Global need for food to see a 60% rise by 2050

The VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland in a press release has made an estimated forecast that 60 per cent more food will be needed globally by 2050 while only two per cent more agricultural land will be available.

Due to the mounting environmental issues, it seems unlikely that conventional agriculture can solve this problem by increasing efficiency alone, says the release.

According to VTT, the indispensible requirement to generate calories and nutrients supporting a healthy diet to fight under- and mal-nutrition further complicates the situation.

It says, nowadays industrial biotechnology supplies many crucial medicines and chemicals on a routine basis.

Cellular agriculture aims to expand the range of biotechnological products significantly towards commodities that are conventionally produced by agriculture such as milk and leather. Besides, microbes, plants and even animal cells are being developed for producing food, cosmetics, and other materials. These processes bear potential to disrupt the current value chains and substitute unsustainable or unethical production methods.

Academic and commercial interest on cellular products, such as plant cells for food and cosmetics as well as microbes for leather and other materials is on a continuous rise.

“In the field of cellular agriculture at VTT, we focus our research mainly on the development of plant and microbial platforms. Furthermore, systems for cellular products like proteins for food and material applications are already very advanced.