However, to use it in human food we also need lab-grown products to taste good and be accepted by consumers. This is a much longer journey and may require some external shocks or societal changes in sentiment. Maybe young people will change how they view the killing of animals for food. Maybe pandemic risks from farmed animals will get more attention. Currently it remains unclear.
New technologies in farming could also make food production yet more efficient. Globally, food grown in greenhouses, for example, is rapidly expanding. Greenhouses can produce much more food than open fields: Dutch greenhouses, for example, can produce around 500 tonnes of tomatoes per hectare (200 tonnes per acre), compared with 30 tonnes per hectare (12 tonnes per acre) in open fields.
Vertical farming takes this further by stacking layers of crops on top of each other and using exclusively artificial sources of energy. Today, producing most crops in vertical farms would be far too expensive and vertical farms only work for high-value crops like herbs and leafy greens. The cost of energy would need to plummet for them to be adopted at scale, and to avoid this worsening climate change, the energy sources would have to be low-carbon renewables.
Transformative change
Achieving even just a few of these disruptions could bring huge ecological benefits, freeing up large amounts of land for natural ecosystems to rebuild, support biodiversity and store carbon. Many of them could also improve food security, which will become increasingly important with a changing climate.
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However, as we free up land, other competing land uses may take its place. Urban land represents around 1% of global area, and it seems unlikely this will replace farmland at scale (although in areas with high demand for housing and infrastructure it could). A major risk however is that plantation forestry and biofuels will further increase in area. Historical environmental policies have created demand for biofuels and wood-based products as sustainable alternatives, but much scientific research has called for better solutions. For sustainable change, new solutions should not carry these trade-offs. Electric cars, for example, are a better alternative to biofuel-based cars.
We also need to be honest about the downsides of these transitions. Farmers in many countries would be hit hard as certain parts of the market disappear, so ensuring they are supported to create new livelihoods is critical. Animal welfare could be (although not inevitably be) further compromised by a shift to higher intensity production.
These innovations will also only improve food security if they’re affordable for people on low incomes. Otherwise, they risk widening global food inequalities, rather than reducing them.
None of these changes are inevitable. In fact, it’s plausible that things move in the opposite direction, and agricultural land starts expanding again. There could be a scramble for land to produce biofuels for aviation or shipping. We could see a pushback against harmful processed foods stymying the development of processing that improves nutritional value, and offers healthier alternatives to current food products. Rollbacks of environmental policies that protect natural lands, meanwhile, could lead to croplands and pasture expanding into vital areas for biodiversity.
But if we can get the transition to an increasingly landless agricultural system right, it could make the 21st Century a turning point in human history. In fact, we could be living in the first century in recent times where we leave the planet with more nature than it had before.
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