Predicting industry trends ahead of a new year can be a fool’s errand; but
business behavior — just like human behavior — is easier to forecast when the
stakes are high. Due to the urgency of solving some of humanity’s most
formidable climate- and health-related challenges, we regard decision-makers’
behavior vis-à-vis cellular agriculture — and cultivated food products, in
particular — to be of some consequence when considering what lies in store for
2023.
Only the next twelve months will tell for sure; but here’s our best guess on the
policy, business and industry fronts:
Policy front: Cellular agriculture will become a fixture in governments’ food security and net-zero strategies
When it comes to fighting climate change, the debate over whether leaders will
change ‘business as usual’ is seemingly endless and marked by obscurity. But
when it comes to food security, governments have historically been quicker to
action. Perhaps this stems from hunger being an ancient challenge — its
avoidance has become ingrained as a fundamental expectation of national and
local leaders. Whatever the reason, our current food system’s lack of
sustainability and reliability could very well be the spur that leads to
meaningful government action on what is also the climate front.
Food supply chains that are deeply associated with
deforestation,
loss of
biodiversity
and other formidable environmental challenges are also stretched thin trying to
feed 8+ billion humans (and counting). From a climate perspective, the crisis is
that such food systems — based on resource-intensive conventional agriculture —
contribute to a
third
or more of global
greenhouse gas emissions. What will turn heads, however, is a newfound ability
of national and local leaders to provide adequate nutrition, empower their
communities and spur economic growth at home as they become more aware of
cultivated meat’s crucial role in this matter.
In September, the White House announced fresh
support
for cell-cultured food, and a month later released its Global Food Security
Research
Strategy
— highlighting its commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition; and building
medium- to long-term sustainable, resilient food systems. In Southeast Asia,
Singapore became the first nation to
approve a
cultivated-meat food product in 2020; and it is developing its national
plan for food security
with full knowledge that cellular agriculture is significantly less reliant on
natural resources, which the island nation lacks. Increased funding for cellular
ag elsewhere — including the United
Kingdom,
Israel
and the
Netherlands
— demonstrates growing interest at the highest levels in diverse regions.
Policymakers increasingly understand that more resilient food
systems
can generate $4.5 trillion
annually in new
economic activity. In 2023, their new and developing plans for action will
reflect this understanding.
Business front: M&A will continue and funding may flow; but partnerships will be the most strategic enabler of change
Relative uncertainty across tech and non-tech sectors of the economy has
increased the likelihood of mergers and acquisitions (M&As); but in terms of
sheer impact, many of these deals achieve only the sum of whatever parts are
brought together or unceremoniously consumed.
For cellular ag, as well as numerous other fields with high impact potential for
climate-positive systems, partnerships are where companies can best exert their
influence. When industry leaders collaborate with cellular-agriculture
companies, it enables one solution to spur more; and with the market size for
cultivated meat forecasted to reach $25 billion by
2030,
more food and meat incumbents will look to partner with cultivated-meat
producers in 2023.
The present financial downturn has made it harder for newer companies to achieve
nine-figure raises. A consequence of this is that incumbents have a more limited
set of companies with which to partner, making it easier for them to decide on
specific courses of action. Growth-stage cellular-agriculture companies will
leverage this narrowed playing field to employ food companies’ expertise and
infrastructure of producers and distributors. This will empower larger brands by
providing them with strategic assets to be implemented across their value
chains. For growth-stage companies, their positioning in the industry will
become better solidified — which will enable them to more easily retain autonomy
and independently manage their own growth strategies.
Such collaboration up and down supply chains will help rapidly drive and scale
the impact of cultivated food
products.
Supply chain agreements will be designed to overcome cost barriers in
large-scale production, so that cultivated food products can drive economies of
scale and shorten their path to more widespread price parity.
Industry front: Food will continue feeding (back into) biotechnology
While many of foodtech’s core principles owe their existence to biotechnology,
the former has itself prompted a steady stream of innovation — much of which
applies to branches of biotech.
Food items — the essence and practical entirety of soft commodities — are the
most reliable source of human demand, making them ripe for scientific
advancement. Just as cultivated-meat companies are partnering with major food
companies, in 2023 they will forge deeper collaboration with prominent players
across biotech.
Cultivated-meat companies will work to reduce their own production costs and
heighten scalability. Meanwhile, advances by them and others in meta-analytics,
tissue engineering, computational design and other sub-fields will allow more
facets of cellular agriculture to become translatable to biotechnology and the
betterment of human health.
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Published Dec 22, 2022 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET