I’m going to try to make sense of this tumultuous year, starting with three trends from the past 12 months that I see as key to the immediate future of food.

  1. An insane year for alternative proteins By Dec. 1, venture capitalists invested a whopping $1.5 billion in alternative proteins during 2020, according to the latest data from the Good Food Institute. That money — close to double the 2019 total — is making the industry increasingly visible. At the start of the year, the Impossible Burger was available in around 150 stores — now you can find it in more than 15,000. Newer alt proteins are also coming. Just last week, Singapore became the first country to approve the sale of lab-grown meat. And while the field may not need further incentives, it got one anyway: This week, the XPRIZE Foundation announced a new $15 million competition focused on chicken and fish alternatives.
  2. How committed is your company? Where do we start? How about June, when Unilever committed to zeroing-out emissions from all its products by 2039? Or last week, when Nestlé, the world’s largest food company, said it would spend $3.6 billion over the next five years as it moves toward a 2050 net-zero target? Or back in March at Horizon Organic, a U.S. dairy brand that committed to going carbon-negative by 2025? Those are just the first three that come to mind in a bumper year for target-setting.
  3. The rush for regenerative ag Another area where a flood of new initiatives in 2020 made it challenging to keep up. Big industry names such as Bayer and Cargill said they would help farmers transition to regenerative methods, and big names from the wider corporate world — JPMorgan Chase and IBM, for instance — bought some of the first carbon credits from Indigo Carbon, an soil offsets marketplace. Nori, an Indigo competitor, closed a $4 million funding round. Another disruptive company, Farmers Business Network, launched a service designed to help farmers earn a premium from regeneratively farmed grain. Again, those are just the first examples that come to mind.

Read the full article about food trends by Jim Giles at GreenBiz.