CNN’s The Next Frontier explores the future of food

In a new episode of The Next Frontier, CNN’s Rahel Solomon meets innovators around the world who are imagining new ways of producing food to meet the demand of a growing population.

From meat alternatives to hi-tech farming practices, technology today has the potential to greatly impact how we will eat in the future. Liz Specht, Vice President of Science and Technology at the Good Food Institute, believes that “the best way to ensure we have food security in the future is to diversify our protein supply.”

Following the success of the plant-powered movement which has taken off over the past decade, Specht believes that it is time to introduce the next generation of alternative ingredients. “I think we have to be open to all the tools in our toolkit to make a food system that can actually sustain a population of the size we’re approaching,” she adds.

To protect the future, some scientists have been looking to the past, to billion-year-old micro-organisms that helped form the basis for modern day plants – algae.  Companies around the world are now harvesting and refining this ingredient. Miller Tran, co-founder of Triton, tells the programme, “I believe the next frontier in the future of food is really harnessing the potential of microorganisms. And here at Triton we believe that that microorganism is algae.”

He continues, “Food has to be an experience. The next generation and the future of food is not just about mimicking a burger, it’s creating an outcome that simply put doesn’t exist.” Algae can be evolved for various compounds which resemble animal products such as meat, eggs or even milk. “The outcomes that are possible are just endless,” Tran says.

“It starts with growing them in liquid. Eventually we’ll transfer them into a fermentation tank, which is basically how we produce beer with microorganisms in a stainless-steel reactor. Once we have that scaled up process, we dry them, and we send them off to food science to create the next new novel food product,” explains Tran.

One of the newest industries aiming to mimicking animal product is ‘cultivating meat’, grown in a petri dish instead of a farm. Specht explains, “This is cultivating actual animal cells and animal muscle tissue. You’re creating what is essentially identical to animal meat.” One customer tells the programme, “I feel like I’m tasting the future.”

Israeli startup Steakholder Foods is a company at the forefront of this emerging technology, combining 3D bio-printing with advanced cellular biology to create whole cuts of meat. According to CEO Arik Kaufman, “The printing capability is our secret sauce. We hold a platform that is very diversified and can be relevant to multispecies.”

Beginning by humanely taking tissue from an animal, stem cells are then isolated and placed in bioreactors where they are fed nutrients to help them grow. Vice President of Biology at Steakholder Foods, Orit Goldman describes the process of cultivating the meat, “We characterise the muscle and fat cells under the microscope. The muscle cells will contract as in the native tissue. When we have the differentiated cells, we mix the cells with the bio ink and print the cells through the printer.”

The printing process takes around seven minutes. Afterwards, Goldman says it requires a maturation and incubation phase before it can be cooked. Kaufman compares raising livestock to cultivating meat, “It takes approximately two years to grow a cow until it’s slaughtered and has a huge effect on the carbon footprint of the world. The time it takes to produce a cultivated steak is a few weeks. It’s much more efficient timewise and energy consumption-wise. It’s clean and it’s ethical.”

In Doncaster, England, CEO and co-founder of Earth Rover, James Brown, describes how AI powered robots (Earth Rovers) could be the next frontier in farming. “The idea is to produce food sustainably with no diesels, no chemicals, and no tillage of the soil.” The autonomous rover can be controlled using GPS guidance, can go up and down the field, and control weeds with concentrated light.

Current control methods include spraying chemicals or mechanical weeding, which can harm the soil and surrounding crops. The rovers are much more precise distributing these chemicals and take advantage of AI by using cameras that provide information to farmers about plant size and health in order to only apply what is needed. Liz Specht says, “Both will serve all areas of food production in a really valuable way.”

In Italy, Luca Gamberini, co-founder of Nemo’s Garden, is looking for a sustainable land space solution for the future. The mission of this underwater farming technology is to give it “an added possibility for growing produce on the huge amount of coastlines that is especially present in our middle section of the earth.” The pilot plant is located just off the coast of Noli in an array of suspended greenhouses called biospheres, transparent plastic domes anchored to the sea floor which capture air inside.

The plants grow via hydroponics, using water-based nutrients in place of soil. According to Gamberini, Nemo’s Garden stands out from other forms of farming with “the difference in the light spectrum that reaches the plants, thermal stability of the ocean water, separation from outside pathogens and pests and access to fresh water.”

Looking to the future, Specht believes that people need to be open to all kinds of concepts to feed the planet. “The urgency of the challenges in the food system right now are such that we can’t wait to be able to bring agriculture up to the speed it needs to be at.”

See more from The Next Frontier:

https://edition.cnn.com/specials/world/the-next-frontier

The Next Frontier airs on CNN International on Saturday 8^th April 2023 at 11:00 BST

The show also airs at the following times:

Saturday 8^th April 2023 at 05:30 BST and 17:30 BST

Sunday 9^th April 2023 at 04:00 BST and 22:30 BST

Monday 10^th April 2023 at 01:30 BST