Sustainability and Plant-Based Foods: Time For A Reset
For naysayers around plant-based foods, this year has poured a lot of fuel onto the fire, with the very public collapse of ‘unicorn’ businesses, a high-profile and credible backlash against processed foods and a cost-of-living crisis that has sent consumers flocking back to buy four Asda Quarter-Pounders for £3.50. However, in the words of Mark Twain, reports of the death of plant-based food have been greatly exaggerated.
The share price slump of Beyond Meat and the collapse of Meatless Farm will no doubt become Harvard case studies and entertaining Netflix documentaries, but they in no way tell the whole story about the state of the category. It appears that Meatless Farm experienced a fatal combination of poor management, unsustainable overheads and twitchy investors, and, while there has of course been a slow-down in the category, the consumer tailwinds are still strong. Given the current economic climate, the increased focus from VC and private equity firms on, say it quietly, profitable growth, not just growth, is also forcing a much-needed reset from companies that were previously hell-bent on over-ambitious land-grabbing.
Product quality has also been a challenge. A category will never become self-sustaining until it gains enough repeat customers and many plant-based foods have fallen down on taste and texture comparisons. They have also struggled to dispel the notion that they are ultra-processed and therefore unhealthy, with ingredients more befitting a chemistry lab rather than artisan food production. The publication of Chris van Tulleken’s excellent book, Ultra-Processed People, while not majoring on the plant-based industry, has heightened the public’s awareness of industrial substances and additives to avoid.
However, most of these issues are just the natural growing pains of any maturing category. There are also hugely exciting food developments everywhere you look – lab-grown (cultured) meat alternatives are starting to provide a serious challenge to traditional proteins; vertically grown salad from one of our clients, untouched by human hands until the consumer opens it and using 94% less water in production, has appeared for £1.50 a bag in Tesco, and overall investment in new agtech ventures is at an all-time high, with c. 20 times more capital deployed than 10 years ago.
There is clearly significant pressure, driven by climate change and a ballooning population, to build a more sustainable future for agriculture and nutrition. No doubt many more innovative food businesses will go to the wall, but those that survive will be reaching massive scale in a few years’ time. New eating habits will be more fully engrained, new categories will be more mainstream and truly transformative agriculture, for example growing wheat or soy without the current drain on environmental resources, will be here. A golden age of food beckons!
