Hacking Food: Alternative Foods Present Opportunities for Conventional Farmers

OUR FARMS and farmers, if they are to survive and leverage disruptive change, must develop a new mindset, skill-set, and strategic focus that is open to an alternative food future to that produced through traditional farming.

Let’s hack meat and provide some food for thought on its future, starting with Beyond Meat one of many future foods that demonstrate a clear departure from the conventional farming production and business model. 

Beyond Meat uses traditional farmed produce, including peas, apples, canola, coconut, bamboo, beetroot, potatoes, rice and sunflowers to create a meat replacement that is certified ‘vegan’ yet almost perfectly imitates the meat cooking and eating experience. Their products are developed in their 2400sq m research and innovation facility run by an in-house chef and team of scientists.

Within the facility, an electrical ‘nose’ analyses more than 1000 molecules that make up the aroma and taste of meat, there is a texture lab, a sensory testing lab to capture real-time consumer feedback and a pilot production line that enables rapid product development. The entire process is based on taking the protein structures from plants and refining them into imitation meat. As a result, a Beyond Burger patty contains about the same amount of protein, two times the iron, and about half the saturated fat of a meat-based burger – all with no cholesterol. Not to mention, the environmental impact of leveraging existing farm products in a new form is significantly less than that of traditional, grain-fed cattle raising.

The Beyond Meat business model is disintermediating traditional meat models, taking farmed produce, adding value and delivering it through conventional channels a completely new form that is valued in existing markets.

Not only is the journey from farm to table different and valued in a new way, the purpose of the organisation is also based on a new view of access to and availability of secure, nutritious food – a challenge that all countries are facing as they fight rising health costs bought on by the current deluge of low-health foods. Let’s get real about this. Beyond Meat is one of many alternative foods presenting opportunity and risk for conventional farmers.

For those willing to find new models and markets for their existing produce, alternative foods may represent big opportunity. For those who would prefer to hang on to old ways of thinking at all costs, Beyond Meat is just one of many risks that may push traditional farmers into Managed Adaptive Decline.

While the flaws in emerging alternative foods may be real for now, there is no question that this is one of many disruptors that conventional meat farmers and producers must be aware of and addressing if they are to survive and thrive in disruptive change.

At Resilient Futures, we haven’t ‘drunk the kool-aid’ on the future of Beyond Meat. But we have tasted the burger, and it is great. We strongly suggest starting your journey towards understanding disruption ‘beyond meat’ and what that might signal for other farmed products.