There’s nothing unusual about emerging technologies disrupting food and fibre production.

It was seen in the past when artificial flavourings and dyes emerged and, more recently, in the disruption synthetic fibres caused in the wool industry, University of Otago Professor Hugh Campbell says.

The latest disruption to come along is the emergence of plant-based and alternative proteins as a replacement for animal proteins.

Its impact on New Zealand agriculture is the subject of a new report: Protein Futures: Future scenarios for land use in Aotearoa New Zealand.

“The question that gets posed is, are novel proteins or plant-based substitutes for animal proteins one of these big bang events?” Campbell said.

The research was undertaken by the University of Otago and Lincoln University-based AgriBusiness Group, who presented their findings at a webinar organised by Our Land and Water.

While the technology is there, upscaling it to the extent that it can compete with animal protein will take a phenomenal amount of energy, Professor Rob Burton of the Norwegian Centre for Rural Research said.

“But it’s not impossible. Given that we’re going to have to transition totally away from fossil fuels anyway, it’s likely that we will be developing these types of technologies that will go alongside the new energy needs of bioreactors in the future,” he said.

Those developing technology around cell-based protein creation and precision fermentation have said it requires a transition in energy as well as a transition in food production.

Both the cell-based protein creation and precision fermentation emerged from the pharmaceutical industry.

So far, the process used to produce them has been to create them in small quantities at high cost, he said.

“When you’re looking to produce agricultural products, you’re looking to produce exactly the opposite. You want massive quantities at a very low price. This has been the big issue many of the startups have had to deal with.”

Up until 2021, the total invested capital totalled $5 billion globally. But after that, covid and economic headwinds saw a large drop-off in investment.

“The investment in plant-based in 2021 is less than the combined investment in fermentation and cultivation,” he said.

Many of these startup companies were funded by and are at the mercy of venture capitalists rather than governments or universities.

But even if these companies falter, the science underpinning the technology is there and will not disappear. It will only improve and innovate, especially if the price of traditionally produced proteins becomes too high.

“This happened in NZ with the wool sector in the 1920s. The minute that wool prices were booming, the artificial wool companies began more developments and building factories. This is what killed off wool in those years; whenever times were good for wool, they were even better for substitute products.”

But remember, said Burton, “the wool transition took decades”.

Campbell said having an industry driven by venture capitalists is not a good premise for basing something in NZ.

“The value proposition for this happening in NZ must be because we have some kind of stick by the science sector here and we have science and R&D capacity in NZ that can do this and that we can have high capacity in arable production.”

Neither of these can be left to venture capital and require a strategic role for the government if any of those scenarios go ahead, he said.

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