Myth: Modern foods are, and will forever be, too expensive to compete with animal products.

As we are in the early stages of the disruption, modern food products are understandably expensive. But part of what makes a technology disruptive is the fact that the technology, as well as the technologies that underpin it, are all steadily decreasing in cost. In the case of Precision Fermentation, some of the technologies that underpin it include artificial intelligence, machine learning, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, bioinformatics and computational biology, many of which have been and are continually declining in cost.

Once the industry infrastructure has been built and multiple companies have scaled up, the cost of producing foods using Precision Fermentation will trend toward zero because so many of the variable costs associated with production will trend toward zero. This includes variable costs such as energy, water, transportation, labor and feedstock. These will all be affected by disruptions in other sectors including transportation, energy, information/automation, as well as further innovation in the food and agriculture sector.

Explore the evidence...

• Modern foods produced by precision fermentation will disrupt our current food systems as they reach cost parity and become cheaper to produce than industrial agriculture foods. Watch RethinkX co-founder Tony Seba describe this in more detail.
• If the cost curve continues the way it has for the last few decades, the cost of PF will be cheaper than the cow by 2024/2025. Watch RethinkX co-founder Tony Seba describe this in more detail.
• The cost of modern food products will be half that of animal products and they will be superior in every functional attribute–more nutritious, tastier and more convenient with much greater variety. Wider economic benefits will accrue from the reduction in the cost of food in the form of increased disposable incomes and from the wealth, jobs and taxes that come from leading the way in modern food technologies. Learn more about the implications of the modern food disruption on p7-8 of our Rethinking Food & Agriculture report.
• Read more about the future of modern food, like Precision Fermentation, and its impacts on various sectors on this webpage.