By Bradd Libby and Georgia Shine Bartlett
In a recent article published in the NZ Herald on the fate of the New Zealand red meat industry, Vincent Heeringa and Dr Victoria Hatton stated, “we find it hard to imagine that an industry so old, so established, and so important could suffer a Kodak-like moment.”
History has shown time and time again, that when the end of an industry comes, it comes quickly, regardless of how long that industry has been in business. Much like the swift end to Kodak film and rise of the digital cameras in the late 90s and early 2000s mentioned above, human history is littered with thousands of examples of inevitable technology disruptions—where a cheaper, more competitive technology outperforms and outcompetes existing products, leading to the disruption of entire industries and, often, transformation of our societies.
In this case, it is inevitable that global, industrial food industries reliant on animal-by products will be disrupted by modern food technologies, primarily for economic reasons. Modern food technologies like Precision Fermentation and Cellular Agriculture are able to produce the same food for a fraction of the time, cost and energy of their industrial counterparts. The question is not if, it is when.
A prime example of the swift and blind-sided nature of disruption is the rise of the internal combustion engine and demise of the horse and cart mentioned in our 2020 book 'Rethinking Humanity'.
In 1904, ‘The Carriage Monthly’, an American Trade Magazine, stated: “Humankind has traveled for centuries in conveyances pulled by beasts, why would any reasonable person assume the future holds anything different?”
Within decades, the horses and carts used for thousands of years for transport and labor were swiftly replaced with internal combustion engine vehicles, transforming our societies forever. Simultaneously, within industry, steel disrupted the role of iron, and electric lighting disrupted the ancient role of fire in home and hearth. All of these well used, established technologies suffered their own 'Kodak-moment'.
By comparison, the New Zealand cattle industry is not very old. Kodak was founded 1892, right at the same time that New Zealand first became a meat exporter, thanks to technologies like artificial refrigeration and propeller-driven ships.
New Zealand is now the world's largest dairy exporter, accounting for a significant portion of global dairy trade. Dairy is a major contributor to New Zealand's economy, accounting for 35% of the country's total commodity export value and 3.2% of total GDP. Red meat is New Zealand's second largest goods exporter, contributing significantly to the country's export revenue. Approximately 80-90% of beef and dairy products are exported overseas. Red meat exports account for approximately 15% to 16% of New Zealand's total export revenue.
Now, new technologies are upending the meat and dairy industries again. Cellular agriculture meat has already been approved to be sold commercially, and dairy products made from precision fermentation are on the shelves. New Zealand's traditional markets are also scaling up local production of Precision Fermentation. This in itself will have profound impacts on demand for our exports. China, Australia and the US are all scaling up PF, China particularly rapidly. How long until the orders from China just stop… months, a couple of years…?
The fantasy is not that the meat and dairy industries will be disrupted. The fantasy is believing that they won't be.
As a model for “branding” New Zealand, Heeringa and Hatton quote futurist Mike Lee saying that Noma, the world-renowned restaurant in Denmark, “worked insanely well. Look at the number of ambitious, pedigreed chefs it spawned, colonising other parts of the world.” The article also quotes a Beef + Lamb 2023 Futures report, citing the rise and export of K-pop as an example of the potential for red-meat to continue to be NZ's golden egg, with the right storytelling...
Noma closed for regular service at the end of 2024 and has now re-invented itself as a food lab and e-commerce site - selling hot sauce, vinaigrette, tote bags, and t-shirts.
“It’s unsustainable,” [Redzepi] said of the modern fine-dining model that he helped create. “Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work… We have to completely rethink the industry.”
Both Noma and K-pop are inventive new ways to look at established industries, but neither represent the inevitable and immense force that modern food technologies present for the way we will produce and consume our food in the near future. We wrote in our 2019 Rethinking Food & Agriculture report: "Products made by precision fermentation and cellular agriculture will be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. By 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal-derived products they replace. The impact of this disruption on industrial animal farming will be profound."
The authors of the article note how Noma put “Denmark cuisine.. on the map. I’m not saying you must execute a Noma copy, but you need something that puts New Zealand on the map.”
One thing we can agree on are the questions raised by the authors: What’s New Zealand’s food story? Does NZ have a place in the sun? Is there a food equivalent of the Lord of the Rings? And can it be New Zealand's?
It is time to rethink New Zealand's meat and dairy industries, as NZ's largest export they are poised to be the most impacted by this disruption. As RethinkX's CEO Richard Gill, a kiwi himself, notes "whilst there will always be a niche-market for red meat, if you think it will have any significance going forward, this is a mistake. People might still own horses, but they definitely don't ride them to work every day."
Hopefully the New Zealand meat and dairy industry will think hard about its future and the role that modern food technologies like Precision Fermentation and Cellular Agriculture could play in securing it.
The silicon valley of modern food has yet to be decided, and as a gold-rush nation, New Zealand is poised to take the reins.. Will NZ be the next Kodak? The next K-pop? Or rethink its' industry and transform it into something else entirely...