Renewable Food - The Next Climate Domino to Fall?
Note: A shortened version of this article was first published in The Financial Times on August 29th 2025
We are easily distracted by the short-term fluctuations of political and business trends in the corporate sustainability world. But beyond the noise, it’s the science and the economics that matter. The economics delivers the needed change – or the damage if we fail to act.
On that basis, it seems likely that food and agriculture will be the next climate domino to fall. The science is clear that without change the current system will fail, while the economics is shifting to enable a renewable food system to take its place.
In my recent paper published by the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership, I defined a renewable food system as one that could:
Expand production to feed 9 billion + people, healthily and affordably.
Do so within a now inevitable rapidly changing climate and ecosystem.
Allow for the steadily growing needs of a larger, and wealthier population, for land.
Deliver this in the context of possibly extreme geopolitical instability and climate migration that now also seems inevitable.
Continue doing so indefinitely.
Science tells us that industrial agriculture, and the food system built on it, fails to meet these criteria and is therefore unsustainable. This is not a philosophical view or preference, it is physical, scientific reality. Between climate impacts, water scarcity, soil degradation and land use, the current system simply cannot meet the forecast 50% increase in food demand. Anyone saying otherwise is ignoring the evidence or blinded by self-interest.
Improvements proposed like regenerative agriculture and precision farming are just not material to the scale of the problem. They are often good for the impact on individual farms, and they make for good marketing stories for food companies but, when it comes to global impact, they are like sticky plasters on broken bones.
The impending problem is not hard to predict. Take an unsustainable system, increase production by 50%, add an increasingly erratic, unpredictable climate, and subtract significant amounts of water. You do the math.
The problem is not just a theoretical ‘can we produce enough food’ question. We need a globalised market food system that can deliver the right food, at the right price, in the right place, at the right time. And do so amid increasing geopolitical instability, rising nationalism, and decreasing global cooperation. Given this, as climate and other impacts accelerate, there is a high likelihood of supply shocks and a global food crisis. Or at the very least, it seems inevitable there will be a series of rolling, regional crises that make supply instability the new normal. This will create geopolitical upheaval, conflict and disorder, with major global economic impacts. These impacts will collectively exacerbate and reinforce the system-wide crisis.
This is not doom and gloom, nor Malthusian fearmongering. To the contrary, the economics tells us we already have a solution available.
There are a range of new approaches to food production that are in widespread use today and accelerating across global markets. These include leveraging age-old fermentation techniques, combined with modern technologies like AI and biotech, to produce protein and other food ingredients through biological processes, rather than traditional agriculture.
There are some cutting edge innovations reshaping our understanding of what’s possible, like protein flour being made from renewable energy, air and water by Solein in Norway. Or fats like butter and cooking oils being made from carbon which is being done by Savor in California. In those examples, production is not just animal free but virtually land free. However more significant in market terms in the coming years is the replacement of animal agriculture products with fermented protein and dairy, producing the same food but more efficiently, cleanly and eventually cheaper. Credible studies show these methods can slash water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and land use by upwards of 90% while delivering a product biologically identical to what we see today.
Based on our experience in energy, market acceleration is unlikely to be driven by a moral or social imperative, nor by consumer choice. It will be driven by the economics inherent to a manufacturing and technology industry that has the ability to create food ingredients that are simply more competitive - cheaper, healthier and more reliable. These economic benefits will see many FMCG industry leaders wanting to capitalise on this opportunity, rather than opposing it. This makes the shift far more likely.
The experience in renewables and in electric vehicles give us an idea of which countries are likely win and lose in the coming disruption. For example, China and Singapore are already working together and have the most aggressive policy to capture these opportunities. The USA and some EU states are not just failing to support them but, in some cases, banning them, allegedly to ‘protect our people’s way of life’. From ‘Drill Baby Drill’ to ‘Plough Baby Plough’. We know how that story ends. The market will continue to move forward, it will just do so without them.
The earliest disruption is likely to come from the B2B market looking for reliable, clean and well-priced ingredients used to make food, rather than a finished product. For example, the milk, cream and sweetener in a McDonalds McFlurry or the ground beef in a Big Mac is not chosen for its provenance. The corporation’s supply chain executives analyse it for its price, purity, quality and reliability of supply. They understand that consumers focus on taste and price.
Another example already making waves in the market is algal oil (replacing omega-3 oils from wild caught fish). This is already being used in aquaculture and human nutrition, along with cosmetics and industrial uses. One company with an advanced supply chain and commercial agreements already in place is Veramaris, the JV from dsm-firmench and Evonik. Atlantic Sapphire, the world’s largest land-based aquaculture firm, started using Veramaris in their feed in 2022 and has reduced their fish oil use by 25%. Fish farmers in Chile, Canada, Norway and Ecuador have integrated of Veramaris into their supply chains. As well as the environmental benefits of reducing pressure on wild caught fisheries, there are numerous commercial benefits including no price fluctuations due to good and bad fishing seasons and no ocean pollutants to extract.
While acknowledging it’s early days the market certainly thinks these various new production approaches could transform the global food system. The Good Food Institute lists over 2,000 active businesses in the alternative protein space. Some are start-ups with wild, disruptive ideas, but many are major global companies in the food industry, like Cargill, ADM, dsm-firmenich, Unilever, Danone and Nestle. These companies are not motivated by social responsibility or the moral imperative. They are focused on being competitive by having resilient, affordable supply chains in an increasingly unstable world.
A renewable food industry is now a clear possibility. Will it happen? We can’t be sure. We can however be sure that the current food system won’t deliver what we need. When things are unsustainable, they stop. When the food supply stops things gets ugly. Markets will then respond - either delivering the needed change, or the damage if we fail to act.
Note: the full paper on which this article is based was published by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and can be downloaded here.