Advanced fermentation using microorganisms to make protein promises a paradigm shift to feed the growing global population, just as selective livestock breeding did in the 19th century and the Haber-Bosch process to make ammonia for fertilizer did in the early 20th century. Bacteria, fungi, and yeast already produce all the essential food groups that humans need, and the technology is advancing rapidly to make products more efficiently and at a substantially greater scale. Market research firm the Brainy Insights forecasts that sales of foods made in bioreactors will increase from $3.83 billion in 2025 to $22.8 billion in 2033. Potential benefits of the approach include a lower cost of food and lower carbon emissions, water consumption, agricultural waste, and land use.

Freeing up farmland: Precision fermentation to make protein and synthetic meat directly from animal cells will cut cattle farming’s share of the market and will free up 80% of land—an area the size of the US, China, and Australia combined­—according to RethinkX, a company specializing in disruptive technology analysis.

Fish food from natural gas: About one-third of the world’s ocean fish that are caught are used to feed farmed fish, contributing to overfishing. In a bid to avoid this problem, Calysta has developed a fermentation process for making protein-rich fish feed from single-cell bacteria that are free from genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and fed with natural gas. Calysta’s joint venture company Calysseo has started up a plant in Chongqing, China, to produce up to 20,000 metric tons (t) or fish food and pet food per year. “We are producing the equivalent of the edible parts of 10 cows an hour in a plant that requires zero arable land and 90% less water than equivalent sources of protein,” Calysta CEO Alan Shaw says. Calysta plans to build a 100,000 t per year facility in the Middle East.

Mycelium burger, anyone? Humans have been consuming mycoprotein in large volumes since Imperial Chemical Industries dropped Quorn onto our plates in 1985. Quorn is made by fermenting a fungus, Fusarium venenatum. In recent years, several new companies have entered the fray. The Fungi Protein Association, an industry body that formed in 2022, now has 36 members. Among them, the firm the Protein Brewery has developed Fermotein, a non-GMO mycelium made using a fermentation process with inputs of water and carbohydrate crops. It is 50% protein and also contains vitamins, minerals, and fiber. The company opened a pilot production plant in 2021 and gained approval earlier this year to sell Fermotein in Singapore. The product’s flavor is neutral, so it can be added to—or blended with—numerous foods, including meat analogs, dairy alternatives, and pastas, the company says.

Yeast 2.0: Foodstuffs made with yeast have gone way beyond the staples of bread and beer. Food technology firms are inserting genes into the DNA of yeasts, including the baker’s yeast variety Saccharomyces cerevisiae, to produce foods rich in protein and vitamins. Products include animal-free versions of dairy products, eggs, meats, fats, collagen, and gelatin, as well as novel flavors. Impossible Foods has engineered a yeast to make heme, a flavoring compound that gives its plant-based burgers a meaty taste. Perfect Day has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists to develop an engineered yeast–based process to create whey and casein. These proteins can be used to produce cheese, yogurt, and ice cream that are identical in taste and texture to traditional animal-derived products.

Honey without bees: The market for natural honey may be about to change. Having raised more than $5 million from venture capitalists, start-up MeliBio is in the middle of scaling up a microbial fermentation process for making synthetic honey. MeliBio claims that a masked taste test with industry leaders found that its synthetic product, named Mellody, was indistinguishable from natural honey. The firm Bee-io is also developing a bioprocess for making artificial honey.

Protein from the air: The company Solar Foods is leading a pack of more than a dozen companies developing fermentation processes for making protein from non-GMO, single-cell bacteria fed with hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and other trace elements. The company aims to make the world’s most sustainable protein production process by using hydrogen made using renewable energy. The company opened its first plant in April with an annual capacity to produce 160 t per year of its protein—a relatively tiny volume for the food industry. The dried bacteria form a high-protein orange powder that can be added to many foods.

Alternative protein centers emerge: Imperial College London and North Carolina State University have each recently opened sustainable protein research centers with funding from the Bezos Earth Fund, an organization that has committed $100 million to develop sustainable protein alternatives. “One of the key aspects we’re going to explore is biodiversity, moving away from just looking at the typical bacteria cell,” says Rodrigo Ledesma-Amaro, head of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein at Imperial. “We have a track record of working with nonconventional organisms and being able to study those and engineer those and make products out of those.” In a separate initiative, the UK government in August paid $20 million to create a National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre directed by the University of Leeds in association with Imperial and other British research institutes to help alternative protein technologies become mainstream in the UK.

A response to climate change “Precision fermentation is going to have an increasingly important role to play in meeting the world’s need for food, particularly as traditional food supply chains become ever more impacted by climate change,” says Shahin Ali, a senior scientist at ATCC, a developer and supplier of microorganisms. “Precision fermentation focuses on producing high-value ingredients in controlled environments, meaning they are sheltered from volatile weather patterns and can become a stable means for large-scale food production year-round. With its stability and reduced environmental footprint, precision fermentation is undoubtedly going to be a part of our future.”