According to the article, Trump is in the doghouse for announcing that he would “exempt from tariffs 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef.”

This political initiative is attempting to address the continued rising beef prices. As discussed in another article on this Substack, according to a February 13, 2026, Food Ingredients First article, ground beef hit $6.69 per pound in December 2025 — up 19.3% year-over-year and 72% since 2020 — with the USDA forecasting a further 6.9% wholesale increase in 2026. Meanwhile, the U.S. cattle herd fell to a 75-year low of 86.2 million head as prolonged drought and animal-borne pandemics gutted supply.

While criticizing President Joe Biden, Trump claimed his plan “will reduce prices for Americans while giving space for our Great American Beef Herd to grow again,” he wrote on Truth Social,” reported Politico.

Not everyone agreed. Pushback was immediate.

Image courtesy of Magnific.com

“The beef inflation numbers coming out in the next round must be really bad,” said one agriculture industry representative, who was granted anonymity to speak about sensitive discussions. “We heard Trump was watching beef prices almost as closely as gas prices at one point.”

What’s the Beef and Where’s the Beef?

Cattle Ranchers and those embedded in the agricultural sector aren’t buying the proposal that reducing or eliminating tariffs will do anything to lower domestic prices. As Politico noted, industry leaders are unsure which countries even have 300,000 metric tons of beef trimmings available.

“Everybody we’re hearing from in the supply chain is like, ‘What extra meat?’” said the source.

In other words, ranchers aren’t just resisting foreign competition, they are pointing out the harder truth: there is no extra beef to be had. Quite literally, where’s the beef?

They are right. Beef is in short supply globally. But, why? Why can’t we just have more cows in the world, make more beef and lower prices?

Let’s get into it.

Federal Reserve graph showing rising U.S. beef prices.

1. Climate and Natural Resources Realities. Droughts around the world - U.S., Australia, and South America- have shrunk herds. So, we are starting from a global herd low point. This is also why other countries don’t have extra beef to sell.

2. Biological Constraints. Cows are mammals, like us. They have a 9-month gestation period, like us. They give birth to one newborn at a time, like us (usually.) So the repopulation process is slow.

3. Not All Cows Are Beef Cows. Some Are Mothers. To maintain a factory line of the mother cows, you can’t sell them for beef. You have to keep them impregnated on a continual basis to churn out their young, the product. So these cows don’t go towards beef production as they are needed in the newborn production line. This furthers the difficulty of expanding the beef supply.

4. Risky Business Model. With a 9-month gestation period and then 17-24 months of growing (with the help of hormones as the natural process is 18-36 months), that means years of feed, labor, drugs, financing costs, land, water, and more. This makes it expensive and risky since Mad Cow disease or screwworm can wipe out herds or global trade wars can wreak havoc. As a result, this means some ranchers just end up getting out of the business altogether, again making it difficult to build up herds.

5. Rising Demand. Global demand is up, but herd sizes, per the above, are down. This stresses the supply even more.

6. Continued Disease and Drought. Disease and droughts aren’t one-time events. They continue perpetually which keeps herd sizes small. Disease in particular is worse as the herd size grows, intuitively working against the rebuilding process. This is also why other countries don’t have extra beef to sell.

Okay, so we see that it is difficult to build up herds from all-time lows. But, if we can get through this difficult moment, can we have big herds again to bring down the prices and, if so, when?

As mentioned above, the production chain is long and expensive, and with inflation looming, prices won’t be coming down any time soon… if they ever do. And that’s the true Catch-22.

Courtesy of Our World in Data

Can We Even Build Herds Up Again?

As explained in a previous article on this Substack, cow herds contribute dramatically to climate change and rising Earth temperatures.

1. Cows Increase Climate Temperatures. Cows are responsible for a large swath of global methane emissions, a greenhouse gas emission much more powerful than carbon dioxide. Per the graph above, while the total greenhouse gas footprint for one kilogram of beef from non-dairy herds is 100 kilograms, methane makes up 49% of its emissions. This directly contributes to rising temperatures.

2. Cows Negatively Impact Our Carbon Sink, Reenforcing Their Impact on Rising Temperatures . Cows are responsible for 41% of the world’s tropical deforestation, thus limiting the carbon sink potential of the planet, and thereby again, contributing to rising temperatures.

3. Cows Require a Disproportionate Use of Natural Resources like Land and Water. Cows require excessive amounts of land and water (460 gallons of water used for just a single hamburger, inclusive of watering crops for feed per the U.S. Geological Survey) from a planet short on both due to a population projected to grow by 20% by 2050 and climate change impacting water supplies.

Thus, we’re screwed.

While requiring large amounts of water, cows push up global temperatures. Growing herds mean driving up temperatures which then create more droughts. Drought is what got us here in the first place as herds and feed crops were decimated by not having enough water during excessive heatwaves. This resulted in rising beef prices given the smaller supply and the rising demand. Trying to increase the herds will just put us back in the cycle of more higher temperatures, and then more droughts and more decimated herds, and so on and so on.

If we are caught in a vicious downward spiral of wanting more of the thing that creates less of what we want, what do we do?

A UN Environment Programme image showing how one cow with the cultivated meat process at maturity (Innovation!! What’s more American than that?!), once cow could feed an entire country. This same cow nows feed 5 people.

Now What Do We Do? It’s Spending, Stupid.

The most logical step is to not be so reliant on beef and to diversify the protein supply chain so that it is more resilient and more plentiful. Diversifying the protein supply will bring down prices, mitigate rising climate temperatures and provide more supply for better food security.

So how can we diversify the protein supply chain so it is less dependent on the resource-heavy cow, bring down prices and continue to feed the planet?

Invest in innovation. No country in the world innovates like the United States. Our realitvely open markets and open society structure puts us at an incredible advatage to succeed with innovation, as we have always done in the past. It is odd that we would be slow to innovate, or even against innovation in this case, on something as critical as our food supply.

We need to put capital investment (philanthropic, government, and VC) into a diversified protein supply chain, and the technologies that support more efficient farming. And we need to to do it now. In short, we need to finance food fast.

-Invest in plant-based, fermented and cultivated proteins to provide an alternative to the resource-intensive middleman. NASA has already shown interest in funding some of these advancements.

-Invest in hybrid products blending meat with umami vegetables like mushrooms for a meat-tasting burger made with half the meat. This is an easy, win-win solution.

-Invest in farmers to rewild their land, at least in part, rather than graze animals, while also growing more plant proteins. This will help us rebuild our carbon sink, bring down rising temperatures will secure the livelihoods of ranchers..

-Invest in the AI technology to render farming more efficient in our strange new world: vertical farms, methods for reducing food waste (such as more cold chain storage), and technologies enabling less pesticide use for healthier and nutritious soil that yields healthier and nutritious food are just a few of the innovations that can move the needle.

-Invest (through tax dollar subsidies) in the Meat and Dairy Giants to refit their production facilities to scale these new innovations. These corporations already have your tax dollars via extensive subsidies ($38 billion U.S. yearly, although in extreme drought years I expect it to be more) to prop up the current system that isn’t working. So stop subsidizing what isn’t working and start funding innovation that will lessen the extreme pressure that our current protein system puts on our climate and, thus, on us.

Although no longer called Lab Meat, but now called Cultivated Meat, the process can a) erradicate the need for huge doses of antibiotics in herd animals, b) lower pandemic risk to people from sick animals, c) diminish large amounts of land and water use by animals and the land and water given over to growing food to feed them, d) dramatically reduce methane from animals and e) feed more people. It’s an obvious win and doesn’t replace our current system. It complements it so we have enough food to feed people, thus avoiding social unrest. Image courtesy of Magnific.com

In short, as a spring on the classical political slogan goes: “It’s spending, stupid.” It’s time to spend big on diversified protein innovation in order to have more protein options or pay the price of more heatwaves, food insecurity and larger food inflation.

As the Politico article illustrates, it’s just not as simple as trying to get more beef and plugging a shortage with foreign beef that is also in short supply. We are out of options. We can no longer only feed the world protein solely with resource -intensive, inefficient animal factories that are a massive contributor to climate change.

This isn’t a choice. This is an imperative.

Our last hope is to invest in food innovation, and fast. If food insecurity takes hold, civil unrest will follow and it’s a completely different kind of ballgame from there on out.

This article was written by me and AI corrected the typos.

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For press and consulting inquiries, you can reach me at elysabeth@ElysabethAlfano.com .

For my article Can Americans Even Afford a Burger Anymore?, click here. For my article, Our Food System is Fragile, Fractured and F-Bombed, click here.

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan, and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday.

Elysabeth

#

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

This Substack goes dark on all major holiday weeks and if the Cubs are in the World Series.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

I parked with my eye kitty-corner to the station escalator waiting for her arrival. Then I opened my still-warm burrito: chicken, rice, cheese, onions, tomatoes, spices. I took one bite and thought, ‘Huh, I remember this as tasting better.’

I took another bite and I bit on something that was an undeniable mash of joint, knuckle, and/or cartilage that made my stomach contract and my gag reflex kick in. It reminded me why I never ate drumsticks. I didn’t like having to eat around all those ligaments, remnants of something living, moving, breathing.

I put it behind me. I had swallowed other thoughts before about what I was really eating. I had made mediocre peace pretending I didn’t know what was in that burrito, nugget, or salad. Oddly, salad was the easiest when pretending: it usually looked all rosy-white and pristine. But sometimes I could see those red veins in those processed chicken chunks, revealing what I really already knew in the pit of my stomach. But I was a resilient soldier eating chicken like a good girl because chicken is as all-American as that other “don’t ask, don’t tell” food: hot dogs.

I would poke around the chicken with my fork, distinctly off-put, but continue eating around it, moving on…because chicken is healthy, right?

So, per my habit, I forged on, bringing the burrito back up to my mouth for a third bite, but the smell was suddenly overwhelming. All I can say is that it smelled like rotting flesh, stewing with blood and feces and oil, and my body couldn’t do anything but start to throw up. I whipped myself out of the car and threw up in the garbage can, luckily available right next to the car.

It was quick and visceral and a total expulsion.

I was immediately physically fine afterwards. No lasting food poisoning or sickness, just a rapid, complete rejection of having that smell, that taste, that experience, that feeling anywhere near me.

Although physically fine, as I gained my composure, my brain had registered the experience and I wondered, “What the heck was that? What just happened here? What is going on?”

Our World In Data showing the scale of the chicken problem which is its main reason for unhealthy birds leading to unhealthy outcomes for people.

Fast forward and a study of 2,117 U.S. adults taking GLP- by the Acosta Group in April of 2026 found that they were buying 31% more fresh chicken. As GLP-1 users flock to this kind of protein, it raises the question: is chicken really all that healthy?

It begs the question, what is really going on?

There’s a lot of misinformation about what meat is and isn’t. Let’s take look.

Disease

1.Salmonella: 31% of ground chicken has Salmonella according to a study by Consumer Reports in 2022.

“CR found salmonella in 31 percent, or 23 of the 75 samples of ground chicken it tested. Nine of the 25 products CR tested from Perdue had salmonella. Samples from Trader Joe’s and Wholesome Pantry, which source their chicken from Perdue, also had salmonella, as did some samples from Isernio’s, Walmart and Whole Foods. Overall, no single brand stood out as being statistically better or worse than another, and CR found no difference between ground chicken from organic and conventionally raised birds. (Emphasis my own.)

All of the salmonella from the ground chicken samples was resistant to at least one antibiotic, and 78 percent were resistant to multiple drugs. People handling raw meat contaminated with antibiotic-resistant bacteria could get sick with serious infections that can be hard to treat. More than 212,000 people each year are sickened with antibiotic-resistant salmonella in food, and 70 die, according to the CDC.”

2. Feces. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) sued the USDA over fecal matter in 48% of chicken in 2019.

Poultry Slaughter Procedures, a USDA training video, reveals that the chicken slaughtering process ends with carcasses soaking in cold water—”fecal soup”—for up to one hour before being packaged for consumers. The Physicians Committee obtained this video through the Freedom of Information Act.

Fecal matter means the E. coli bacteria is on the meat, and cutting it means that it is then on thaeknives. Washing it means that it is then splattered about the kitchen. Yes, cooking it thoroughly is a way to eradicate it, but it’s good to know what you are dealing with to see if you really want to eat…something with fecal matter.

Right about now, someone usually says, “But there is fecal matter in lettuce, so there!” Yes, but that fecal matter is from animal agriculture manure run-offs into our waterways and that can get onto our veggies. We are back to the basic truth that animals go to the bathroom and when 80 billion factory animals (78.5 billion chickens) don’t have indoor plumbing, their bathroom is our land and water, which ultimately gets directly or indirectly into our food.

3. Avian Flu and Pandemics.

According to the United Nations (UN), the top two reasons for the next pandemic are related to the intensification of animal factories. This makes sense. Per Our World in Data, there are 78.5 billion chickens in factories-a frightening ratio of 10 birds for every human on earth. Animals living beak to snout in their own feces are, of course, a breeding ground for disease.

The NIH confirms the transmission of avian flu from birds to humans and humans to humans and has concerns that this could lead to a deadly flu epidemic such as the Spanish Flu. Many Asians have died from this and globally, the World Health Organization has recorded 478 human deaths out of 997 confirmed cases of avian influenza A (H5N1) across 25 countries since 2003, reflecting a case-fatality rate of roughly 48%. Most human infections occur via direct contact with infected animals or contaminated environments. And with so many birds (78.5 billion), direct contact with a bird by factory workers is inevitable.

Ugh, who wants another COVID?

This images shows the scale and density issue of chickenn farming. Courtesy World animal Protection.

4. Antibiotic Resistance. Think that chicken is clean-label? What about the antibiotics and the filler/additives listed below that aren’t listed on the label.

The biggest use of all antibiotics on the market is by the livestock industry for the production of meat and dairy. “Of all antibiotics sold in the United States, approximately 80% are sold for use in animal agriculture; about 70% of these are ‘medically important’ (i.e., from classes important to human medicine),” notes the National Library of Medicine.

It goes on to say that, “Antibiotics are administered to animals in feed to marginally improve growth rates and to prevent infections, a practice projected to increase dramatically worldwide over the next 15 years. There is growing evidence that antibiotic resistance in humans is promoted by the widespread use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in animals. Resistant bacteria are transmitted to humans through direct contact with animals, by exposure to animal manure, through consumption of undercooked meat, and through contact with uncooked meat or surfaces meat has touched.”

These factors, among others, have led to a situation in which antimicrobial resistance is rising at an alarming rate, threatening our ability to treat common infectious diseases, resulting in prolonged illness, higher medical costs, and increased mortality. Some experts note that we are headed towards a 70% antibiotic inefficacy rate. “One in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections causing common infections in people worldwide in 2023 were resistant to antibiotic treatments, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report. Between 2018 and 2023, antibiotic resistance rose in over 40% of the monitored antibiotics with an average annual increase of 5%-15%.”

This spells trouble.

5. Increased Climate Temps Mean More Disease. “There is recent research from Oxford that the diseases that you get from chicken are going up with Climate Change. Because [with the increased heat] the bacteria that you get from chicken is increasing, so you have food safety issues,” states Cambridge Professor Paul Behrens. It stands to reason. Remember, we are talking about 78.5 billion birds in limited space in factories.

The scale is tremendous, almost incomprehensible. Americans eat almost 270 pounds of meat a year, so the math quickly adds up to such a massive number of animals that disease is rampant.

This image from Our World in Data shows the nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture coming in large part from intensive chicken farming. According to the National Library of Medicine, “Animal agriculture emissions contributed ~30% to the global anthropogenic N₂O emissions in the decade 2010-2019. Cattle contributed the most (60%) to the increase, followed by poultry (19%), pigs (15%), and sheep and goats (6%).”

Processed with Fillers, Additives and Illness

1. Fillers and Additives. According to Consumer Reports from June 23, 2026, “Chickens are injected with a solution (brine) containing salt or sodium ingredients, such as sodium phosphate,” and, “Brines often contain other ingredients, such as sugar, natural flavors (which aren’t much different from artificial flavors), and carrageenan (to help with moisture retention). Some research has linked carrageenan to the development of inflammatory bowel disease and ulcerative colitis.”

Don’t be fooled by the short ingredient list…that chicken is processed and those birds are sick.

2. Sick, Unhealthy Birds. There is so much to discuss here that I will let AI sum it up best, with its links to sources, to deliver just the facts: In industrial broiler chicken farms, up to 90% of birds suffer from detectable walking difficulties or leg deformities, 25% to 70% develop chemical skin/hock burns from ammonia-soaked litter, and nearly 100%of egg-laying hens or specific flocks undergo beak trimming. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Leg Deformities and Lameness

• 90% of fast-growing broiler chickens display an abnormal or impaired gait (difficulty walking) by the time they reach slaughter age.

• 19% to 30% of these birds suffer from moderate-to-severe clinical lameness, often leaving them unable to reach food and water easily. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Ammonia and Contact Burns (Hock/Breast Burns)

• 25% to 70% of commercial meat chickens show varying degrees of footpad dermatitis or hock burns (chemical skin erosion caused by prolonged contact with uric acid and ammonia in wet litter). [1, 2]

• Investigative spot-checks on standard intensive farms reveal that specific low-welfare or crowded houses can push hock and skin burn rates above 70%. [1, 2]

Sitting and Inactivity

• 75% to 90% of a modern broiler chicken’s final weeks are spent sitting down because their artificially heavy breasts outpace the strength of their skeletal and leg structure. [1, 2]

Beak Trimming (Cutting)

• Nearly 100% of intensive commercial egg-laying hens (and many breeder flocks) are subjected to beak trimming (infrared or blade beak-cutting) as chicks to prevent cannibalism and feather pecking induced by extreme crowding. [1]

Respiratory Issues

• While precise whole-industry percentages vary by ventilation quality, elevated indoor ammonia levels frequently exceed recommended limits (10–25 ppm), causing widespread mucous membrane irritation, chronic respiratory stress, and high vulnerability to airsacculitis across entire enclosed flocks. [1, 2]

Eating sick animals is hardly the basis for a model of health.

Birds in animal factories. Courtesy of Animal Equality.

Worse Welfare Standards Means More Disease

Industrial chicken farming is helping the spread of Campylobacter, the world’s most common bacterial cause of diarrhea, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of Oxford’s Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research found that as chicken farming has grown, the exchange of Campylobacter strains between wild birds and chickens has increased sharply.

“As the chicken population has exploded, they’ve increasingly picked up strains from different wild birds and become a cauldron of bacterial evolution,” says senior author Professor Sam Sheppard of the University of Oxford.

“Lots of strains come together and hybridise. We do not want that, because that’s where new Frankenstein monster bugs emerge.”

The study also suggests that large, crowded chicken farms can act like “pathogen sponges,” allowing bacteria from different sources to gather, multiply, and spread.

So, is that chicken really the healthy option? Maybe not.

But then what do we do? If chicken isn’t the answer to everything, now what? The world isn’t going to stop eating meat, obviously, so what do we do?

Here’s Harvard Medical School’s suggestion for getting non-sick, disease-free, lean protein, even if you choose to do it only some of the time. Or keep doing what you are doing. Either way, your choice. But at least now you know.

Image from Our World in Data showing the daily meat consumption per person in 2023. For the US it is 3/4 pound per day on average, or 340g.

#

For press and consulting inquiries, you can reach me at elysabeth@ElysabethAlfano.com .

For my article Can Americans Even Afford a Burger Anymore?, click here. For my article, Our Food System is Fragile, Fractured and F-Bombed, click here.

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan, and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday.

Elysabeth

#

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

This Substack goes dark on all major holiday weeks and if the Cubs are in the World Series.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

An October 2025 report from members of MI6 and MI5 as part of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee was buried by the UK government for being ‘too negative.’ Hiding the facts didn’t work, and the report was finally made public under duress in January of this year.

The report was officially published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and was in collaboration with the Joint Intelligence Committee, which oversees the country’s security services in addition to providing input across government. The results of this report might make one wonder if MI6 and MI5 have me on speed dial. At the very least, it might make one think that some of the highest ranking British intelligence officials are reading this Substack.

Here’s why.

Credit: Laurie Nevay, Secrect Intelligence Service Building, SIS, the headquarters for MI6. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The report states that the UK faces “national security risks from ecosystem collapse,” and that “biodiversity loss is a global threat… including crop failures, intensified natural disasters and infectious disease outbreaks.

“Ecosystem degradation is occurring across all regions and ecosystems. The average size of monitored wildlife populations declined by 73% between 1970 and 2020. Populations of vertebrate species have declined by an average of 68% since 1970. Freshwater ecosystem species populations have shown the largest losses, falling 84% in the same period.

“The rate of extinction is tens to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. It suggests that a sixth mass extinction may be underway.

“With current trends, global ecosystem degradation is highly likely to continue to 2050 and beyond. There is a high degree of uncertainty around the timing and pathways of ecosystem degradation, given the number and complexity of the drivers involved.

“Food production is the most significant cause of terrestrial biodiversity loss. As the global population grows, reaching 9.7 billion by 2050, the impact of food production on natural systems will intensify and it will become even more challenging to produce sufficient food sustainably [due to the natural resources needed to produce food, which are being destroyed by the same system].”

Our World in Data chart showing that 41% of the global tropical deforestation is from the beef industry.

The impacts from the above Catch-22 are that, “Migration will rise as development gains begin to reverse and more people are pushed into poverty, and food and water insecurity. A one-percentage increase in food insecurity in a population compels 1.9% more people to migrate.

“Serious and organised crime (SOC) will look to exploit and gain control over scarce resources. More people pushed into poverty will mean more opportunities for SOC to exploit (for example, people trafficking and black markets in scarce food, pharmaceuticals, and critical minerals).

“Non-state actors including terrorist groups will have more opportunities resulting from political instability – for example, acting as mercenaries or pseudo-governments. They may gain control over scarce resources.

“State threats become more severe as some states become more exposed than others to food and water insecurity risks.

“Pandemic risk will increase as biodiversity degrades, people move between countries and transfer of novel diseases between species becomes more likely.

“Economic insecurity becomes more likely. Nature is a finite asset which underpins the global economy. It would take resources of 1.6 Earths to sustain the world’s current levels of consumption.”

Our World in Data graph showing the disproportionate natural resources needed to get protein from animals. 25kg of feed is needed to get 1kg of beef. This is otherwise known as a bad investment, unless you are an investor willing to invest $2.50 to get $.10 back. If this is the case, you’ll be out of money soon, just as we will be out of natural resources soon if we don’t start innovating for a more efficient way to get protein.

It goes on to say, “The total annual value of ecosystem services to the UK was £87 billion in 2022 (3% of GDP).” Thus, the impact is not only on those thrown into poverty and food insecurity, but on the economy as a whole.

There is more. “Geopolitical competition will increase as countries compete for scarce resources including arable land, productive waters, safe transit routes, and critical minerals.

“Political polarisation and instability will grow in food- and water-insecure areas and as populations become more vulnerable to natural disasters. Disinformation will increase.

“Conflict and military escalation will become more likely, both within and between states, as groups compete for arable land and food and water resources. Existing conflicts will be exacerbated.”

Further, it states that the, “Ecosystem degradation or collapse will challenge the UK’s food security.

“The UK relies on global markets for its food and for fertiliser. The UK imports 40% of its food from overseas, with over 25% coming from Europe. The UK is heavily reliant on imports for fresh fruit, vegetables and sugar. Animal farming at current levels is unsustainable without imports – soy from South America makes up 18% of produced animal feed. Nearly 50% of packaged products contain imported palm oil. The UK is not self-sufficient in fertiliser – for both nitrogen and phosphorus it is partially reliant on imports. Global phosphorus production is dominated by China and Morocco.

“The UK is unable to be food self-sufficient at present, based on current diets and prices. Full self-sufficiency would require very substantial price increases for consumers, as well as improvements in efficiency, waste reduction and resilience across the food system, including agricultural production, food processing, distribution and consumption. The UK does not have enough land to feed its population and rear livestock: a wholesale change in consumer diets would be required. It would also require greater investment in the agri-food sector so that it is capable of innovating in sustainable food production.” In other words, the UK can’t risk such global political tensions due to dwindling natural resources caused by an inefficient food system.

“UK food production is vulnerable to ecosystem degradation and collapse. Biodiversity loss, alongside climate change, is amongst the biggest medium- to long-term threat to domestic food production – through depleted soils, loss of pollinators, and drought and flood conditions. Ecosystem collapse would place the UK’s agriculture system under great stress, leaving it struggling to pivot to the new approaches and technologies that would be required to maintain food supply.” In a bizarre, unfortunate twist, the way we create food today disproportionately uses natural resources, destabilizing the ability to create food in the future.

Our World in Data chart showing that of 76% of the the earth’s land is habitable. 45% of that is given to agriculture. 80% of that agriculture land is given to animals which returns only 17% of our calories needed. This is more bad investing, but helpful to understand how our limited natural resources are used so that we can strategize other ways to receive protein that are more efficient. The best way to do this is to cut out the expensive middle man: the animal. The silver lining here is we also see that 16% of our agricultural land is given to growing plants, including plant proteins, and this provides us with 83% of our calories. This is known as a good investment.

“Ecosystem degradation or collapse affecting major food-producing regions would increase resource scarcity and drive up global food prices. There is high uncertainty about how this would play out. The geopolitical response, as well as the extent and timing of ecosystem collapse, would determine whether and how quickly global markets are able to respond. Collapse of production in two or more breadbasket regions would almost certainly significantly drive up global food prices, potentially limiting the UK’s ability to import food, impacting household food security and restricting diets.

“Significant disruption to international markets as a result of ecosystem degradation or collapse will put UK food security at risk. Global scarcity would drive greater state intervention in supply chains, and securitisation of and conflict over food and water.

“Some technologies exist that could help, but need significant research, development and investment to have a chance of working at scale. Protecting and restoring ecosystems is easier, cheaper and more reliable. The time required to develop and scale technologies is unknown without further research. Both existing (plant pre-breeding, regenerative agriculture) and emerging technologies (AI, lab-grown protein [known as cultivated meat], insect protein) offer potential solutions.”

While I haven’t written about the rise in organized crime, black markets for critical food resources, increased human trafficking and more climate change refugees due to food shortages, here are links to my articles that do investigate many of the themes of this report:

Food inflation, pandemic risk, antibiotic risk, insect protein, investing in food solutions: plant-based, hybrid, fermented and cultivated proteins for both food security and biodiversity loss/climate change reversal, our food system as a biodiversity loss driver, thus further putting our food system at risk, reversing biodiversity loss with rewilding , rising healthcare costs and the implications, national security risks, growing population with diminishing natural resources due in major part to an inefficient food system, destabilizing economic impact and more.

For the full UK report, see here. Cambridge Professor Paul Behrens discusses the report here. (10-10:30 and 14-18:00 discuss solutions to bolster food security. Spoiler alert: all three revolve around addressing animal agriculture and, no, eating chicken isn’t the answer.)

Also, one thing is clear to me from this UK Joint Intelligence Committee report. It doesn’t matter if nations like the U.S. and Canada could potentially be food sufficient because the increase in global food and climate refugees to these “secure” places makes them just as vulnerable to destabilization.

This is why my next article will be Financing Food Fast. We can no longer have our heads in the sand.

Just ask MI6.

Our World in Data Chart showing the methane release from agriculture, which as we know from above charts, is primarily animals. The release is actually more than shown when it is combined with food waste and land-use change and forestry, which are separate lines in the chart.

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For press and consulting inquiries, you can reach me at elysabeth@ElysabethAlfano.com .

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan, and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday.

Elysabeth

#

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

This Substack goes dark on all major holiday weeks and if the Cubs are in the World Series.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

I believe it is a misconception, popularized by startup stories like Uber and Tesla, that the startup companies necessarily win the day of any system shift. Usually, the startups do the innovating, but they are then acquired by industry titans. In the case of the food industry, I believe it will be the legacy food giants that will scale the innovation to actually feed the world in these natural resource-restricted times.

These legacy food companies have the infrastructure, supply chain logistics and distribution channels, not to mention deeper pockets, to grab the growing protein market which will need to be diversified in order to feed our expanding population.

When all is said and done, I believe it will be the meat and dairy giants that make the big bucks on protein diversification.

And that’s fine with me.

Some might be disappointed that an industry with a significant trail of pain and destruction- deforestation, water pollution, air pollution, animal suffering, triple whammy human disease; heart disease, diabetes and cancer, animal disease, human antibiotic resistance risk, climate change impact, links to erectile dysfunction, and human rights abuses with both adults and children-will ultimately benefit from the shift.

I get it. That is a hard list to read and I am not suggesting that one should make peace with it.

But are we moving forward or looking backward? If it’s the former, then let’s get on with it already.

Courtesy of Magnific.com

Who Killed The Electric Car, um, I Mean the Plant-based Burger?

It is a strange phenomenon that sometimes the industry that stands to benefit the most from progress is the industry that thwarts that progress. However, as we all know, it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks and change can sometimes be painfully slow. Perhaps this is why the animal agriculture industry is for the most part still living in its 1960s iteration of the mass factory animal husbandry.

But in 1960 the world had 3 billion people. It now has over 8 billion. The population has grown by more than 160% and the demand for meat has grown along with it. However, our natural resources of land and water, with animal agriculture as the predominant user of both, have not grown. This means we have to make more food with fewer inputs. As discussed in previous articles, this is becoming increasingly less feasible with the input-heavy and input-inefficient ‘animal for protein’ model.

Perhaps the industry isn’t solely responsible for the lag in funding or implementing protein innovation. Stockholders demand high returns that can often only come once an innovation has been established and crystallized as critical to consumers. However, the path to progress in this area has precedent in that the US government already subsidizes the industry to stay afloat and, under the previous administration, funding was established, though has since been reversed, to invest in precision and biomass protein fermentation, and cultivated meat. In other words, asking the government for funding is not a new path for this industry. I believe they could successfully garner funding to help mitigate the costs of implementing new technologies, and thus keep their shareholders happy.

However, the meat and dairy industries to my knowledge aren’t pushing for funding for the future of food, which, according to BloombergNEF, is about to undergo a monumental shift. In many ways, their strategic PR and social media campaigns directed against diversified proteins are pushing to avoid adapting the food system to the future and keep us in the 1960s.

So where does that leave us?

An image from Our World in Data showing the water pollution and land and freshwater usage of the food and agriculture sector.

Whomever owns Food Tech Has The Power

There is a day of reckoning coming, I believe, with droughts and rising temperatures curtailing crop output for animal feed and the animals themselves, thus driving inflation and food insecurity. It may be that the necessity to mitigate rising food prices and food losses, not vision, is what catapults us into the future of food.

With food insecurity, not just food inflation, on the rise, it becomes clear that whomever owns novel, efficient food technology holds important political cards. How hard can you really negotiate with your trading partner if they control your food shipments? Not very much.

We see that food Innovation is an issue of national security, and, thus, perhaps a priority for government funding. New studies reveal that MI6 believes it is.

Courtesy of Magnific.com

M&A Is the (American) Answer

So how do we get novel protein innovation out of the testing phase and scaled for commodity-level pricing for the benefit of humanity while keeping shareholders and industry titans happy?

I encourage the animal agriculture industry to call off the policy police pushing anti-innovation with things like bans on cultivated meat (in America, the land of business and innovation!) and get to the business of making money from mergers and acquisitions.

Thanks, in part, to those successfully orchestrated PR and social media campaigns claiming that plant-based burgers are ultra-processed but that meat burgers are a bastion of health (comical), the anti-innovation push and an obsession with AI investing, the protein innovation sector is at an all-time low . It is possible to grab the emerging technologies of fermented proteins, hybrid products and cultivated meat on the cheap from the startups that vetted the technologies. Then, using the power they already wield so well in Washington, the leading meat and dairy companies could lobby to obtain subsidies for retooling or refitting machinery for scaling the new, resource-efficient innovations, rather than lobbying for innovation bans.

Such a reversal of strategy could make them the (money making) heroes of the day. It’s the most American thing they could do.

Courtesy of Magnific.com

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For press and consulting inquiries, you can reach me at elysabeth@ElysabethAlfano.com .

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan, and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday.

Elysabeth

#

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

This Substack goes dark on all major holiday weeks and if the Cubs are in the World Series.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

As you have probably heard, extended heat waves in Europe have pushed temps to over 104°F in some countries and have accounted for 10,000 excess human deaths in June. Unfortunately, there seems to be no end in sight as July is also proving to be a stewing heat trap.

Of course, this has been awful news for farmers, as well. A report by Coceral, the trade organization representing the cereals, oilseeds, rice and olive oil sectors, forecasts that the EU crop will be down 8%, as a result of recent heatwaves. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit predicts a loss of “around €2 billion for grains such as wheat, barley and maize alone. This falls to around €1.8 billion after accounting for improved harvest prospects in a few countries, such as Bulgaria, that escaped the worst of the heat. Wider costs of the heatwave, such as lost livestock and vegetable crops, are not included in this estimate.”

Benoît Merlo, a farmer in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of France, said, “I’ve been working on my farm for ten years to make it more resilient through cover crops, crop rotations and species adapted to hotter and drier conditions. But with temperatures exceeding 38°C for weeks on end, everything is breaking down. I’m expecting yield losses of at least 50 per cent, or even 70 per cent, for certain crops, such as soya. We’re no longer heading for a crash - we’re already there.”

And it isn’t just crops that suffer.

AI generated image.

According to the Good Food Institute, Europe, “Heat stress can cause breathing and heart problems, dehydration, weaker immunity, reduced fertility, and death [for farm animals]. During the late June heatwave, extreme heat killed 2.5 million to 3 million broiler chickens in France. Clement Blanchard, a chicken farmer in Pays de la Loire, France’s second largest poultry region, told Reuters he lost about 700 chickens over a few days, compared with one or two per day normally.

“Climate change also increases the likelihood of epidemics affecting farmed animals. On top of heat stress depleting immune systems, rising temperatures and changes to ecosystems create optimal conditions for diseases to spread – and lead to greater antibiotic use in meat and dairy production.” As we know from my previous Food Systems Strategy with Elysabeth article on growing antimicrobial resistance in humans due in part to excessive antibiotics in factory animals, more antibiotic use in animals due to rising temperatures is another heightened risk for people.

Extreme Heat Kills Crops and Animals. Dead Crops and Dead Animals = Inflation

As we saw with the drought in the Western United States earlier this decade and as noted in an early article on Food Systems Strategy with Elysabeth, entitled, “Can Americans Even Afford A Burger Anymore?”, ground beef hit $6.69 per pound in December 2025 — up 19.3% year-over-year and 72% since 2020 — with the USDA forecasting a further 6.9% wholesale increase in 2026. Further, the U.S. cattle herd fell to a 75-year low of 86.2 million head as years of drought and animal-borne pandemics impacted supply, according to a February 13, 2026, Food Ingredients First article. In addition, if the animals do survive this year’s heat and drought, their production of milk and quality of meat is much less due to stress and being less likely to eat in extreme heat. Again, this adds to food inflation.

Even before this heatwave, the general math for food animals is already bad. Animals are inefficient calorie converters. Cows are 2% energy-efficient which means that only 2% of calories in animal feed inputs are effectively converted to animal meat for food. The remaining 98% of inputs are lost. Pigs are 8.6% efficient, and chickens are 13% efficient. Even with chickens, 87% of inputs are lost. This is why 80% of our agricultural land used for animals only yields 18% of our calories. We use the land to grow the animal feed and then we lose most of it in the conversion. Meanwhile, what is lost in conversion could have been crops grown to feed directly to people.

AI generated image

So, it’s already bad math to give high-protein, high-fiber crops to animals who require massive amounts of land, water, time, and even more crops, when we could simply grow crops to feed directly, and efficiently, to people. With extreme heat and droughts, the bad math keeps getting worse.

Extreme temperatures destroy corn and soy crops, up to 70% according to farmer Merlo above. These crops are used as animal feed and their destruction is going to make this already expensive protein source even more so. The lack of feed and the diminishing number of animals in the system is going to push food inflation for years to come and, hopefully, make us question why we were giving food with protein and fiber to animals instead of people to begin with.

So how can we get extreme temperatures and, consequently, a significant driver of food inflation, under control? Let’s look agriculture’s impact on rising temperatures and what we can do about it.

What Came First: Severe Heat Temps or a Fractured Food System?

Here is a bright light. Our food system is both the cause of (in part) and the solution to (in part) climate change. And making a shift to the food system could help us get extreme temperatures under control. Hmmm, “How’s that?” you say? Let’s take a look.

Our food system creates 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs), per the United Nations Environment Programme. Animal agriculture is responsible for 60% of that, or a total of 18% of the global emissions. And why would our animal-protein manufacturing be responsible for such a large chunk of our total greenhouse gas emissions?

Image from Our World in Data showing that the agriculture sector is the largest emitter of methane.

For starters, animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss, and is responsible for 41% of the world’s tropical deforestation. Why so much? Remember, as discussed, animals are terrible calorie converters. Cows are 2% energy-efficient which means that only 2% of calories in animal feed inputs are effectively converted to animal products. The remaining 98% of inputs are lost. So we have to give them lots of food/crops for an extended period just to get that 2% of food output. This means cutting down trees to grow crops (no, not for people) to give to animals. Since the animals only give us 2% to 13% back on our investment of crops, we need to cut down more trees to grow more crops to get the output of food necessary. That massive deforestation is a major driver of what is driving excessive temperatures around the world.

Furthermore, animal agriculture is also responsible for 32% of the world’s methane emissions. This is primarily from the supply chain of cows and sheep, as well as pigs, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

In short, with animal protein playing such a large factor in the elements that create higher temperatures, deforestation and methane emission, we won’t significantly improve our ability to reduce temperatures if we don’t address this cow in the room. Tom Lancaster, land, food and farming analyst at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) said, “With clear, scientific proof that climate change was to blame for severity of the June heatwave, these losses are just a portent of the future impacts we will see if we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero and bring our climate back into balance.”

So with the imperative of reducing heat temperatures that negatively impact our food system and drive food inflation, how do we go about doing this so that we can mitigate food inflation?

Our World in Data image showing that agriculture is the largest emitter or nitrous oxide .

It’s Spending, Stupid

The most logical step is to address the largest sectors that emit the emissions that drive rising temperatures: agriculture (including waste and deforestation/land-use change for crops), energy, transportation and building materials. This article addresses the largest components of agriculture contributing to rising temperatures, the animal component.

(Spoiler alert: Let’s first be clear about what we are talking about. I am not saying that we get rid of animal agriculture I am saying, look around you. Temperatures are too high and this isn’t working for us. What is the main factor in agriculture, one of the found major drivers of climate change, that is causing this (animals) and how can we address this?)

We can address the animal agriculture portion of the climate change pie by diversifying the protein supply chain so it isn’t so dependent on one very expensive middleman (the animal) that is consuming our natural resources (land/tress for animal crops for feed) such that these resources (land/trees) no longer work for us as carbon sinks, mitigating increasing temperatures. We can reverse that trend by rewilding the land and not using it for animals. Fewer animals also means less methane emissions. Rewilding land requires us to come up with alternatives to supplement the animal protein that would have been produced on that land.

So how can we diversify the protein supply chain so it is less dependent on a resource-heavy middleman and continue to feed the planet?

Invest. Put capital investment (philanthropic, government, and VC) into a diversified protein supply chain, and the technologies that support more efficient farming.

-Invest in plant-based, fermented and cultivated proteins to provide an alternative to the resource-intensive middleman. NASA has already shown interest in funding some of these advancements.

-Invest in hybrid products blending meat with umami vegetables like mushrooms for a meat-tasting burger made with half the meat. This is an easy, win-win solution.

-Invest in farmers to rewild their land and cease graze animals, while also growing more plant proteins.

-Invest in the AI technology to render farming more efficient in our strange new world: vertical farms, methods for reducing food waste such as more cold chain storage, and technologies enabling less pesticide use for healthier and nutritious soil that yields healthier and nutritious food are just a few of the innovations that can move the needle.

-Invest in the Meat and Dairy Giants. Yes, even them. They already have your tax dollars via extensive subsidies ($38 billion US yearly, although in extreme drought years I expect it to be more) to prop up the current system that isn’t working. So stop subsidizing what isn’t working and start funding innovation that will lessen the extreme pressure that our current protein system puts on our climate and, thus, on us.

In short, as the classic banner stated during previous political elections: “It’s spending, stupid.” It’s time to spend big on diversified protein innovation or pay the price of more heatwaves, food insecurity and larger food inflation.

Business as usual in food production is no longer a viable option.

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For press and consulting inquiries, you can reach me at elysabeth@ElysabethAlfano.com .

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan, and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday.

Elysabeth

#

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

This Substack goes dark on all major holiday weeks and if the Cubs are in the World Series.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV

Why would the food system ever change? We walk into Costco and everything looks fine…or is it?

As we saw during COVID, the global food system, even in wealthy countries such as the U.S., fell apart quickly.

Let’s take a deeper dive.

Courtesy iStock

Food: A Current Snapshot.

Our global food system accounts for 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Included in that is food waste, which constitutes 8%, and animal agriculture, which accounts for 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. 32% of the world’s methane emissions come primarily from the supply chain of cows and sheep, but also from pigs, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It would be hard to significantly impact climate change without addressing a number as large as 32%, especially since methane is one of the more powerful emissions.

While cow burps are often cited as a source of methane as the jokes commonly note, a substantial portion of these emissions is also due to deforestation required to grow crops for animal feed. These animals need food in addition to other critical resources such as land, water, and time.

Ironically, we often think we cut down trees to grow food filled with protein and fiber for people. But we don’t. We deforest the planet and destroy biodiversity, in part, to grow food for a resource-masticating middleman: animals. We don’t feed them once; we, of course, feed them for their entire lifetimes. This is why animal factories are a leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss according to the UNEP: they must continually clear forests to grow food for 80 billion factory animals.

In short, it turns out that we are great at feeding animals, but we are bad at feeding people, particularly as the global population grows by almost 25% to almost 10 billion by 2050, but the natural resources like land and water do not.

Feeding animals instead of people is not just inefficient and a bad business equation (it takes 25 kilograms of feed to get 1 kilogram of cow, increasing the need for deforestation to grow more crops), but this supply chain is also lengthy. This leaves a large environmental footprint. Recently, a New York Times article noted that the environmental cost of beef is $22.05 for a $5.34 meat portion. That is 413%. For cheese it is $3.76 for a $3.74 portion (101%). Chicken is $1.83 to $2.20 (83%). Chickpeas and tofu environmental to portion costs are $.74 to $1.46 (51%) and $.21 to $2.42 (9%), respectively.

As we can see, these destructive, inefficient and long supply chains are an expensive endeavor. The damage from the overall food system, of which animal protein plays a major role, represents approximately $12.7 trillion in externalized costs to the consumer, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO). This is 10% of global GDP.

In other words, the need to create a more efficient system is huge. And where there is necessity, there is an opportunity to make money (and impact).

Despite this incredibly large footprint on our planet and the equally large investment opportunity to solve this critical dilemma of food security while mitigating natural resource destruction, sustainable food systems transformation driven by innovation currently receives only 2.5%-4.8% to 7.2% of climate funding, according to the Word Bank and Climate Policy Initiative respectively.

So where do we go from here?

Beef emits 49.89 kg of of Greenhouse Gas Emissions per 100 grams of protein per Our World in Data.

The Path Forward

Given the business inefficiencies, the growing concerns regarding producing enough food for a global population using our resource intensive system and the mounting negative impacts from the food system on the planet, blended capital investment (philanthropic, government, and VC) is just beginning to flow into food systems transformation. Family offices, governments, and investors around the world—99% of whom aren’t vegan and have no intention of ever becoming vegan—are looking to make a true impact and understand that protein diversification, complementing (read: not replacing) animal protein, is a powerful way to do so.

1. Inexpensive: The World Bank, as noted at COP28, is calling for $450-$650 billion in food systems transformation each year for the next 10-15 years. By contrast, according to Senior Energy Analyst Robert Barnett at Bloomberg Intelligence, novel energy innovation needs $3 trillion a year for the foreseeable future. $650 billion yearly is a lot less than $3 trillion. As a simple example, fermenting proteins (using techniques similar to fermenting beer and other foods such as yeast and tea) isn’t that much of a leap, whereas re-electrifying the grid for EVs is a much larger undertaking. Thus, compared to other green technologies, diversified proteins, along with many other technologies such as better cold storage to address food waste among other issues, are a less expensive innovation.

2. Easy(ier): A foundation for much of the technology of complementary proteins (also referred to as diversified proteins) already exists. Yes, the innovation curve in plant-based innovation and fermented proteins is in its infancy, and improvements are constantly occurring. Yes, more innovation is needed for advancements such as precision fermentation for dairy and cultivated meat. However, building off the above point, there is a solid base in the sector from which to grow quickly. This base makes it easier to implement and achieve scale.

3. Quick Impact: Inexpensive and easy solutions mean faster impact compared to other green sectors. Since diversified protein innovation means reducing methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases, the results could be significant and short-term. The Climate Bonds Initiative has measured the impact of investing in diversified proteins as has the Boston Consulting Group, which found that diversified proteins are 3x-40x more impactful at reducing greenhouse gas emissions than other green technologies.

Simply put, we could live without cars if we had to. We can’t live without food. The way we produce protein now is unsustainable with our current natural resources and growing population. This presents an enormous investment opportunity, and investors are waking up to this.

Before we get too excited, what is holding us back?

The UN Environment Programme estimate for how much meat cultivated meat can produce at scale compared to what an animal can produce now.

The Biggest Hurdle

If reducing methane emissions and the overall environmental impact of our food sector is so inexpensive, easy, and impactful, why haven’t we done it already? What could divert us from harvesting this low-hanging fruit?

The biggest hurdle isn’t consumers, as is commonly thought. The biggest hurdle is the American meat lobby’s power over politicians and the media. This influence ensures that government funding to novel innovation is slow and misinformation among consumers is rampant. Anecdotally, for example, I was in an interview when someone told me, “Consumers don’t like the taste of Beyond Meat.” I said, “I do, and I know many who do.” He responded, “I do, too, but I read it somewhere.” In short, negative campaigns from the meat lobby had this panelist second-guessing his own tastebuds and experience. Wow, that’s power!

It is important to note that EVs didn’t surge in the market in one day, and meat isn’t going away anytime soon. In other words, no, the world is not going vegan. There’s no need to panic. This isn’t an ‘either or’ situation. Meat will still be around: both 1) regenerative meat—expensive and scarce, mostly feeding the wealthy, and 2) factory meat—inexpensive, subsidized, and what most people eat, even when they think they are eating something labeled ‘humane’. Both will still exist.

However, allowing consumers to rotate in sustainable, complementary protein options and reduce their meat intake with other tasty items will reduce the pressure on the planet and our natural resources. This keeps us moving forward, not backward, in the fight against climate change and feeding the global population. If the meat lobby could be kept at bay, this diversification could happen relatively quickly and easily, providing meaningful change, expanded consumer choice, and maintaining America’s relevancy in food innovation and resiliency, a new priority of the Department of Defense under President Biden, that has since been curtailed.

Assuming we can keep the vested interests on track, what kind of financial opportunity are we looking at exactly?

Climate Policy Initiative notes that only 7.2% of climate finance in 2021-2022 went towards agrifood systems.

Show Me the Money

Even better is that this represents an enormous business opportunity and investment case along the entire supply chain: AgTech, bio-technology, regenerative ingredients, flavor and texture innovations and consumer packaged goods. These are all exciting investment opportunities for the food industry and, in time, the public. As more blended capital dollars flow to R&D for complementary proteins ameliorating the entire supply chain and regenerative practices, more of the $9.7 trillion total food and beverage market, not including the supply chain, is addressed. The meat market is $1.65 trillion, 17% of the food and beverage market.

In short, the business opportunity is massive. In my opinion, the meat industry should be jumping at the chance to own and profit from the innovation opportunity around complementary proteins. After all, aren’t they there to make money? So make it.

As a Cargill executive shared with me after the company changed their name from a meat company to a general protein company in anticipation of a food system overhaul (paraphrased), “We don’t know when the food system will shift, but when it does, it will go quickly.”

Mahesh Roy of IIGCC, an investor organization focused on climate change, noted that capital will flow from the private sector into food transformation as it has into the energy sector. As paraphrased: “Keep it simple. Show people the data around the inefficiency of the current food system and they will find the opportunity to make money. Show them the added benefit of impact and the trillions will flow.”

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For press and consulting inquiries, you can reach me at Elysabeth@ElysabethAlfano.com

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan, and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday.

Elysabeth

#

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

This Substack goes dark on all major holiday weeks and if the Cubs are in the World Series. I’ll be in Africa most of the Fall and will try to be as consistent as possible.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

Ah, the all holy potato chip! What could ever possibly make that beautiful crisp better than it already is: potato, oil, salt…it’s perfection! Nothing could possibly be more delicious…or could it? What if the chip were baked, instead of fried? What if it were whole grain or had ridges? What if it were in the shape of a square, or the shape of a triangle and was made of blue corn? Wait! What if it no longer came in a bag but came in can with a pop-top lid!?! What if it were made from things like veggies or the sun? (What even is a Sun Chip?) Maybe it has flavors like ‘Flamin’ Hot???’

Indeed, there have been quite a few iterations made of the almighty potato chip. In fact, there is an entire aisle in the grocery store dedicated to its many versions. Yet, the classic potato chip is still thriving. Potato chips are expected to grow from almost $65 billion today to $113 billion by 2034, a CAGR of 7.22%.

It is the best of all worlds: the consumer still has the all-perfect, classic potato chip and they also have a slew of other tasty options. The whole category is up based on the innovation around the original, classic potato chip. The grocery store is happy. The consumer is happy. The chip makers are happy.

Along with more mouths to feed as the population has grown, innovation in chips has only increased demand for all chips. It hasn’t destroyed the original chip. The chip-snack industry has increased to meet demand and both the industry and consumers (waistline issues aside) benefit from more options.

Chip aisle. Image produced by AI.

Consumers Like and Benefit from Options; Supply Chain Resiliency is a Bonus

So, what if the meat counter were to expand its options such that the meat counter became more like an entire meat aisle? What innovations would we have in the short-and long-term and what would be the benefits of such an expansion to the industry and consumers? What are the protein possibilities that can help to scale protein production to not only meet increased dietary demand from MAHA, but also the increased demand from middle-income countries globally?

1. Factory Meat: Not going anywhere! To be clear, before anyone worries that cheap meat is going to be pushed out, it won’t be. The fast-food burger and grocery store ground meats are here to stay. The impacts on animals and the environment are huge as this sector is currently the leading cause of global deforestation, water eutrophication, and 32% of the world’s methane emissions, but it is also how we currently feed a good portion of the population. Luckily, innovating for more options, such as the ones below, will lessen demand for this option, which will benefit, people, the planet and animal alike.

2. Grass-Fed (AKA Regenerative) Meat; While attractive in concept (imagine animals in fields rather than factories and most people take a sigh of relief), it is an expensive option that serves mostly the wealthy. In this instance, giving the animals more land, water, space and time allows them to be healthier and the product, despite it still having high amounts of saturated fat and no fiber, to also be healthier as antibiotics, stressed animals and hormones can be avoided. However, more resources being used (land, water, time, food) also means a more expensive product. It also means that the product can’t scale for global production because it is more resource intensive than factory meat. This means the cost will remain out of reach of many.

3. Plant-based Proteins. Often formulated from pea and soy proteins, using plant protein directly for the end product for human consumption, instead of using it as animal feed (requiring crops, water, land, time) to be converted by the animal and then be turned into food for people, is a much more efficient process. It uses less land and water than mono-cropping to feed animals and is a fast-to-plate process rather than the weeks, months or years of waiting for animal meat.

4. Fermented Biomass Proteins (with fiber, bonus!) from mycelium-a protein technology already scaling and proving viable, providing both quantity and quality. Using technology akin to fermenting beer, this is a near-future game changer; creating large slabs of meat from microbes. Much like animal meat, it can be seasoned to be delicious.

5. Cultivated Meat. This technology has a way to go yet, but what a guaranteed crowd pleaser: the actual meat grown from the cells of animals without the deforestation and water use needed for growing crops for animal feed. Just skip the animal and all its land, water, time and food needs altogether, while gaining a resilient and less pandemic-risky supply chain! Brilliant for the global win-win.

6. Hybrid Meat. Rather than jumping to new options right away, maybe the industry moves in baby steps until we lock down the cultivated meat technology. Imagine burgers that are a blend of mushroom and beef, or a blend of fermented microbes and pork, or cultivated meat fat (much easier than cultivating a structured piece of muscle from cells) with soy or pea protein. Here the options are endless.

   

Greenhouse gas emissions per 100g of protein; by Our World In Data.

Don’t Mess With Meat…Unless You Want To Grow Profits Like The Chip Aisle

And so it could be with the meat counter. Factory meat, grass-roaming meat (expensive due to its use of natural resources, but a perfect option for the upper-spending tier), plant-based meats, fermented meats, cultivated meats and hybrid meats will offer more price and meat choices to the consumer, more production and profit options for the meat companies and more growth for the grocery chain.

Equally as exciting is the job growth that can come from innovation growth for all these new options.

If a Diverse Meat Aisle Is Such A Great Idea, Then What’s the Hold Up?

Alas, the hit job from the meat industry on the novel protein sector harkens back to how the oil and car industries killed the electric car in the ‘90s. Even though the meat industry would be, in my opinion, the financial beneficiary of a diversified protein aisle, the industry is resisting change.

This is doubly disappointing because the industry is very powerful and has the ear, through intense lobbying, of policy makers. I believe that they could get governmental support to start making shifts in the food system. So they wouldn’t even have to take on the risk themselves. It is an incredibly privileged position and I wish they would use it: get the subsidies, revamp the system to include more novel protein options and benefit financially from the growth. In the end, the current large food companies have the distribution channels and we can’t ignore that, while I love a good start-up story, the current food industry giants have the highest likelihood of success.

In the end, necessity is the mother of invention and, much like with the electric car, protein innovation will grow and solidify in the global culture because it has to, and most likely the industry titans will be a part of that shift. As discussed in my article, “The Food System is Fragile, Fractured and F-Bombed“, global food insecurity and risks to the food supply chain such as climate change, natural resources depletion and disease are on the rise.

As the population grows to 10 billion from 8 billion by 2050, we can’t keep expanding animal protein because it is too costly in time, land, water and crops resulting in 41% of tropical deforestation, water eutrophication from manure pits and 35% to 40% of the world methane emissions.

From the MIT Technology Review is a little considered but growing problem: “Farms have become larger in the past two decades or so, so there’s much more manure—and that has to be stored somewhere,” says Swati Hegde, the [Alberto’s Dairy] global manager of agricultural methane.

“Typically, cattle and swine farms spray manure into lagoons or tanks, creating a foul-smelling, low-oxygen slurry in which microorganisms known as methanogens thrive. They gobble up hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and other compounds and produce methane as a by-product. Other microbes in the mix produce smaller amounts of nitrous oxide.

“Both are particularly potent greenhouse gases, with as much as 30 to nearly 275 times the warming power of carbon dioxide, respectively, over a century.

“The slurry is often spread onto fields to add nutrients to the soil. When it’s done excessively or improperly, this part of the practice can pollute soil or groundwater with drug residues, pathogens like salmonella and E. coli, and nitrates. Nitrates that leach into drinking water have been linked to a variety of human health risks. And those that flow into rivers, lakes, and coastal waters can spawn algae blooms that poison fish, block sunlight, suck up oxygen, or form large coastal dead zones devoid of marine life.”

Industrial Manure Pit, image by AI.

As noted by the unappetizing reality above, the innovation curve for the current production of animal meat has reached its end. Sure, we can tweak here and there to reduce methane or eutrophication, but we can’t squeeze more from the animals with any fewer inputs than we already do.

The crunch is on to produce more protein, that is more nutritious, in a shorter amount of time using fewer resources while causing less environmental, animal and human damage. Enter novel proteins.

Godspeed.

##

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan, and Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday,

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

This Substack goes dark on all major holiday weeks and if the Cubs are in the World Series.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

As someone who believes in protein innovation as one of the critical components of a food system transformation toward a resilient system that can realistically feed the world in the face of dwindling natural resources, many might think that I would advocate for insect protein. Wrong.

Insect protein is for the birds.

Image of Black Soldier Fly Larvae.

The primary reason that I see insect protein as a risk too great to invest in this: according to the United Nations (UN), the top two reasons for the next pandemic are related to the intensification of animal factories. This makes sense. Animals living butt to snout in their own feces are, of course, a breeding ground for disease. Sure, the animals are given 80% of all the antibiotics on the market (also a breeding ground for antimicrobial resistance in humans), but it isn’t enough to stop swine fever, avian flu (something that started in the 90’s and on which we still don’t have a handle), E. Coli, Salmonella and more.

Per Our World in Data, there are 78.5 billion chickens in factories-a frightening ratio of 10 birds for every human on earth-with ammonia from the high concentration of birds so potent that attendees have to enter the factories with respirators or other protection. Now imagine the number of bugs needed to make the quantity of food produced from chickens.

According to AI, 4,500-12,000 insects are needed to produce the equivalent amount of meat from one 5-pound broiler chicken. This results in 650 trillion x 1000 individual insects to produce the same amount of food from the current amount of chickens in factories. It is more insects than I can actually comprehend.

Ultimately, insect protein increases the number of waste-producing beings spreading disease in confined areas by the trillions! For a list of the 77 (by my count) bug-borne viruses according to the CDC, click here. Of course, with further intensification of bug factories, even more viruses than those on the list could emerge.

This Our World In Data graph shows the impact of our last pandemic, COVID-19, which was also animal-borne.

Further, it isn’t a foregone conclusion that many insects, given their size, wouldn’t escape and negatively impact the wild insect populations, gravely impacting biodiversity.

• If we know that intense, confined animal production produces unhealthy animals, and

• If we have concerns about life-threatening pandemics stemming from unhealthy animals, and

• If we know that massive antibiotics distributed to these animals result in antimicrobial resistance in humans while still not curbing all pandemic threats, and

• If we have concerns that, given their size, massive insect production means escaped bugs altering the biodiversity landscape,

why would we ever increase these threats by trillions?

So, while I am all for protein innovation and scaling to increase food system resiliency, limit natural resource depletion and diminish supply chain disruptions from a dependence on animal protein, I do not believe that insect protein is a smart option.

Rather, it seems to be a Darwin Award-worthy idea.

This Our World in Data image shows that 78.5 billion chickens are slaughtered yearly for roughly 8 billion people (the global population.)

##

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan.

##

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday,

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

Therapists often say that we can’t change what we don’t acknowledge.

Most people don’t realize that our food system is showing extreme signs of weakness. Skyrocketing beef prices, for example, are a sign of a weak system that is susceptible to breaking. According to a February 13, 2026 Food Ingredients First article, ground beef hit US$6.69 per pound in December 2025 — up 19.3% year-over-year and 72% since 2020 — with the USDA forecasting a further 6.9% wholesale increase in 2026. This isn’t due simply togeneral inflation. This is because the U.S. cattle herd fell to a 75-year low of 86.2 million head as years of drought and animal-borne pandemics impacted supply.

This is also not a one-off situation. The same is occurring with skyrocketing egg prices due to avian flu. In fact, rising prices, trade wars, and extreme weather are all negatively impacting food distribution.

So why aren’t we acknowledging this?

I propose that we don’t have a neutral language to negotiate the problem. With virtually all subjects at the moment being polarized and politicized, augmented by certain industry interests and the politicians that support them, it’s almost impossible to say that the food system needs an overhaul without being accused of playing political sides.

So, tell me, what side is one on if they propose better business models for more nutritious output?

What political side is one on if they propose introducing products that need fewer inputs, but produce more outputs, otherwise known as efficiency?

What political side is one on if they propose that more efficiency means better profit margins and more stable, consistent supply chains, otherwise known as resiliency?

What political side is one on if they propose new innovations for farming equipment, better soil management, better cover crops, and smarter technology for less for food waste, and more protein diversity for less dependency on a single kind of protein?

What political side is one on if they propose investing in the technology to control IP in order to stabilize and establish something as critical as food security on the global stage?

It seems to me that none of these have a political side and that moving forward on all of them, and thus revamping the system as a whole, is pretty important to the population as a whole.

As a quotidian example of how we can’t seem to get out of our own way to even begin normal conversations about our food system, look at how we have politicized processed foods in a convenient way, choosing to simply ignore some basic truths. What we like, we decide isn’t processed. What we don’t like, we decide is processed.

The following foods are items most people love, eat, accept, don’t discuss, and give a hall pass to…yet they are highly processed. This rhetoric is are supported by the press and politicians.

Protein Powder

Fast food or store-bought hamburgers

Sandwich meat (ham, bologna, turkey)

Bacon, sausages and hotdogs

Most store-bought breads, hamburger buns, and hot dog buns.

Meanwhile, mention a plant-based burger and people are up in arms about it being processed, which varies greatly depending on the product. Never mind that the meat industry created the sector called ‘Processed Meat’ and that there is a whole section in the store dedicated to the highly processed breakfast sausages, bacon, ham, bologna, turkey, and hotdogs; all of which are Group 1 carcinogens, per the World Health Organization.

It seems to me that, despite the industry rhetoric and press initiatives to control the conversation, we are going to need to be realistic about the foods we eat. For example, when ordering a ground-beefhamburger, how many of us order the side salad instead of french fries? Be real. It’s never the salad and french fries are deeply processed. We also need to get serious regarding the need to fix the system to get healthier personally, but also healthier and more resilient from a larger systems perspective.

Our World In Date chart showing that beef is responsible for 41% of the world’s tropical deforestation, a critical natural capital.

As discussed in my last article, “Our Food System Is Fragile, Fractured and F-Bombed“, we are going to need a strategy in order to implement a system overhaul and to do that we need a common language that acknowledges where we are, how we spend, and where the weaknesses lie: in protecting industry interests, misinforming consumers, poor consumer habits, food waste and insecure supply chains due to specific protein dependencies.

The average American ate 270 pounds of meat a year in 2023- the equivalent of three quarter pound hamburgers a day-and we are going to have to find a way to continue to supply that level of protein with at least some other options than animal protein or the supply chain weaknesses due to the disproportionate use of natural capital will only continue. We also need to come clean on the fastest way to innovate ourselves to a better position: meaningful investment. We need to do all this before more supply chain breakdowns from rising prices, weather or trade wars become existential.

The last thing we need is another era of empty shelves lacking in flour and meat like we had during COVID-19.

Let’s hope that we soon get our heads in the food game and stop wasting time on politics or the melting food system will be more costly to us than just expensive burgers.

##

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan.

##

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday,

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

All images courtesy of Magnific, formerly, Freepik, unless otherwise noted.

Our food system is screwed.

We all witnessed the disappearance of meat from shelves during COVID-19. We also felt the jolt when Russia invaded Ukraine, causing ripple effects in global wheat exports to the point where India banned exports to make sure that it had enough for its own people.

Why would a pandemic or global instability so easily disrupt our food system? Let’s take a look at how we now find ourselves in a pickle with something as critical as feeding ourselves.

AI generated image .

Our food system is fragile.

In other words, it is prone to breaking.

1. Long supply chains mean that breaks can and do happen at any point. Our reliance on animal protein means we go from seed to growing crops (requiring time, land, and water). These crops are fed to animals in order to grow them (requiring more time, land, water, and feed). Then, the animals are slaughtered and transported—often across international borders—or they are transported live around the world and then slaughtered. Upon arrival, there is distribution to wholesales and then retailers, and finally to you.

The supply chain is long, slow, costly, inefficient, and susceptible to disruption. One break in the chain—due to decimated cow herds from the 2023 drought, avian flu, global trade wars or a myriad of other options—and the dominoes begin to fall.

2. Political tensions and wars mean food-dependent nations risk not getting food shipped to them.

Singapore only produces 10% of its own food. It is pushing hard to produce 20% of some of its veggies and 30% of its seafood and eggs by 2035. Food security is equally important for China which only has 7% arable land. While North America is extremely well-positioned, globally speaking, many countries have varying degrees of food dependence, relying on other nations to feed them. This is tricky in a geopolitically unstable world.

3. Disease.

Disease creates higher food prices and causes public health threats. Mad cow disease, Ebola, African swine fever, and avian flu are all examples of diseases spread by intensive factory farming. In fact, according to the United Nations (UN), the top two reasons for the next pandemic are related to the intensification of animal factories. Living butt-to-snout in feces in confined areas is a breeding ground for disease and disease causes disruption, in addition to public health issues.

Our World in Data chart showing that 80% of our agricultural land is used for animal protein giving us disproportionately only 17% of our calories.

Our food system is fractured.

In other words, some things can’t be fixed or tweaked.

1. The current system requires a disproportionate use of natural resources, and this makes continuing to produce food in this way uncertain for humanity. According to Our World in Data, 80% of our agricultural land is used for animal agriculture, yet this provides only 17% of our calories. This means that a disproportionate amount of land is used to give us very little. As we need to create more protein for a growing population, we are going to run out of agricultural land to do this.

Agriculture in general is also responsible for 70% of global clean water usage. This disproportionate use of natural capital means potential losses for other industries, such as AI, which also requires natural capital like water. As natural resources shrink due to climate change and a growing population, these become material risks to our food systems.

2. Our food system is bad math. Animals are inefficient calorie converters. Cows are 2% energy efficient which means that 2% of calories in animal feed inputs were effectively converted to animal product. The remaining 98% of inputs are lost. Pigs are 8.6% efficient and chickens are 13% efficient. Even chicken means that 87% of inputs are lost. This is why 80% of our agricultural land used for animal only yields 18% of our calories. We use the land, to grow the animal feed and then we lose most of it in the conversion. Meanwhile, what is lost in conversion could have gone directly to people.

It’s bad math to give high-protein, high-fiber crops to animals who require massive amounts of land, water, time, and even more crops, when we could simply give this food directly to people.

3. The way we produce food is destructive and extractive.

Our food system creates 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs). Animal agriculture is responsible for 60% of that, or a total of 18% of the world’s global emissions. This is in addition to being the leading cause of deforestation and biodiversity loss.

We need to innovate and implement other options.

Our World in Data graph showing the energy conversion of crops to meat per animal. Cows are 2% energy efficient in making meat calories, meaning 98% of inputs are wasted.

I am not saying that meat is the only pain point. Of course, food waste is a tremendous issue, vertical crop growth can impact food security in places like the Middle East that have grave water concerns while solutions offering more efficiency in energy use and natural capital through AI are critical. The whole system needs a revamp for a brave, new, healthy world.

Still, the meat component is such a large factor that not addressing it means simply not addressing the disintegrating food system. The numbers are staggering and, honestly, hard to wrap one’s mind around.

Consider this: according to Our World in Data, Americans ate approximately 270 pounds of meat in 2023, up 33% from 1961. This excessive consumption in North America and elsewhere around the globe results in 88 billion animals in factories taking up enormous resources. As we human mammals are only 8 billion on the planet, this is a staggering ratio. To account for the smaller size of some factory animals such as chickens, this translates to 36% of the mammal biomass eating 54%-59% of the mammal biomass with wild animals dwindling down to a mere 5% of mammal biomass.

I am no Zen master, but this math seems f-bombed to me, and not in our favor.

I am also not saying that we must get rid of meat. I am simply pointing out the weaknesses in the system and the need to lighten the load.

I am saying we need to diversify - now, not later - according to a specific strategy to reduce the pressure on the system and prepare ourselves for system breaks, trade wars, and natural resource deficits that would leave us... hungry and screwed.

Our World in Data chart showing that livestock are 54%-59% of the mammal biomass on the planet.

Our food system is F-bombed.

1. The meat industry, and the politicians that protect it, create obstacles for funding for innovative alternatives that would relieve pressure on the system, while also keeping vital information from consumers. Most consumers have no idea that deli meats, bacon, hot dogs, and sausages are Group 1 carcinogens, per the World Health Organization. They have no idea that processed foods, including but not limited to meat, have no fiber—a critical component of gut health—and most people don’t realize that “natural flavors” in foods often mean unnatural additives. If they knew these things, maybe they would naturally of their own accord lighten their consumption by 10%-20%, dramatically helping the situation.

This is why the UK is now prioritizing consumer education so that the industry doesn’t control the narrative at the consumer’s expense. Still, in the United States at least, the meat lobby is controlling the narrative and most politicians aren’t willing to take them on.

2. There is no food strategy in place from policymakers, and there is no will to go up against the meat industry and put one in place. Thus, we have no roadmap to address an uncertain future. This is not a sound business or political stance.

3. Investors are generally confused and reactive. It will take blended capital—an all-hands-on-deck approach to funding—to establish a new food system that works for the 10 billion people projected to inhabit the planet by 2050, per the UN. However, venture capitalists are confused and hesitant about what to bet on next. Wall Street is too obsessed with AI to care. Foundations often lack the information or connections to pursue a new path, and governments are, for the most part, dragging their heels. Yes, there are initiatives here and there, but not the kind of large-scale, concentrated funding connected to a plan of action that is needed. In short, there is no significant leadership. Anywhere.

What is interesting about this is that there is an opportunity for whomever steps up to lead to make a lot of money by building this new system and owning the technology at play. There is also an opportunity to secure political leadership. After all, whomever owns the technology to produce protein without heavy natural capital usage will be in a very advantageous position.

“Who Makes the Money?” will be an article coming in the future, but it isn’t a moral path to feeding people that is going to pave the way. It is the business opportunity, and it is a big one that is currently being overlooked.

Where do we go from here?

We would be wise to:

1. Develop a strategy for protein diversification, recycled food waste, and better farming and distribution with AI enhancements to render general farming and supply chain management more efficient. Plant proteins and fermented mycoproteins are both possible at scale and would be cheaper than meat while using fewer natural resources. Diversifying the system, even just 20%, would take pressure off natural capital and reduce disease risk. AI will also help to mitigate emissions and increase efficiency.

2. Fund this strategy with blended finance. Bring government, private, and philanthropic dollars together.

3. Work with current industry players to ensure that the strategy isn’t blocked. There is no point in reinventing the wheel. The people who currently make food have the distribution channels to keep a new strategy functional, and their support is critical. Ensuring they don’t bock efforts is key.

Creating a more diversified food system is well within our grasp. Compared to, say, the energy crisis, the funding needed to shift the food system isn’t as heavy; estimates sit at $400 billion -$650 billion yearly, as compared to the energy shift’s $3 trillion needed per Robert Barnett of Bloomberg News. Further, the innovations, in many instances, are already here, such as fermenting protein, and are, thus, relatively easy to implement.

Meanwhile, with no strategy in place, we leave ourselves open to many food disruptions that could be devastating to global stability.

Thankfully, we don’t run our companies like we run our food system, or we would all be fired.

##

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

I also suggest The End of the World Is Just the Beginning by Peter Zeihan.

##

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday,

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

All images courtesy of Magnific unless otherwise noted.

For my article Food Security Is an Issue of National Security, click here.“

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) published a paper in December 2023 that estimates that our food system, which we know to be primarily based on animal proteins, externalizes $12.7 trillion in costs to society for us to carry. That is an estimated 10% of global GDP. In other words, in producing food, the food system, primarily made up of large corporations and not small farmers (17% of the U.S. production value), also produces a burden on society for which it does not pay and it transfers that cost to the members of society.

The above-mentioned paper determined that 73% of the $12.7 trillion cost to society is due to dietary pattern-induced productivity losses. This is in-line with a 2018 Milken Institute report stating that the $1.1 trillion in U.S. health care costs for chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity, as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is actually $3.7 trillion when lost economic productivity is included. “This is equivalent to nearly 20 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).”

So our diets aren’t just having a major impact on our health. They are also impacting the global economy.

Another societal concern with significant cost to society has emerged from our diets: antimicrobial resistance (AMR). AMR is a “growing global concern, caused by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics and other antimicrobials in humans, animals, and agriculture. AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites change over time and no longer respond to medicines, making infections harder [or impossible] to treat and increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness, and death,” notes the CDC.

Per the World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC, [AMR] is an urgent global public health threat, killing at least 1.27 million people worldwide and associated with nearly 5 million deaths in 2019. In the U.S., more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur each year. More than 35,000 people die as a result.

The WHO, CDC and other agencies have called this an increasingly serious threat to global public health that requires action across all government sectors and society.

Amazingly, the biggest use of all antibiotics on the market is the livestock industry for the production of meat and dairy. “Of all antibiotics sold in the United States, approximately 80% are sold for use in animal agriculture; about 70% of these are ‘medically important’ (i.e., from classes important to human medicine),” notes the National Library of Medicine.

It goes on to say that, “Antibiotics are administered to animals in feed to marginally improve growth rates and to prevent infections, a practice projected to increase dramatically worldwide over the next 15 years. There is growing evidence that antibiotic resistance in humans is promoted by the widespread use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in animals. Resistant bacteria are transmitted to humans through direct contact with animals, by exposure to animal manure, through consumption of undercooked meat, and through contact with uncooked meat or surfaces meat has touched.”

These factors, among others, have led to a situation in which antimicrobial resistance is rising at an alarming rate, threatening our ability to treat common infectious diseases, resulting in prolonged illness, higher medical costs, and increased mortality. Some experts note that we are headed towards a 70% antibiotic inefficacy rate. “One in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections causing common infections in people worldwide in 2023 were resistant to antibiotic treatments, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO). Between 2018 and 2023, antibiotic resistance rose in over 40% of the monitored antibiotics with an average annual increase of 5%-15%.”

The cost of antibiotic resistance to society, particularly in the U.S., is substantial, with a financial burden of more than $4.6 billion per the CDC. More than the cost is the concern that standard hospital procedures such as childbirth and surgeries will be compromised by non-functioning antibiotics, primarily due to the over exposure of the same through the livestock industry that creates the meat and dairy we eat.

So where do this leave us?

AI image of a virus not responding to antibiotics.

Trivia (Answer at the end!): By bypassing the courts, what insertion into the Farm Bill is trying to negate the twice upheld in court Prop 12 law that acts as a safety measure for meat eaters and an upgrade in animal welfare standards?

1. Upgrade our current situation. Denmark, Europe’s second-largest pork producer, slashed antibiotic use by increasing the amount of barn space allotted to individual hogs and improving ventilation in the facilities. In much the same way, U.S. livestock farmers could also lower antibiotic use by raising fewer animals in better-ventilated barns or having animals spend more time on pasture instead of in confinements,” puts forth the Environmental Working Group (EWG.)

However, as many may know, California Prop 12, the law to increase the size of pig gestation crates to avoid ‘disease inducing’ conditions, is now threatened. After defeating several challenges and being upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court, it is being targeted by industry interests trying to insert the deeply misleadingly named ‘Save Our Bacon’ Act into the Farm Bill. The latter would nullify the tenets of Prop 12 for inter-state business and, in brief, overturn the will of the people and the Supreme Court.

This is a perfect example of externalizing costs. Corporate animal factories don’t want to spend on upgrades for societal safety precautions for meat eaters, so they push the cost onto the citizens who pay with increased healthcare costs, prolonged sickness and, in some cases, death.

So much for upgrading our situation.

(Courtesy of AI from actual factory footage.)

The lack of foresight and strategy regarding the food system and its societal implications is impressive. The lack of foresight and strategy so that a small group of industry members can benefit at the large-scale demise of society is, well, insanity.

2. Diversify our protein supply chain. Another option for fewer antibiotics in our food, in addition to better conditions to prevent disease in factories such that every animal isn’t butt to snout in their own feces, is having a diversified approach to protein.

Diversifying the protein supply chain to include protein products from beans, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes and pulses, in addition to regular factory or grass-fed animals, is one way to lessen the pressure on the system, as these foods don’t require massive antibiotic infusions.

Further, innovations in fermented proteins from mycelium and microbes, using the age-old ‘technology’ that we use for yeast, tea, beer, kimchi, kombucha and more, can make proteins at scale, without using large swaths of land or inordinate amounts of water, both of which are downfalls of the current way of producing animal protein.

It’s not rocket science. As a society we can’t risk having our antibiotics fail. We also can’t risk a small group of industry titans (and the politicians taking their money) choking the system so that progress can’t be made.

3. Innovate for the future. It’s impossible to have a future of food if there is no investment for a future of food. Novel innovations to improve efficiency, taste, human wellness, and animal conditions can render the food supply safer.

In short, we need a food system that can create more food, that is more nutritious, in a shorter amount of time while using fewer resources and creating less damage.

However, despite the system being on the brink of its own demise, there seems to be no roadmap for feeding 10 billion people by 2050 without destroying ourselves in the process.

According to the ClimateShot Investor Coalition (CLIC) and as noted by the Climate Policy Initiative, “…agrifood systems receive 7.2% of global climate finance, just short of USD $95 billion annually. This is merely 8.3% of the USD $1.1 trillion in climate funding required annually by 2030 to reduce the sector’s impact on deforestation, emissions, and biodiversity loss, and to adapt to rapid environmental changes that impact global food security, production, and supply chains.”

(Courtesy of Climate Policy Initiative this graph shows the miniscule amount being spent on agrifood systems as compared to climate finance.)

It’s baffling to me that something as important as feeding people safely is currently being relegated as an afterthought at best in the policy and investing worlds. And when people can’t get enough food or the system makes them sick, there is trouble. This is why my next article will be, The Next War Will Be Fought Over Food and Water.

[On a personal note, a dear friend and long-time sailing partner’s mother went in for hip surgery and died…because the antibiotics didn’t work. So this article hits home for me.]

##

Trivia: By bypassing the courts, what insertion into the Farm Bill is trying to negate the twice upheld in court Prop 12 law that acts as a safety measure for meat eaters and an upgrade in animal welfare standards?

The cutely named and deeply misleading, ‘Save Our Bacon’ Act.

California Proposition 12 (”Prop 12”) is a farm-animal welfare law with major safety implications for meat eaters that was approved by California voters in November 2018. It requires minimum space standards for egg-laying hens, breeding pigs (sows), and veal calves, and prohibits the sale in California of certain pork, egg, and veal products that do not meet those standards, even if the animals were raised outside California. These standards can cut down on the passage of disease, as well as act as humane measures.

Prop 12 passed with about 63% of the vote. It was challenged by the National Pork Producers Council and, in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court, in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross, upheld Prop 12 and rejected the industry’s constitutional challenge.

Apparently, the will of the voting people and the judgement of the Supreme Court aren’t that important. The ‘Save Our Bacon’ Act was sandwiched into the 2026 Farm Bill by industry leaders. The Farm Bill passed the House. The Senate has yet to vote.

##

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday,

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

All images courtesy of Magnific unless otherwise noted.

The average American now has to think about the drive-through, as the $1 meal is a thing of the past, and it seems that beef herds may not be increased for years.

This is a familiar story with animal protein. Supply can’t keep up with demand. As natural resources, such as land and water, remain constant or diminish — as noted with the aforementioned drought — and the global population grows to 10 billion from 8 billion by 2050 (an increase of 25%), we see that the focus we have on animal proteins presents a problem for feeding the world. Add a growing middle class in Africa, India, and China, all demanding meat, and we see we have a large problem indeed. With MAHA suggesting 50%–100% more protein and GLP-1 users wanting more, the equation is only exacerbated, further increasing prices as supply dwindles.

The expensive nature of a burger doesn’t stop there. The environmental cost is a whopper.

In a September 19, 2024, article, The New York Times noted the externalized environmental cost that society pays for food production, detailing that the environmental cost of beef is $22.05 for a $5.34 meat portion. That is 413%. For cheese, it is $3.76 for a $3.74 portion (101%). Chicken is $1.83 for a $2.20 portion (83%). Chickpeas and tofu environmental-to-portion costs are $0.74 to $1.46 (51%) and $0.21 to $2.42 (9%), respectively. And these costs aren’t factored into the burger price; they are factored into taxes to repair the damage, making the burger cost even more.

So, what is the real cost of a hamburger?

A Big Mac may seem cheap, but upon further review, it is quite costly. In fact, this was explained by the American Institute for Economic Research, which noted in April 2022 that, “The United States federal government spends $38 billion every year subsidizing the meat and dairy industries. Research from 2015 shows this subsidization reduces the price of Big Macs from $13 to $5 and the price of a pound of hamburger meat from $30 to the $5 we see today.”

For a nation that espouses capitalism, watching the U.S. government, through its taxpayers, subsidize the meat industry by tens of billions a year is puzzling. Again, this subsidization doesn’t include the cost taxpayers spend for environmental cleanup. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), our food system, based heavily in animal proteins, costs society $12.7 trillion in healthcare costs, health-related employee production losses, and environmental cleanup. While not all of that is attributed to utilizing animals as protein rather than other less costly sources, it is a considerable chunk given that Americans alone eat over 280 pounds of meat a year on average.

If food is going to be subsidized, wouldn’t it be better to subsidize healthy foods such as vegetables or inexpensive proteins such as beans, legumes, pulses, and whole grains that could keep healthcare costs down and the productivity of employees up?

Subsidies bolstering an inefficient and harmful sector are just one of the many reasons — along with climate change, biodiversity loss, and overuse of land and water — that there is industry pressure to clean up supply chains and production via innovation.

Rising Cost of Beef per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics via the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)

Trivia: How much of our agricultural land is used to grow meat? Answer below!

Silver Lining: Novel Protein Offerings and Industry Benefits

There is a silver lining, however. There are protein possibilities that can help to scale protein production to meet increased demand.

To be clear, these innovations are supplemental. Animal factories and grass-fed beef aren’t going anywhere. Everyone will continue to have these options. However, these options along can no longer do the job of getting people the protein they desire. The global demand for protein is too high and the natural resources too limited for the amount of people we have on the planet today.

Supplemental innovations that can ease supply chains pressures and render the protein industry more resilient to price fluctuations and disease (Avian Flu, Mad Cow Disease, Ebola, African Swine Fever) disruptions are:

• Plant-based Proteins: From such headliners as pea and soy proteins, these can be made and seasoned into all types of meat products (and protein powders) such as burgers and sausages. Growing these proteins directly for food requires less land and water than mono-cropping alfalfa and soy for long periods of time to feed animals (getting the meat from the animals weeks, months, or years later; a very long, wasteful, and non-resilient supply chain).

• Hybrid Meats: Burgers made from a mushroom-meat blend can save on natural resources and costs while not sacrificing that great umami taste, adding new, tasty options for the consumer.

• Fermented Biomass Proteins: (with fiber as a bonus!) Made from mycelium, this technology — based in the well-known food tradition of brewing tea, beer, and yeast — is already scaling and proving viable and delicious.

• Cultivated Meat: This technology has a while to go yet, but what a guaranteed crowd pleaser: actual meat grown from the cells of animals without the deforestation and water use needed for growing crops for animal feed. Just skip the animal and all its land, water, time, and food needs altogether! Just get the meat! Brilliant for the global win.

Why Should Investors and Industry Care? Innovation Is on the Horizon.

This is actually good news for investors as they seek secular trends with large-scale growth potential. Markets reward the correction of inefficiencies, and scaling outsized returns becomes possible when the novel innovations in which investors invest are adopted at scale. Investing in food system innovation presents an excellent opportunity since it isn’t a question of whether the food system will change, but when, as a world with food shortages would be a world at war.

Keeping enough protein supply to feed the world will be critical. Indeed, the World Bank predicts $450–650 billion flowing to R&D and food innovation each year for the next 10–15 years; an exciting opportunity for innovation and growth.

This is also good news for the industry, which will experience shorter, more resilient supply chains for a better bottom line from diversified protein innovation. In addition, governments will benefit from stronger food security and food independence through innovations like fermented proteins, cultivated meat, and hybrid plant-rich/meat-based products. As prices come down and adoption increases, consumers will also benefit from healthier and more prolific options, as will animals and the planet.

Of course, animal factories, typically lower in price point, and regenerative meat — typically higher in natural resource use and, thus, higher in price point — will still exist, just as gas cars still exist. These options will not go away, and everyone will still have access to them and the option to choose them. But novel innovations in protein added to the supply chain will give consumers more choice while lightening the pressure on natural resources and consumer pocketbooks, yet still keeping up with global demand.

With an upside for governments, industry, and consumers, adding more protein options to the production process seems like the better option over a world of global food shortages and increased global strife.

Trivia: How much of our agricultural land is used for meat and dairy livestock? 80%.

According to our World in Data, 80% of our agricultural land is used for meat and dairy livestock, producing merely 17% of the our calories and 38% of our protein. Conversely, 16% of our agricultural land is used for food grown directly for people, providing 83% of our calories and 62% of our protein.

What I am reading: I suggest FoodFix by Helena Bottemiller Evich if you want to stay updated on the madness that is strategy-barren, food politics.

Thanks for reading today and see you next Thursday,

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Chartered Alternative Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

All images courtesy of Stockking by Magnific unless otherwise noted.

I thought it might be good to have one of my initial posts discuss a baseline of where we are and what needs to be addressed. Of course, one can’t do that in one post. However, hopefully this will give an understanding of our current pain points and a general direction forward.

This isn’t about one person’s burger or anyone losing their favorite food. This is about building a more resilient system through diversifying the supply chains with better innovations for fewer breakdowns from disease, skyrocketing costs, wars or political upheavals.

Here we go!

(For my last article on Food Security Is an Issue of National Security, click here.)

I Asked AI to Build a Better Food System. This Is What It Said.

I have been speaking on TV, and in public auditoriums and private board rooms on food system transformation for years. While those interested in investment opportunities are keen to lend an ear, many have been skeptical, wondering if this would somehow impact their ability to grab a burger at a moment’s notice.

I always explain that food system transformation, particularly as the global population increases approximately 25% to 10 billion by 2050 per the U.N., is additive, not subtractive. Meat won’t go away. Animal factories will still exist, but other advances will diversify and compliment that system such that

-The consumer will have more options, both in taste and in price,

-Soil won’t be so intensely mono-cropped with alfalfa, corn, what and soy, thus preserving nutrients for richer foods,

-Water will be used more judiciously,

-Supply chains (and national security) will be future-proofed from disruption,

-Global deforestation, and thus a portion of Climate Change, will be mitigated, and

-The spread of disease will be slowed. Diversifying a food system beyond intensified factories can mitigate the spread of disease: think African Swine Fever, Avian Flu, Ebola, Mad Cow and other diseases that render the supply chain, not to mention human health risks of antimicrobial resistance, fragile.

And fragile is not what you want in a food system. To reference the book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, we want a food system that is anti-fragile.

[Trivia (answer below): Which famous CEO, referring to both its ability to scale and its global importance, said on CNBC with Jim Cramer, “Protein synthesis is going to be huge”?]

What, then, are these innovations and methods that can achieve such positive results while increasing resilience (we don’t want a repeat of disrupted food supplies like the ones we experienced during COVID-19) and economic viability through new jobs?

If you have been in a meeting or a global presentation with me, you already know!

In addition to the general tech advancements such as electric tractors, solar energy and precision watering that can better utilize our natural resources, we have

1. Regenerative Farming Practices for healthier soil; rotational cover crops of beans, legumes, and pulses instead of only mono-cropping for animal feed.

2. Plant-based Proteins from such headliners as pea and soy proteins. Feeding crops directly to people rather than animals (and only then actually getting the meat from the animals weeks, months or years later; a very long and non-resilient supply chain) means less land and water use.

3. Fermented Biomass Proteins (with fiber, bonus!) from mycelium; a technology already scaling and proving viable and delicious, and

4. Cultivated Meat. This technology has a while yet, but what a guaranteed crowd pleaser: the actual meat grown from the cells of animals without the deforestation and water use needed for growing crops for animal feed. Just skip the animal and all its land, water, time and food needs altogether! Brilliant for the global win-win.

5. Food Waste. Recycle food streams to avoid the waste of resources and nutrients.

6. Increased Farming Technology. As noted above, technology, including AI, can greatly increase the efficiency on the farm to reduce checmical use, increase water productivity and generally render the whole system to be more efficient.

As an early proponent of the need for food systems transformation for a more resilient food supply that also better positions the United States for food independence in a quickly changing world, many have been skeptical that I was somehow nefariously coming for their burger.

So, to start the Substack with a clean slate and a baseline for future discussions around building a food strategy to mitigate weaknesses in the system, I asked AI (Gemini), an independent and objecive voice, what it would do with the current food system to make it more resilient, nutritious and resource efficient for both the current and future population.

Here is AI’s response. This has not been edited.

“Building a global food system that is resilient, resource-efficient, and nutritious requires a shift from maximizing ‘calories per acre’ to maximizing ‘nutrition per drop of water and gram of carbon.’

To feed a growing population—projected to reach nearly 10 billion by 2050—while mitigating climate risks, the strategy must be trifurcated into structural reinforcement, technological additions, and strategic investments.

1. Shore Up: Strengthening the Foundation. We must first fix the leaks and vulnerabilities in the existing system to prevent further degradation of the resources we already use.

-Soil Health & Regenerative Practices: Current industrial farming often treats soil as an inert medium rather than a living ecosystem. Shoring up the food system means scaling no-till farming, cover cropping, and crop rotation. Healthy soil retains more water and sequestering carbon, making crops more resilient to droughts and floods.

-Waste Reduction: Roughly one-third of all food produced is lost or waster.

* In Developing Regions: Shore up cold chain infrastructure (refrigerated transport and storage) to prevent spoilage before food reaches the market.

* In Developed Regions: Reform best by labeling and consumer behavior to reduce landfill waste.

-Genetic Diversity: Relying on just a handful of crops (wheat, maize, rice) creates a monoculture trap. We must protect and reintroduce heirloom and climate-resilient varieties that can withstand shifting pests and temperatures.

2. Add: Integrating New Pillars. Resilience comes from diversity. Adding new methods of production decentralizes the food supply and reduces the pressure on traditional farmland.

-Precision Agriculture: Integrating AI and IoT sensors to apply water and fertilizer at the plant level rather than the field level. This reduces chemical runoff and preserves freshwater.

-Alternative Protein Sources: Shifting toward plant-based proteins, fermentation-derived proteins, and cultivated meat can significantly reduce land and water usage. This allows for high-quality nutrition with a fraction of the environmental footprint.

-Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA): Adding vertical farms and advanced greenhouses near urban centers reduces food miles and allows for year-round production of nutrient-dense greens, regardless of outside weather conditions.

3. Invest In Long-term Drivers. Investment should be directed toward high-leverage areas that change the economic and biological incentives of the system.

-Biofortification: Investing in the breeding of staple crops to have higher levels of micronutrients (like Vitamin A, Zinc, and Iron). This addresses hidden hunger in a resource-efficient way.

-Decentralized Energy for Agriculture: Financing solar-powered irrigation and processing equipment for smallholder farmers. This provides energy independence and ensures food processing can happen even in remote areas.

-Water Management Tech: Investing in desalination breakthroughs and advanced wastewater recycling for irrigation. As freshwater becomes more scarce, the ability to create usable water for crops will be a primary security asset.

This image from the U.N.E.P (United Nations Environment Programme) shows the potential for cultivated meat to exponentially feed more people at scale than our current system.

With so much data available on what needs to happen to shore up our food system given our growing population and dwindling natural resources, one would think, given the catastrophic implications of disrupted global food chains, that the U.S. would be investing heavily to be a leader in food systems innovation. Yet, according to the Good Food Institute’s State of Global Policy: Public Investment in Protein Diversification to Feed a Growing World, “federal investments in plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-enabled proteins in the United States declined from a peak of about $115 million announced in 2024 to an estimated $11 million in 2025. In doing so, the United States bucks the global trend of investing competitively in biotechnology and biomanufacturing, of which food production is an essential driver of scientific progress, production capacity, and economic growth.”

Are we headed in the right direction?

Perhaps that will be my next question to AI: what will the world look like if global food supply chains are disrupted and how will we think looking backwards thinking we could have done something about it?

Trivia: Which famous CEO, referring to both its ability to scale and its global importance, said on CNBC with Jim Cramer, “Protein synthesis is going to be huge”?

Jensen Huang, CEO, Nvidia.

Thanks for reading today, and see you next Thursday,

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn. Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially.

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Charted Alterntive Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

Image by jcomp on Magnific unless otherwise noted.

Does the world need another Substack where someone waxes prophetic about the answers to a crushing problem—or, worse, the world as we know it?

I certainly don’t have all the answers to life’s biggest mysteries. I can’t claim to have all the answers for righting the food system, either. However, I do see a gaping hole in the food systems space. There is plenty of content on cooking and health, of course. There is also a lot on new innovation, product success or failure, and a bit of policy coverage. However, from my perspective, there is a distinct lack of thought leadership regarding an overarching food strategy going forward.

On my Food Systems Strategy with Elysabeth Substack, every Thursday you will receive newsletter-style essays on the state and risks of our global food system, the innovations taking place to render it more resilient, delicious, and efficient, and the realistic trajectory of the sector. The posts will incorporate many aspects of the food system: agriculture, AI, innovation, economics, natural capital use, healthcare benefits, costs and risks at both the personal and societal levels, cultural impacts large and small, spiritual and religious questions, and even labor and job implications.

I’ll get into it all!

The purpose of this Substack is to shine a light on how all of these elements work together, how they will be impacted, and how they can shift in unison or in tandem for a successful food transition… or not.

It is more than “food for thought.”

It is meant to be a path forward—a potential roadmap out of what currently isn’t working and what, if not addressed soon, will become an overwhelming hurdle. This Substack is meant to be a tactical, multidisciplinary approach to course-correcting the most vital thing to our existence other than water: food.

So, why did I start a Substack on Food Systems Strategy? Because it’s needed.

Don’t worry, I’ll throw in some trivia so it will be fun and, for paid subscribers, there is a monthly Zoom call with me and others to get into the weeds.

So subscribe and let’s dive in!

Elysabeth

Subscribe to my Substack. Follow me on LinkedIn.

Live and interactive content coming soon-ish. Potentially. This Thursday’s article will be Can Americans Even Afford a Burger Anymore?

About Elysabeth Alfano

Elysabeth Alfano is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation. She speaks globally on the intersection of food security, resiliency, efficiency, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Compact Leaders Summit, COP27, COP28, SXSW, BloombergTV, FintechTV, Bloomberg Radio, WGN Radio, WGN-TV and more. She has written for Sustain Finance, Charted Alterntive Investment Alliance (CAIA) and Advisorpedia among other publications. She has hosted two podcasts, The Plantbased Business Hour and Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest which was the Advisor to the food systems ETF, EATV.

Food is nourishing and vital for our survival. As the world contemplates food insecurity issues brought on by climate change, the inefficiency of our food supply system and rising political tensions, investing in a safe and secure food future resonates with all of us, governments and individuals alike. As trade wars and physical wars rage on, it is easy to see how food, sadly, could be weaponized.

Several examples point to how food and water could be in limited supply causing countries to trade less and rely on their own supply chains more, resulting in food shortages. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world’s leading producer of sunflower seeds, the sixth largest producer of corn, and the ninth largest producer of wheat and soy, shows us, in addition to the devastation of the war in Ukraine, that our food supply system is fragile and susceptible to breaking. For a while, due to shortages emerging from the war, India stopped trading wheat. Per the BBC, “The price of wheat [jumped] on international markets after India banned the export of the staple cereal.”

Food instability isn’t just a product of war. The Middle East, Singapore, China, and parts of Africa currently experience food insecurity. With valuable resources like water in short supply due to climate change and world angst at an all-time high, it is understandable that many countries would like to maintain a self-sufficient food supply and mitigate their food insecurity risk. COVID-19 and its impact on supply chains underscored the same need.

This is why governments worldwide are investing in alternative proteins that require less land, water, and time to produce than traditional animal protein, while emitting fewer greenhouse gases and addressing several key food security issues. This is critical because, as international diplomacy deteriorates, being food and water independent via using fewer natural resources to create more amounts of protein is a matter of national security.

To build a more robust food supply system, Israel, Canada, the European Union, Singapore, and China are all putting money into alternative proteins: plant-based, cell-based, and precision fermentation technologies for developing food products. These additional products grant a diversification of the supply chain, and, thus, build resilience for the entire system. These are not replacements, but additions allowing for more customer choice, both in product and price points, and less system fragility.

A Global Path Forward Without The U.S.

As the U.N. projects the global population to grow from approximately 8 billion people to 10 billion people by 2050, many countries have begun planning for more mouths to feed and a more efficient, nutritious, faster, and prolific way to feed them. Investing in research into resource-saving technologies such as plant-based innovations, precision and biomass fermentation, and cellular agriculture is a path to food security. Canada, for example, announced that it would invest $100 million in its plant-based industry. The European Union announced it would invest 10 billion euros in a green transition program focusing on plant-based proteins.

For countries that naturally have food insecurity issues, finding a more efficient way to produce food is a strategic imperative. Singapore can only produce 10% of its food and imports the rest. Because its food supply chain is very susceptible to pandemics and regional political squabbles, Singapore is emerging as the Asian food tech capital, investing $72 billion in its ’30 by 30’ plan to produce 30% of its nutritional needs locally by 2030. Of note, Singapore made history when, on December 2, 2020, it became the first country in the world to give regulatory approval for the sale of cell-based meat by Eat Just, Inc.’s Good Meat.

Israel is also taking a global leadership role in diversified proteins. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed government officials to appoint a body to support these innovation industries by connecting key stakeholders operating in this field, including but not limited to universities, government agencies, and entrepreneurs. According to the Good Food Institute, the Israel Innovation Authority announced its plan to allot a portion of a $69M investment to a cultivated meat consortium composed of companies and research institutions.

The Netherlands, too, is championing the advancement of cultivated meat. A leader in food innovation and home to MosaMeat, the first company to debut a cultivated meat burger, the Netherlands pledged 60 million euros to develop a cellular agriculture ecosystem.

Food Innovation Is an Issue of U.S. National Security

In 2024 it seemed that the U.S. was gearing up to be a leader in food innovation with the Department of Defense (DoD) set to invest in advancements in food through biomanufacturing. “The next industrial revolution will be a biomanufacturing revolution. [The Department of Defense] is keenly aware of that reality,” said Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. “DBIMP’s [Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program] investment in a diverse set of companies will help transition U.S. bioindustrial manufacturing from the laboratory to a network of large-scale production facilities, able to fortify defense supply chains...while positioning the U.S. bioeconomy for surging growth.”

Unfortunately, several food companies that were set to receive funding for biomass fermentation say that this funding has been cut. It is important to note that this is not the case in China, which continues to invest and advance in food innovation.

According to Reuters, in China, “Food security has long been regarded as a major source of political legitimacy for the ruling Communist Party.” China’s arable land is shrinking, making the country increasingly dependent on the rest of the world to feed its 1.4 billion people.

The Good Food Institute’s 2026 State of Global Policy: Public investment in protein diversification to feed a growing world notes, “China’s No. 1 Central Document—the first policy statement released by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council each year–included among 2025’s goals “Building a diversified food supply system,” including efforts ‘to cultivate and develop biological agriculture and explore novel food resources.’ The central document specifically mentions a need for ‘expanding food sources through multiple channels,’ including fungal and algae-based protein extraction—techniques used in the development of many plant-based and fermentation-derived products.”

It goes on to say that, “China’s investments in cultivated meat, fermentation-enabled protein, and other “new proteins” grew both larger and more explicit in 2025, with a variety of actors at the national, state, and municipal levels announcing new investments in biotechnology research, industry development, and infrastructure. In February 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released a plan to revitalize rural economies pursuant to the No. 1 Central Document, advocating for investment in biotechnology-enabled agriculture, exploration of new food resources such as plant-based meat, and the development of algae-based foods.”

The report quotes the U.S. National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnologies. “Realizing the full potential of agricultural biotechnology requires addressing the challenges it faces. Total U.S. spending on agricultural research has fallen by a third since peaking in 2002. By contrast, China is now the largest global funder of agricultural research and development (R&D), and China-based companies are acquiring and consolidating global agricultural companies to bolster their technology portfolio. For all of these reasons, it is critical that the United States leverage the opportunities of biotechnology today to build an agricultural sector that is up to the challenges of tomorrow.”

With the Commission additionally stating in the April 2025 report, Charting the Future of Biotechnology: An action plan for American security and prosperity, “The inflection point for biotechnology has not yet arrived. Ultimate leadership of the sector is still up for grabs. With chips and advanced telecommunications we were caught flat-footed. But with biotechnology, fortunately, we can act early and decisively.”

Will we? Clearly, the clock is ticking.

The Next Wars Will Be Fought Over Food and Water

Water advisor Will Sarni’s approach makes sense. “I propose we be honest and clear with civil society: there are outdated public policies that fail to address the increasing demand for a finite resource and a hydrologic cycle disrupted by climate change. With regard to water management, the past is no longer a guide to the future, and the status quo is no longer adequate. We need to increase water efficiency and reuse, and develop alternative water supplies, due to declining surface water and groundwater depletion.” The same approach must be taken with our no longer resilient and outdated food system. We need a more efficient system addressed through food waste, water and land management, and less destructive and innovative methods resulting in more products and more resiliency.

Water and food security is the single-largest impact investment opportunity in the history of mankind. Roughly 40% of the world’s population is affected by water scarcity, much of which is linked to animal agriculture using over 70% of the world’s freshwater supply.

With a growing global population, global warming, and dwindling resources, we are all in a race for food and water. With fewer countries potentially less willing or able to share or trade food in the future, the food supply may soon become a geopolitical issue and an environmental and health issue. Ultimately, it is possible to foresee that wars will be fought over food and water, as is the case with Syria, and true geopolitical power will be held by those who control the global supplies. This hits home for governments and individuals alike.

Yet, according to the Good Food Institute’s State of Global Policy: Public investment in protein diversification to feed a growing world, “Federal investments in plant-based, cultivated, and fermentation-enabled proteins in the United States declined from a peak of about $115 million announced in 2024 to an estimated $11 million in 2025. In doing so, the United States bucks the global trend of investing competitively in biotechnology and biomanufacturing, of which food production is an essential driver of scientific progress, production capacity, and economic growth.”

This is dangerous territory for the U.S. The race is on.

Excerpts of this article were taken from my co-authored article with Kubra Koldemir, Forget The Race to Space. We’re in a Race for Food and Water.

Elysabeth Alfano speaks globally on the intersection of food security, sustainability, and our global food supply system, including recently at the United Nations Global Leaders Compact Summit, COP27 and COP28, BloombergTV and more. She is a business and policy advisor on efficient food system transformation, and hosted two podcasts on the same, one entitled, The Plantbased Business Hour, and one entitled, Upside & Impact, for the New York Stock Exchange’s podcast platform. She is the former CEO of VegTech™ Invest, the Advisor to the VegTech Plant-based Innovation & Climate ETF, (EATV).

Kübra Koldemir is a business writer at SustainFinance and a sustainability researcher at Argüden Governance Academy. She has written numerous sustainability articles that have been published in various global publications. Koldemir started her financial career in 2006, working as an investment analyst in New York City, first at a long-only fund and later at a hedge fund with $1 billion in assets under management (AUM) that specialized in financial service companies.

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