Why aren’t other modern food technologies disruptive in the same way that Precision Fermentation is?

The fall in cost and rise in capabilities of Precision Fermentation (PF) has meant that it will be the first modern technology to disrupt the current food and agriculture system.

A disruption happens when the convergence of key technologies enables the creation of an entirely new product or service that is good enough to satisfy consumers’ desires and affordable enough that it offers a compelling value proposition relative to other existing options.

Precision Fermentation is the convergence of many technologies. The age-old process of fermentation is combined with precision biology, which includes modern information technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning and the cloud, as well as modern biotechnologies like genetic engineering, synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, systems biology, bioinformatics and computational biology.

What makes PF disruptive is that the costs of these underlying technologies have caused the overall cost of PF to fall dramatically from what it once was. This in turn has allowed more companies to continually improve the technology such that its capabilities have risen as well.

In Rethinking Food and Agriculture, we found that PF will make protein production five times cheaper by 2030 and ten times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar. They will be up to 100 times more land efficient, 10-25 times more feedstock efficient, 20 times more time efficient and 10 times more water efficient than animal products, and they will also produce less waste. This means that 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.

Explore the evidence...

• Precision Fermentation is the cheapest and most efficient modern food system currently on offer, so it is more disruptive than other modern food alternatives. Watch RethinkX co-founder Tony Seba explain what PF is, and why it disrupt the dairy industry.
• The cost of PF is being driven ever lower by a steep decline in the cost of precision biology. As a result, the cost of producing a single molecule by PF has fallen from $1m/kg in 2000 to about $100/kg today. We expect the cost to fall below $10/kg by 2025. This statistic is from p18 of our Rethinking Food & Agriculture report.
• PF is now on the cusp of outcompeting animal agriculture as a form of food production, not just in cost, but in capabilities, speed and volume. The end result will be an improvement in the efficiency of current industrial food production by an order of magnitude.
• The food and agriculture disruption will begin in the dairy industry.
  • Learn more about the disruption of dairy.
  • Learn more about PF and the dairy disruption on p20-28 of our Rethinking Food & Agriculture report.
• Learn more about the social, economic, geopolitical and environmental implications of precision fermentation disruption on p8-9 of our report

Witness the transformation

This is primarily a protein disruption driven by economics. The cost of modern proteins will be five times cheaper than existing animal proteins by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035. Eventually, they will be nearly as cheap as sugar. They will also be superior in every key attribute–more nutritious, healthier, better tasting and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. This means that 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.

Learn more about the disruption of food & agriculture.

Published on: 12/07/23