Precision Fermentation: The Future of Sustainable Agriculture?

What’s the story? 

• COP27 ended with no significant action from world leaders, leaving environmental activists and experts beyond frustrated and looking for other solutions. One that's coming to light is a new technology known as precision fermentation.
• Some say precision fermentation could be one of the most important environmental technologies ever developed for fighting climate change. Mainly used for drugs and food additives, it is a refined form of brewing that multiplies microbes to create specific products, which scientists say could be a new staple in agriculture. 
• In agricultural feedstock, the microbes use hydrogen or menthol (made with renewable energy) mixed with water, carbon dioxide, and fertilizer. When they're bred for specific proteins and fats, the microbes can create meat and dairy alternatives. If these alternatives become popular, it could shrink the environmental impact of food production and break the dependency on nonlocal food. 

Environmental impact of food production 

• A Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences study found that precision fermentation using methanol needs 1,700 times less land than soy grown in the U.S. Soy is currently the most efficient agricultural practice to produce protein. 
• This reimagined way of agriculture would need 138,000 times less land for beef production and 157,000 times less land for lamb, significantly decreasing water usage and greenhouse gas emissions. 
• Writer, activist, and supporter of precision fermentation George Monbiot wrote in The Guardian: 

“If livestock production is replaced by this technology, it creates what could be the last major opportunity to prevent Earth systems collapse…” 

• By significantly decreasing our reliance on animal agriculture, which claims more and more land each year, this process would allow us to restore forests, wetlands, mangroves, and so on. Monbiot believes it could even stop the sixth great extinction scientists say we’re in.

Breaking dependency on nonlocal food

• Various nations don’t have fertile land or enough water to grow their own foods, making them reliant on food shipped from other countries. These areas include the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Central America. 
• What these areas do have, however, is sunlight, which is required to sustain food production based on hydrogen and methanol. This means those nations could produce food through precision fermentation on their own land, decrease their dependence on outside food systems, and reduce transportation emissions, also known as “food miles.”

How can you support precision fermentation?

• Monbiot has created a new campaign called Reboot Food to bring this new technology to light, pulling us away from the disastrous consequences of climate change. 
• The four core principles to reboot food are making it plant-based, not slaughtering animals, using as little land as possible, and making everything in food an open source. 
• Want to learn more or get involved? Click here. 

Are you ready to take action against climate change?

-Jamie Epstein