Crypto News: Supply Lines: Fake meat reboot

Fewer and healthier ingredients, lower prices and better taste. They're some of the solutions the ailing alternative proteins industry is looking for to revive its fortunes.

Sales of vegan burgers, nuggets or eggs have struggled as rampant food inflation and the cost-of-living crisis force consumers to cut back on premium items. Plus, health concerns about heavily processed products are killing peoples' appetite.

And with venture capital money drying up, the sector's startups are fighting for survival. That's in stark contrast to the investor exuberance and eye-spinning number of new products seen in recent years.

That was like a "gold rush,'' according to Andy Shovel, co-founder of British plant-based meat company THIS.

"There was absolutely no eye on quality for a great deal of brands and products which came into the market in 2019, 2020, 2021," he said at the Future Food-Tech summit in London this week. "People thought that they were gonna get rich quick. And that is a toxic behavior which has now come home to roost."

Some people have tried the faux foods and disliked them, while the prices have been "crazy,'' something that companies are starting to address, Shovel said. Alternative-protein firms also need to diversify more into items that deliver on health and nutrition, he said.

Consumers are still very motivated to eat healthier and with a lower environmental footprint while also improving animal welfare, said Robert Lawson, managing partner of Food Strategy Associates and a former managing director of Quorn.

"Those trends are continuing to grow," he said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference. "The tailwinds are strong, but the headwinds around the price and taste remain."

So what is the industry doing to cater for what shoppers really want?

Companies are introducing new technologies that seek to reduce the list of ingredients. Startups are focusing on novel fats that make plant-based meat juicier, or tinkering with seeds to change the way soy and peas are processed. There are also products being developed that have no additives and use processes like fermentation, according to Fiona Bennie, the managing director of Sustainability Studio at Accenture.

That's giving her optimism about the industry's future.

"It's just phenomenal that the range and the diversity of what's coming through," Bennie said at the food-tech summit. "It just feels like we've only just got started in plant-based."

More Food for Thought

Regenerative agriculture is Big Food's latest climate buzzword, but the industry has been running the risk of greenwashing over the absence of established targets and common definition, the FAIRR investor network recently warned.

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform this week unveiled a framework to provide the industry with a globally aligned approach. It's being endorsed by 33 founding members including Nestle, Mars and PepsiCo.

—Agnieszka de Sousa in London

Lost potential | The world's biggest crop trading houses have a message for the next president of Argentina: Free up soy production and exports, or risk getting left behind by rival suppliers Brazil and the US. Officials from Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, and China's state-owned Cofco were unanimous in their concern over the South American nation's outlook as it heads toward a crucial election next month. "It's very sad for me to see how Argentina has lost influence and relevance in global markets," Pablo Scarafoni, head of commercial operations for Cargill in South America, said last week at a soybean conference in the crop-trading hub of Rosario. (Read full story here).

Wheat, corn and soy surpluses were once a powerful tool of American statecraft. Now other agricultural superpowers are filling the void left by the country's waning exports.
The fall holidays in China are usually boom-time for pork eating, as parties and cooler weather entice households to splurge on the nation's favorite meat. But consumption is falling flat and supplies are ample.
Buyers are shipping grains and oil from further and further away after Russia's invasion of Ukraine disrupted traditional trade routes.
For US corn farmers, the rise of green jet fuel is their best hope of staving off an existential threat.
Egypt is in talks to buy 1 million tons of Russian wheat through a government-to-government deal.
The world's top soy exporter Brazil is at risk of losing ground in key EU markets as limited data will make it hard for traders to prove compliance with forest-protection laws.
A war economy may have put tea leaves in every British pot but it's ruined the fortunes of the beverage in the 21st century.

EU rules to curb pesticides by 50% and fertilizers by 20% by 2030 are unlikely to be law before the end of the European Commission's current mandate in 2024, with war-induced food-supply, price and affordability worries prevailing over green-agriculture goals, Bloomberg Intelligence writes.
Agricultural carbon markets are under appreciated and underdeveloped, but "carbon farming" might change that, according to BloombergNEF.
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