How to feed 9.7 billion on a single planet?
Global population is projected to peak at 9.7 billion people in 2064 — up nearly a quarter from today’s 7.8 billion.[i] Some say that peak may be even higher. One of the most urgent implications of this rapid growth will be the pressure to feed that population on diminishing planetary resources. Together with increased urbanization, higher standards of living, and richer diets, population surge will drive an unprecedented demand for protein, the mass production of which is already proving unsustainable today.
Animal agriculture, a primary source of protein in western diets, is considered “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems.”[ii] Worldwide, livestock accounts for somewhere between 14.5 and 18 percent of human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.[iii] Over a quarter of global freshwater[iv] and one third of global crops grown[v] are required to raise animals for human protein needs. Assuming today’s agricultural practices persist, before long, more than two fifths of earth’s ice-free land could be occupied by livestock production.
Meeting our future nutrition demand will require a protein supply chain that untethers itself from land and animal inputs. The good news is that, today, there is no shortage of solutions to help us meet this demand in a sustainable way. Improvements in plant protein formulations have helped to catapult brands such as Beyond Meat and Impossible to household-name status. Continued innovation in cellular agriculture is driving down costs, bringing closer the time when cultivated protein products become accessible to the mass market. In addition, consumer interest in sustainability continues to surge, and the range of products coming to market to satisfy this shift is exciting.
Since beginning our research into the future of alternative protein in 2015, we have been eagerly anticipating a protein offering that reconciles the “tug of war” and tradeoffs often made in our traditional food system between sustainability, affordability, nutrition and all-important taste. We were encouraged by the emergence, and later the main-streaming, of plant-based products with pea, soy, and wheat proteins at their core. But, ultimately, we could not resolve our issue with the supply chain constraints that many of these ingredients face, or their heavy processing and need for additives to replicate a meaty texture and flavor. Cellular approaches have been similarly exciting for us to follow over the years, but scale-up issues and the ability to achieve mass-market pricing remain top-of-mind with many of these technologies.
It was throughout this multi-year research process and continued conviction in our thesis that we crossed paths with Nature’s Fynd in 2016, a company with an incredible product, team and story. From a natural microbe found in Yellowstone’s geysers, the company’s nutritional fungi protein (named Fy) can be formulated into a wide variety of food products as replacements for traditional animal-based offerings. And it uses 99% less land, requires 87% less water, and releases 99% less GHG compared to traditional animal agriculture.
Mass production of Fy is made possible by the company’s patented surface fermentation process, which enables rapid scalability and yield efficiency at low cost. Minimal processing and few secondary additives are required to transform Fy into a wide range of food products; this is because Fy naturally has a neutral taste and fibrous texture. Fy naturally delivers a complete protein with a nutritional profile that we believe is superior to competitive products. It leverages the true power of nature to deliver a more complete and sustainable offering.
After several years of building our relationship with the company, we co-led Nature’s Fynd’s $80 million Series B financing in February 2020 with Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Nature’s Fynd is a food company for optimists, and we can’t think of a more important time in history for that optimism in our global food system. We are so excited to partner with Thomas and the team, and we look forward to supporting the company as they drive a true System Positive solution for the world’s future 9.7 billion people.
[i] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30677-2/fulltext
[ii] http://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/9655af93-7f88-58fc-84e8-d70a9a4d8bec/
[iii] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/climate/cows-global-warming.html
[iv] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212371713000024
[v] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/3/034015/pdf
