Why Silicon Valley Can’t Hack the Future of Food
By Julie Guthman, Fast Company:
“Solutions are the bread and butter of the tech sector, and Silicon Valley has led the way in making our everyday transactions faster, cheaper and more convenient. Recently, though, techies have set their sights on problems far more intractable, complex, and political than data and communications technology, namely the world of food and agriculture. And they have made this foray without genuinely engaging how past introductions of technology in food and agriculture have gone down.
Nowhere is this more clear than in alternative protein innovation, based on biotechnologies aimed toward replacing animal products. They draw on the logic of “substitutionism,” a term that refers to a long term tendency to shift food production away from farms and into factories where food can be made more cheaply and less tied to natural processes.
But it is not at all evident that alternative protein can deliver on its core promise of environmental improvement.
Like all substitutionism, factory or lab production does not escape the need for material resources. Something doesn’t grow from nothing. For starters, you still
need biological inputs either as the base ingredients or to feed the material that is supposed to replicate. While alternative protein entrepreneurs obliquely acknowledge this when they make claims of “plant-based,” they routinely obscure from where all those peas, soy, and mung beans will come and how they will be produced, should those simulacra largely replace animal proteins.”
TAKE ACTION: Ban New GMO Frankenfoods Made with Synthetic Biology (a.k.a “Precision Fermentation”)
This article was originally published in Organic Bytes
- Peppers, Peppers and More Peppers! - August 29, 2024
- Fake Meat’s False Promise - August 22, 2024
- Garlic Herb Roasted Carrots, Potatoes and Green Beans - August 20, 2024