Back in the 1950s, Mexico embarked on one of the biggest transformations in the human history of food production.

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It started with the American agronomist Norman Borlaug and his work with an ancient crop: wheat. The population of Mexico – and the whole world – was rapidly expanding and there were concerns that food production could not keep up. 

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“The battle to feed all of humanity is over,” wrote researcher Paul Ehrlich in his 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb. “In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

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It all turned out quite differently. Nowadays, we share the planet with three times as many people while global hunger has actually gone down. How is this possible?

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What happened is “the Green Revolution”: a period from about 1960 to 1980 in which advances in pesticides, irrigation and plant breeding led to dramatic increases in yields of wheat, rice and other cereal crops. Norman Borlaug would come to be hailed as “the father of the Green Revolution” and “the man who saved a billion lives”, for the unprecedented speed at which he and his team cross-bred plants and developed new hyper-yielding varieties of wheat. 

The Green Revolution was a revelation: the farmlands of the world turned out to be capable of producing far more food than previously seemed possible. And yet for all Borlaug and his colleagues’ work, modern food production is once more reaching the limits of what is possible. And this time it's not our crops, but our livestock that are the major limiting factor.

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Rising standards of living in large parts of the world, in countries like China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, have led to explosive growth in demand for animal products, especially meat. And that is creating a strain on the planet. In fact, if everyone in the world ate the average Dutch diet, we would have to farm all of the habitable land on Earth.

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Where the Green Revolution was a breakthrough in the way we grew crops, we now need a revolution in the way we produce protein-rich foods like dairy and meat. And for all the promising alternatives – think fermentation techniques, cultivated meat and plant-based products – so far it’s not clear what form this “protein revolution” will or should take. What is clear, however, is that our food production needs to change.

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The three big challenges facing modern agriculture

The modern agricultural sector is more specialized and efficient than ever before, yet at the same time it is coming up against hard limits on several fronts. There are at least three significant reasons driving the need for change.

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1. Land use

Vast areas of the planet have been given over to cropland and pastures. “The most visible mark that humanity has left on the planet is the transformation of wild habitats into farmland,” write data journalists Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser at Our World in Data.

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In 2019, 45 percent of the Earth’s habitable land was being farmed. Let that sink in for a moment: we’re talking about an area of 48 million square kilometers, equivalent to more than half the Asian continent!

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A mere 16 percent of agricultural land is used to raise crops for human consumption, while 80 percent is used to raise livestock and produce animal feed. It takes a vast amount of land for an animal to produce as much food as a plant. Calorie-wise, all the land being used for livestock – again, that’s 80 percent of all farmland – is producing a mere 17 percent of our food.

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By the same token, agriculture – and livestock farming above all – is also one of the main causes of global biodiversity loss. According to the World Nature Fund’s Living Planet Index, worldwide wildlife populations for which data are available have declined by on average 69 percent since 1970. Reversing this trend would require us to cultivate more food on less land or to find some way to wed farming and nature (or better yet, do both). 

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2. Climate

Our food system is also an important driver of climate change. First, deforestation for the purpose of clearing farmland releases CO2 stored in plants. Then, cattle produce large quantities of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and the trucks, ships and planes used to transport our food also emit greenhouse gases.

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All those gases add up: a 2018 study calculated that the food supply chain is attributable for over a quarter (26 percent) of global greenhouse gas emissions as expressed in CO2-equivalents. This means just ending fossil fuel use is not going to cut it: if we want to reach net zero emissions in 2050, we can’t avoid changing the way we produce food.

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The transition to more sustainable sources of protein could help here, too. Livestock farming currently accounts for 30 percent of all food supply chain emissions, and even more (52 percent) if you include land used for grazing and for growing animal feed. Meanwhile, and despite a common misconception, transport is a much smaller part of the problem: in terms of emissions, what you eat actually matters a lot more than where your food comes from.

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3. Animals in the food supply chain

Finally, there is one more challenge that sustainable protein production would help to address, and that is how we treat animals.

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Thanks to intensive farming, many animals live short and miserable lives. This is not the exception, but the norm: it is not possible to produce animal products at the scale and at the cost that we do now without animal suffering. Alternatives, such as regenerative livestock farming, are kinder to animals but often have lower yields and require even more land.

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Room for the agriculture we want

Until recently, there was little choice but to accept these issues as the cost of doing business. But that has changed: nowadays, there are a number of innovations which, though still in their infancy, could revolutionize how we produce protein-rich food. 

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First off, investments in the development of high-quality meat and dairy replacements have created plant-based alternatives that are better than ever. However, with demand for animal products only growing for the foreseeable future, finding ways to make those exact products without the actual animal is paramount.

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Fermentation for example is already being used to make non-animal dairy foods. And cultivated meat, which will be indistinguishable from conventional meat, is not only technologically feasible but could be cost-competitive with animal meat products by 2030.

Though these methods will not replace livestock agriculture altogether, they will give the industry more room (literally) to take green measures. Land freed up as a result could be used for forms of extensive (and regenerative) agriculture more in keeping with the mixed landscape we value. That would be better for nature and fairer for farmers, who would no longer be pressured to squeeze maximum yields out of every square meter. 

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A story of opportunities

So, what’s stopping us? 

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The first hurdle is a lack of money. While private sector investments in startups working on sustainable proteins have grown rapidly, public sector funding is lagging behind. The Good Food Institute estimates that governments have invested just over 1 billion dollars in sustainable proteins to date, compared to the roughly 10 billion dollars a year needed.

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Another hurdle is legislation. Getting products such as cultivated meat and fermentation-derived dairy onto the market is hard, particularly in the European Union, where the approval process takes at least 18 months (and up to 3 years) and businesses receive little guidance on what’s expected of them. Hence, not a single cultivated meat product has managed to gain EU approval so far.

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Thirdly, we’re going to need many more driven and talented individuals who can propel the protein transition forward. Think of people like Hans-Josef Fell, the German who negotiated the first feed-in tariff for solar panels. Without his efforts, solar power would never have become as inexpensive and widespread as it is today.

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Lastly, we need to take stock of what the protein transition could mean for society as a whole. Returning to Norman Borlaug: where his hyper-yield crops have made him a hero in some circles, others have been highly critical of his work’s unintended effects. His agricultural methods are blamed for soil depletion and for contributing to monoculture and declines in genetic crop diversity. This is not to say we should put the brakes on innovation, but that we also need people who can see the big picture, unencumbered by commercial or political interests.

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Done right, the protein transition could bring unprecedented benefits. For the planet, for nature, for animals and also for the economy. The Netherlands and Europe are extremely well positioned to take the lead in the food system of the future.

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This story of opportunities needs to be told and shared. The problem is known and we can see the solutions – now, all we need are the people (and resources) to unleash the transition.

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Translation by Elizabeth Manton

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