Final month, a toddler born within the Dominican Republic was credited with being the eighth billionth individual on Earth. This main inhabitants milestone was reached solely 11 years after the planet’s inhabitants ticked previous seven billion, and the ten billionth individual is predicted to be born someday round 2050.

That’s numerous mouths to feed. The United Nations has forecasted that farmers should produce 70 per cent extra meals by 2050 to satisfy the wants of the world’s rising inhabitants.

Whereas planet Earth has been an incredible supplier to human beings, there are limits as to how a lot it can provide. Massive-scale meals manufacturing is already accountable for practically a 3rd of carbon emissions, and 90 per cent of deforestation as pure ecosystems are transformed into farmland.

The surroundings isn’t the one problem confronting meals safety for future generations. Because the conflict in Ukraine – which disrupted provides of feedstock and grains to Asia, Europe, and Africa – has proven, meals provides and manufacturing are extremely weak to geopolitical occasions.

Meals tech takes centre stage

Technology has revolutionised our understanding of how genomic sequencing can produce extra resistant and higher-yield crops and has pushed large advances in different meals, akin to plant-based analogues and cultivated protein.

Additionally Learn: The opportunities and challenges Singapore’s agritech sector faces

Singapore, the city-state which I name residence, has positioned itself to be on the centre of analysis and commercialisation of those novel meals. As a rustic with little arable land and which imports as a lot as 90 per cent of the meals its inhabitants consumes, it has set an bold aim of sustainably producing 30 per cent of its dietary wants by 2030.

At Nurasa, we’re equally centered on accelerating the commercialisation and adoption of sustainable meals throughout Asia. We work intently with business companions and promising meals tech startups to make sure that the style, texture, dietary worth, and worth of those sustainable choices match shopper calls for. Merely put, all of us wish to eat meals that excites us.

However whereas creating superb, tasty, and reasonably priced merchandise is a mandatory first step to engaging customers and establishing and rising market share, it isn’t sufficient. As a few of our most modern meals producers are discovering, there are vital obstacles to bringing sustainable meals merchandise to market.

Limitations to scaling and commercialising new meals exist

Rising gamers have to scale as much as place these merchandise within the arms of customers to disrupt the established order. Different meals producers are nonetheless first-movers in using tools akin to precision fermentation and high-moisture extrusion (HME) to create meals analogues. Nevertheless, normally,  the infrastructure for such modern applied sciences is prohibitively costly to ensure that these rising meals producers to scale as much as business volumes.

Different meals producers additionally face restricted entry to capital to commercialise their merchandise. Though the sector was estimated to be price US$1 trillion by 2050, shopper adoption has not been as strong as predicted.

Consequently, investor confidence has fallen, regardless of rising eagerness to direct capital in the direction of alternatives that contribute to a extra sustainable world. Till the choice protein sector is ready to drive mainstream adoption, the problem of fundraising will stay.

To beat the core impediment hampering development, we have to win customers over on flavour, texture and dietary high quality and encourage them to understand different proteins as actual meals choices.

Subsequently, as producers make additional enhancements and create extra meals purposes and alternatives for customers to combine these merchandise into their every day diets, we anticipate a major shift in habits. Making this a actuality would require improvements in product growth and formulations,  and rising startups missing the related technical experience and capability might want to depend on help from the broader ecosystem to fill present gaps and seize demand.

Providing tailor-made help to scale startups

It’s a critical time for sustainable foods, particularly following the conclusion of COP27 negotiations, the place meals safety featured prominently. With out query, the worldwide occasion has put constructing a extra strong meals system on the radar of leaders – however there may be nonetheless vital work to be accomplished to determine extra moral and environmental methods of manufacturing.

New concepts and improvements, akin to different meals, provide us the chance to enhance resilience and deal with the results of local weather change. Nevertheless, as with every nascent business, challenges stay. Overcoming these would require concerted motion by partnerships at each step of the commercialisation journey.

For this reason Nurasa, A*STAR’s Singapore Institute of Meals and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI) and Trendlines Agrifood Innovation Centre (AFIC) have launched the inaugural Food Tech Startup Challenge with the help of Enterprise Singapore.

Additionally Learn: 4 ways you can capitalise on the food tech gold rush in Asia

At present open for submissions, the problem calls on entrepreneurs from wherever on the earth, specialising in both the optimisation of different proteins – particularly by precision fermentation and HME – or the creation of next-generation wholesome and engaging useful meals and novel product codecs, to take part.

Of explicit curiosity might be how different protein startups overcome the important thing problems with present plant-based meat: style, texture, vitamin, and worth.

The winners of the problem might be awarded, amongst different prizes and incentives, early entry to cutting-edge applied sciences and instruments at Nurasa’s Meals Tech Innovation Centre in addition to the chance to work intently with business leaders to scale up the event of their novel, animal-free meals merchandise to the pre-commercialisation stage.

For entrepreneurs eager to crack the Asian market, this problem is the perfect platform from which they’ll acquire a foothold within the fastest-growing and largest meals markets on the earth.

At Nurasa, we’re wanting ahead to serving to meals innovators discover artistic options that may elevate the obstacles to the adoption of different meals on this area. From the groundbreaking options we’ve seen up to now, the longer term is wholesome and scrumptious – and, extra importantly, sustainable.

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