How do we nourish 10 billion people by 2030 with less land and fewer emissions?
That’s the one-billion-dollar question falling squarely in the hands of Dr Andy Jarvis, who leads the Bezos Earth Fund’s Future of Food Program. With a big chunk of money to deploy and an incredibly complex problem to solve, the Bezos Earth Fund is championing the urgent need to address food as part of the fight against climate change by supporting the development of alternative proteins as part of the solution.
Andy Jarvis spoke on the topic with Food Frontier Founder and Chair, Thomas King, at AltProteins 24.
Let’s start with the big picture. Why food and what is the Bezos Earth Fund’s Theory of Change when it comes to food systems?
It’s terrifying that we have a one-billion-dollar commitment on food. I mean it’s terrifying, because we are facing a nature crisis and a climate crisis—both enormous challenges around the world—and we really need to make every dollar count right now in terms of delivering much-needed solutions.
…we can’t solve the nature crisis and we can’t solve the climate crisis without looking at food. It’s one-third of global emissions. Two-thirds of ice-free land across the planet is being used for our food system. Put simply, yes, we can do all the energy transitions in the world…but we still won’t meet the Paris Agreement unless we transform our food systems.
So, why food? That’s an easy one, and I actually find it kind of crazy that the world is only just waking up to the fact that we can’t solve the nature crisis and we can’t solve the climate crisis without looking at food. It’s one-third of global emissions. Two-thirds of ice-free land across the planet is being used for our food system. Put simply, yes, we can do all the energy transitions in the world, we can go electric cars around the world, but we still won’t meet the Paris Agreement unless we transform our food systems. That’s why we have this commitment on food, it is absolutely critical in the global system. We can’t fix climate and we can’t fix nature without food. We can’t fix the food system without looking at protein. So, the vast majority of our initial attention over the last two years has been in this area of sustainable protein. As I said, one-third of global emissions is for food, well, half of that comes from animals. Two-thirds of ice-free land is being used for our food system, well, 80% of that is for animal source food. This is the first port of call that we’ve got to look at, so it has been the primary goal for a lot of our grant-making.
The Bezos Earth Fund takes a systems-wide approach, grounded in evidence and recognition that food systems are extremely complex and there’s no silver bullet. You’re looking at everything from traditional land-based agriculture all the way through to alternative proteins, cellular technologies, and even consumer research. How are you approaching the sustainable protein grant-making program and what is the ROI (return on investment) that you are wanting to see?
The beauty of the food system is its diversity. You have eight billion consumers around the world, 10 billion shortly. You have enormous diversity in religions, budgets, cultures, values, tastes. All of these kinds of things. And it is very different to energy. Energy has quite a simple solution. We just need to move off fossil fuel generation of energy and into renewables. And of the eight billion consumers out there that have access to electricity, whether it’s coming from renewables or fossil fuel is not necessarily such an issue so long as when they flick the switch, the lights turn on.
Food is a lot more personal. It’s something that goes deep into our culture, and we have to be respectful of that. We’ve taken what we call the “yes and” approach to things. It’s recognising that we need 1,000 flowers to bloom. There is no silver bullet in this. There are lots of solutions that all need to get working all together. I think we’ve got to get off being quite religious or fanatical about “this is the solution” or “that’s the solution”, it’s multiple solutions. So, our approach to sustainable protein is very much in the vein of that. We actually do stuff on livestock: How can we reduce emissions? How can we reduce the methane side of things? How can we get deforestation out of supply chains and value chains? We recognise that for decades to come livestock is an enormous enterprise that we need to tackle. So yes, we need that AND we need alternatives.
The ROI on the alternative protein side really is market share. You have these ridiculous numbers, one-third of emissions, two-thirds of ice-free land with a large portion of that coming from animal source foods. Demand is going to increase by 50% for those animal source foods. There is simply no planet left. There is no carbon budget left if that is delivered with conventional animal source foods. So, we see it’s an imperative. Alternative proteins have to survive. They have to take that market share. So that’s our ROI, how do we get that market share?
Your major focus at the moment is open-source R&D and you’ve announced three centres in the sustainable protein space so far, the most recent in Singapore. Can you tell us a bit more about those initiatives and how they will operate?
When we were looking at the topic of alternative protein it was a tough one because our initial reaction was that the private sector was dealing with that area. You’ve got enormous amounts of venture capital going in and lots of companies delivering and developing products. What’s the role of philanthropy there? That was the question we kept asking ourselves. And, in consulting with many of our partners, including The Good Food Institute who’ve been helping us as strategic partners on this, we came to the conclusion that, unlike many other sectors, the alt protein world missed a beat. It went straight into this venture capital world with lots of companies developing products, lots of companies investing much-needed capital into R&D just to have the basic elements of what would be a product. That’s not actually efficient in the long run and there is an enormous amount of duplicity across the sector and across companies.
So, we thought, let’s go back to basics. How do we create a much stronger base for this? These centres are looking at that foundation, the foundational R&D that is going to help us get the price down, that is going to boost the taste, the texture, the mouthfeel, the consumer acceptance, and do that in a way that is not using salts and sugars and fats to do the heavy lifting so that we actually have products that are also healthy and with minimal processing. So, it’s going back to basics. What are the drivers right now that are causing those prices? Where are we failing to get the taste right? Where are we over-processing or producing products that don’t necessarily have the nutritional quality that we need? And how can we go back to basics? What R&D is going to fix that?
We have three centres, one of them is at North Carolina State University in the US, one is at Imperial College London, and one is at the National University Singapore. Each of them is taking a different flavour, a different focus, but they’re designed to be demand-driven. It’s the sector saying, look, these are some of the problems that we’re facing, and can we move that pre-competitive line a little bit further along so that the next generation of companies are not spending so much of that hard-earned capital that they have on the basic foundational stuff and can move quicker to getting a product in front of consumers.
That really echoes this sentiment that we’ve heard about “a rising tide lifts all ships” and the need for pushing out that pre-competitive stage because we’re trying to solve the same challenges in just getting off the ground. How does a company in the room today go about leveraging the research that’s going to come out of these centres? You said it’s open source. What does that look like?
There are two ways. One is the more passive way, which is helping us by saying that these are the problems we’re facing, this is what we need. We need the centres to be responding to the demands that are coming from across the sector. The second is to plug into these centres. We have, beyond priority setting and trying to get some of the problems you’re facing up on the research agenda, opportunities to co-invest with these centres. What we have is access, we have $90 million across these three centres now deployed. We have enormous capacity on the research side with some of the best researchers around the world working on this and so we can do research projects together. If there are specific topics where you’re really struggling, instead of going alone, go with the centre, work collaboratively and let’s overcome some of these things. These centres are just getting going. They’re only a few months old with many of them just setting up staffing, getting directors in place, setting up the governance arrangements and the means of actually listening, and the ecosystem of partners and all of these kinds of things. So, it’s early in their journey, but now is the time to reach out and start having those conversations and setting their agenda.
A lot of our key audience is based in the Asia Pacific region. Can you speak a bit about how the Bezos Earth Fund views the APAC region in terms of this protein transition?
Just in Southeast Asia and East Asia, you have 2.3 billion consumers and that’s what’s going to define the future, what those consumers are eating in 20 year’s time.
It’s absolutely critical. If you look at the numbers, the cynic in me says that so much of the development of alternative proteins has been in the wrong countries for the wrong reasons, to a certain extent. Where this has been most successful is in places like Singapore, Denmark and Israel. They’re countries without huge amounts of land where there is a reason to develop alternative protein products from a food sovereignty perspective and from an innovation and tech leadership perspective, which is great. But it doesn’t matter in those countries if every consumer switches to 100% alternative proteins, it makes no difference on the planet. What really makes a difference on the planet is many of those countries in the APAC region. Indonesia, China, India, just with those three, that’s where an enormous chunk of the growth in demand for animal source foods is coming from. Just in Southeast Asia and East Asia, you have 2.3 billion consumers and that’s what’s going to define the future, what those consumers are eating in 20 year’s time. It’s also where the biggest dynamics are in terms of growing middle class, which is the primary driver of animal source food demand. APAC is absolutely critical, so that’s where we’ve squarely got our eyes on in terms of getting products in front of consumers.
Do you think there are unique challenges that come with trying to influence consumers in the APAC region? We know it’s such an incredibly diverse region. Even within a single country, there is great diversity in terms of consumers. But as a region that, on one hand, has a long-standing tradition of alternative protein consumption such as tofu, there’s a growing perception that those are the less desirable forms of protein. They’re not as aspirational as the kinds of protein that the West are eating and those with more disposable income in the APAC region are looking to consume more animal-based protein more of the time. What do you think that presents for companies trying to break through in these markets?
On the face of it, I think it’s easier. Talk about taking the hardest of all the challenges, trying to convince a Texan to eat a plant-based burger. That’s what most of the sector was born out of, taking on the hardest food and the hardest consumer culture and trying to switch it up. In Asia it is very different. You don’t have a plate of food where the steak is the headline act. You have, across Asia, much more diverse plates of food where the animal source protein, while important, is not necessarily the absolute headline act. Vietnam, for example, you have beef pho, it’s so many more things than the pieces of beef that are in that soup. In many of these dishes, there is a much easier or lower bar in terms of a product that’s going to be acceptable for consumers. Yes, you have to do the work on the marketing to make it sexy and exciting. But I found it quite funny when we were checking out Thailand and thinking about what alternative proteins would look like there. Among the youth and the growing middle class, it was kind of cool to be vegan and vegetarian and it was being positioned there as a thing that’s a little bit different and edgy. I think that’s how we’ve got to think about this and make it not necessarily a poor man or woman’s piece of protein that’s replacing tofu or tempeh but actually something that is cool. If you’ve got disposable income, you go out and seek this. I think that’s where you’ve got to get to.
If we cast our minds forward 25 years, where do you hope to see the sustainable protein landscape and what do you think are the fundamental levers that need to be pulled in order to get us there? Do you have any calls to action?
I’ll outline why we are so committed on this and why we have now deployed all this money in these three centres. It’s a few proof points that I’ve had. When I took on the job, I spent about a year going around sampling so many different alternative proteins from different parts of the world. Some were plant-based, fermented, cultivated, chicken, beef, seafood. To be honest, I tried a few that were pretty revolting, and I tried a few that were absolutely incredible and those ones that I tried that were incredible… I’ll use an example with cheese. I’m a big cheese eater. I would find it very hard to not eat cheese and I was immediately very sceptical. You’re not going to be able to do a really good piece of cheese with plant-based ingredients. But I tried a cheese, I looked at the guy and I was like “Come on, you just went to the shop and you just bought a blue cheese. This is a scam”. I wanted to do some analysis on it. But I’ve had that proof point now over these last two years where you see that these products can absolutely hit taste parity. That’s the proof point, that’s why we’re convinced.
So, then it’s just a journey. It’s just like the example of solar panels. Jimmy Carter in 1979 put solar panels on the roof of the White House. They were very expensive, they were incredibly inefficient, and they were very early in the journey, but it was visionary in the sense of showing “this is the way we’ve got to go”. And I think it’s very much the same with alternative proteins. We’re early in the journey and very little money has been spent on the alternative protein industry in the grand scheme of things. I have no doubt that in 20 years’ time these products will be highly appreciated by consumers and taking market share. What needs to happen? Price needs to go down, the taste needs to get better, and we need to tell a very strong and good story about the health benefits of the products.
My call to action is primarily to governments. Invest. You need to support this. The counterfactual on this is right now there’s hundreds of billions every year being spent in subsidies to support the animal and livestock industry. There has been $13, $16, $17 billion dollars spent on alternative proteins in all of time. That gets spent in three weeks on animal source foods around the world. You have to give this a chance.
We’re a drop in the ocean in terms of the money but what we want to use is our philanthropic dollars to send a very strong signal that this is a sector of the future.
Governments need to invest. We look at it from a sustainability angle. Others could look at it from a health angle, but they need to invest because this is an economic opportunity. This is a new industry, and just like solar panels right now is an enormous sector and renewable energy is the place to be right now, alternative proteins, I believe, is also going to be the place to be. So, I think the first biggest call to action that we have is for governments to invest. We’re a drop in the ocean in terms of the money but what we want to use is our philanthropic dollars to send a very strong signal that this is a sector of the future. That this is a sector that requires government support. So, it’s the money, investing, but it’s also the policies, the programs, it’s taking away all the barriers that exist right now and start creating an enabling environment for this to succeed.
*Responses have been edited for clarity and conciseness.