, everything else fails. I think what’s really happened is that companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have convinced people that they don’t have to settle for plain old quinoa burgers anymore.”

It’s not that there’s a huge new population becoming vegan. According to Gallup, less than 10% of Americans adhere to either a vegetarian or vegan diet and those numbers have been steady for years. But what has changed is a new acceptance of alternative proteins in the marketplace.

A growing market

Of course, there’s far more to the alternative protein space than just well-known names like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. A fast growing segment, the plant protein market value is expected to grow 55% in just six years, according to Persistence Market Research.

Source: Statista.com.

For one thing, established industry players like Tyson and Cargill have gotten into the game, as well. Tyson Foods recently announced their plans to start selling pea protein nuggets this year, in addition to a blended pea and beef burger, potentially bringing alternative proteins to a huge new market. Cargill has invested in lab-grown meat startup Memphis Meats, pea protein producer PURIS, and Calysta, which is developing methane-based proteins. Even Ikea, the Swedish purveyor of flat-packet furniture, is getting into the game with a new plant-based version of their iconic Swedish meatballs.

The science behind alternative protein technology is far from a new development, considering that companies like Kraft and Kellogg have been selling for years. But it is only now finding broad consumer reach and appeal thanks to a range of new developments and innovations.

Atlantic Natural Foods, the manufacturer of Loma Linda^®, Neat^® and Kaffree Roma™ brand products, produces alternatives for seafood, beef and pork products. The company aims to create affordable, sustainable and healthy sources of plant-based protein, with a focus not only on what today’s shoppers are looking for, but also what is driving future trends.

Laura Lapp, innovation brand manager explains:

Equinom, an Israeli seed-breeding company, is working a step up the alternative proteins supply chain, breeding various grain crops with an eye toward bringing better protein to the world.  While it used to focus on crops for feed and biodiesel, it has turned its eye toward human health. Currently, it is working to create 50% more protein from already high protein crops, such as soybeans, pea, sesame and chickpeas. Others that have potential are cowpeas, green peas, mung beans, and quinoa.

Looking ahead

In such a fast-moving industry, we’ll continue to see many players challenging the alternative protein space. For instance, did you know you can create protein out of thin air? It sounds impossible, but clean tech experts from Finland, Solar Foods can build edible proteins with just CO2, electricity, and water!

At the end of the day, the market for alternative proteins is facing a perfect storm event – product quality has reached a point where even meat eaters are looking at plant-based proteins as tasty options, interest in health and wellness have moved front and center for many buyers, and demand for protein in all forms continues to rise worldwide along with rising standards of living. The challenge is aligning the resources, along with the manufacturing and distribution capabilities, to make it all a reality.