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How Will Cultured Meat and Meat Alternatives Disrupt the Agricultural and Food Industry?

A number of meat alternatives are evolving, each with the potential to disrupt the multibillion-dollar global meat industry.

Meat alternatives have the potential to disrupt the multibillion-dollar global meat industry. The essential questions, however, are which of those new products have the most disruption potential, what are the resulting shifts within the value chain, and who will benefit most?

Based on our work in the global agriculture, food, and meat industry, we shed some light on the major disruptive trends and provide a trigger point to redirect the strategies of companies affected.

Globally, Meat Is a Huge Business and Will Grow Further

The global population-which was around 7.6 billion in 2018-is projected to increase to around 10 billion by 2050. To sustain all these people, a massive amount of food is required. However, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), nearly half of the worldwide harvest is required to feed the livestock population, which consists of about 1.4 billion bovines, 1 billion pigs, 20 billion poultry, and 1.9 billion sheep, lamb, and goats (see figure 1). Agricultural production directly for human consumption accounts for just 37 percent, representing the second largest harvest consumption block (ahead of biofuel, industrial production, and others). Thus, most of the harvest is fed to animals to produce meat, which finally is consumed by humans. In the following elaborations, the term “meat” refers to bovine, pig, poultry, sheep, lamb, and goat meat but does not include game or seafood (for example, fish and crustaceans).