Imagine our lives in 30 years. Nine billion people, all wishing to have a good meal at least every day. We won't be able to do that if we just continue what we do today. We simply will not have enough food for that.
Many people say, that we will need to produce more. More crops, more meat. But is that true? What if we would look into the chain, and make better use of what we already produce? Surprisingly, we are very inefficient in the use of our raw materials. In The Netherlands, we need about ten times the biomass for our daily food (in terms of energy). In addition, we need about ten times the amount as fossil fuels. So, we use up 20 times more resources, than we consume on a daily basis... we can do better than that.
We explore new principles for the production of foods, that allow us to produce much more sustainably, and at the same time can contribute to a tasty and healthy diet. Amazingly, that is possible.
For example, we have developed dry separation techniques, that allow us to produce impure ingredients without any water, with only a few per cent of the energy, retaining much more nutrients and fibre, and that show excellent functionality in food products. We have developed a mild method to structure plant proteins into meat analogues. We are working hard on 3D printing of the same, sustainably produced ingredients. But we also develop ingredients that can deliver better satiety after a meal, to discourage overconsumption.
We find that these developments can contribute to a future in which we simply produce quite enough food for everyone, without having to resort to genetic modification, to produce more raw materials, and thus to stress the soils even more. Use better, not produce more.