New Zealand’s pastoral agriculture risks finding itself the fuel for the hype surrounding synthetic food and should move quickly to resonate with consumers, Nuffield Scholar Richard Fowler says.
The Te Puke sharemilker spent his scholarship year going to 18 countries to study work being done on synthetic foods, particularly meat and milk.
He found a surging industry fed by the jet fuel of venture capital, often contributed by some of the world’s wealthiest individuals including Google founder Sergi Brin, who provided the seed money for the world’s first lab-grown burger.
Beneath the ambiguous brand names like Perfect Day and Whitewave Foods lay slick and well-produced marketing campaigns designed as much to appeal to further venture capitalists as to consumers of the synthetic products.
But, more disturbingly for Fowler, were the inferred and explicit claims that conventional agriculture was inferior and more harmful to animals and the environment than products these companies were offering.
“I think it is the perceptions about conventional farming these brands are playing to that forms the real threat to the likes of NZ, rather than the size of the actual industry itself at this stage.”
Fowler observed an industry still very much in the capital-raising phase, still full of many ifs in terms of market size.
It still presented threats but also opportunities for NZ’s pastoral sector, depending upon how much of the venture capital promise became a reality.
The meat sector faced synthetic products sourced from either plant products or harvested, lab-grown stem cells.
The greatest threat Fowler saw was in the food service sector, with the likes of McDonalds offering a blended or solely synthetic burger on environmental grounds.
However, he remained dubious about synthetic steaks coming soon, with challenges remaining on building the structure for a steak, compared to the mince-like product presently formulated.
The intensive cut-and-carry dairy operations in the United States also pulled NZ’s extensive pastoral system in their negative slipstream that synthetic milk companies played into their promotion.
“The general consensus is there is little difference in carbon emissions between a pasture-based farming model and an intensive, confinement model despite the best animal welfare standards in the world.”
The NZ farming model risked being “lined up and shot” alongside other countries without a real trial.
“There is no concept in the US about our relatively small herds and how farm size is constrained by how far a cow can walk between milkings.”
The international dairy sector was finally starting to mobilise over the use of the word milk on assorted grain-nut liquids. But Fowler believed that might be a only distraction from a product that demanded fighting on a more strategic front.
“It may be as simple as having a better understanding of our true water and carbon footprints.
“These don’t get talked about but we need to find whether we really are better, worse or the same as these new food types in these areas.”
He suspected the new plant-sourced foods might have higher energy costs than conventional agriculture.
“And we need to think about the water footprint when so much of the water used in our systems comes free from the sky. Is that necessarily as demanding as irrigation sourced water?”
Fowler also challenged the industry’s processors to make the leap into some synthetic food investment, at least to engage with the key players in the sector and get the true story on where the industry was heading.
“Because if you just look at the internet at present, you really only get a lot of slick messages, not always with substance behind them.”
But engaging might also provide business opportunities for big processors like Fonterra to expand into new markets and products in a way that grew the entire market, rather than having milk substituted litre for litre by synthetics.
“It really is no different to Coca Cola deciding it is not just into soft drinks and how it got into other drink types, including water.”
It was telling that one of the US’s biggest meat processors, Tyson Foods, had invested a 5% stake in plant-based meat company Beyond Meat.
Fowler would also like to see industry groups including Beef + Lamb NZ and DairyNZ at industry conventions, taking an open mind of what opportunities might exist.
There might also be opportunities for NZ agriculture in providing the basic inputs synthetic food required. Plant-sourced products required crops, often peas and potatoes.
Landcorp had been in talks with Impossible Foods to see if growing such crops might help reduce its environmental footprint.
“But, realistically, NZ is a small-scale crop producer compared to the US and Australia.”
Other niche opportunities to help meet the challenge head on might include supplying stem cells to the cultured meat sector.
“And with a processor like Fonterra, we already own and control some significant supply channels and have customers loyal to the brand. A synthetic dairy food blend could give consumers a choice not currently available.”
Fowler said his year travelling tipped his world upside down and the synthetic threat might at least prompt further changes in conventional farming practices.
“If a consumer is prepared to pay $20 a litre for a milk product made in a certain way then who are we to say they should not get what they want for that?”
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Fowler’s paper can be read at www.nuffield.org.nz
