This is the single best hope we have since renewable energy. Read this post, watch the videos, and just sit and PONDER what all this means for a day or so! I know I sound like an infomercial at the moment but I am convinced that IF the economic learning rates can continue to lower costs, this will be the biggest advance on how we source our food since Agriculture 12,000 to 10,000 thousand years ago!
This is a 3 minute primer. http://youtu.be/z8zuqR95fqA
“Embrace what may be the most important green technology ever. It could save us all” by George Monbiot.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... on-farming“The developments I find most interesting use no agricultural feedstocks. The microbes they breed feed on hydrogen or methanol – which can be made with renewable electricity – combined with water, carbon dioxide and a very small amount of fertiliser. They produce a flour that contains roughly 60% protein, a much higher concentration than any major crop can achieve (soy beans contain 37%, chick peas, 20%). When they are bred to produce specific proteins and fats, they can create much better replacements than plant products ****for meat, fish, milk and eggs. And they have the potential to do two astonishing things.
The first is to shrink to a remarkable degree the footprint of food production. One paper estimates that precision fermentation using methanol needs 1,700 times less land than the most efficient agricultural means of producing protein: soy grown in the US. This suggests it might use, respectively, 138,000 and 157,000 times less land than the least efficient means: beef and lamb production. Depending on the electricity source and recycling rates, it can also enable radical reductions in water use and greenhouse gas emissions. Because the process is contained, it avoids the spillover of waste and chemicals into the wider world caused by farming.”
Existing products: "Brave Robot" has sold millions of tubs of ice cream and cream cheese and packets of cake mix. "Perfect Day" and Israel's "Remilk" are fermenting up dairy proteins to make lactose and cholesterol free milk, yoghurt, and cheese. And now "C16 Biosciences" are brewing up a replacement for Palm Oil! As you know - Palm Oil is in everything.
We are only a few years off Precision Fermentation protein being cheaper than meat.
“What is it like to cook ravioli made with Solein? Watch how we made pasta dough with Solein instead of eggs, the ravioli filling with wild mushrooms and Solein cream cheese alternative and topped it off with porcini foam made with Solein dairy alternative!”
60 seconds - ravioli. https://youtu.be/6p8pEbt7kjE
Here are Bao buns - “What is it like to cook bao buns made with Solein? Watch how we steamed milky, fluffy bao buns made with Solein dairy alternative, and filled them with some crispy teriyaki-glazed Solein imitation meat alternative strips, Solein alternative mayonnaise dressing and crunchy, pickled and julienned veg wrapped in a shiso leaf. Our top chef Sebastian Borg describes it as a perfect balance of soft and crunchy, sweet and salty, sour and umami.” http://youtu.be/DsgpUxec5dY
It will replace all animal products - beef, lamb, pork, chicken and fish (with omega-3's) - in the next 10 to 15 years. It is safe from climate disaster droughts and floods. With grazing now uneconomic we can let nature regrow the 3 trillion trees we’ve cut down, return CO2 to under 350ppm and solve climate change.
Replacing fishing with PF lets our oceans recover. The return of the larger fish will help the water column turn over, trapping more heat and bringing up nutrients from the waters below - restoring the oceans and climate as well.
Tony Seba follows the cost curve as PF becomes 100,000 times cheaper over the last 20 years. We are nearly there. Only a few more years and it will be cheaper than meat! Or other products. One protein is 1000 times sweeter than sugar cane. We can make spider-silk for building materials this way. http://youtu.be/g6gZHbfK8Vo
The Chinese are working on another route - a chemical way to cook up sugary starches used for both food and cardboard etc. http://youtu.be/e2SsheLN1t8
I'm not sure how much fibre we'll grow this way - but imagine getting most of our macro's from thin air and a few fertiliser minerals? And letting 3 TRILLION trees regrow? I mean - at that kind of biomass scales of 3 trillion trees - what could we grow to get airline fuel from biomass?
