America has always led in agricultural innovation. From motorized tractors, to hybrid seeds, cold-chain logistics, and the Green Revolution that now feeds the world – American ingenuity and public investment has established a strong reputation of American strength. With each age, technology and agriculture have grown together and a true American tradition keeps science and agriculture working closely together. The next wave of agriculture is a natural extension of that, with precision technologies at every stage from the field to the processing facility. Cultivated foods can now be crafted using both traditional and modern precision technologies, growing trait-optimized plant and animal foods to serve producers and consumers.
Precision cultivated foods, from cocoa and coffee to milk, fish and meat is a modern form of agriculture that can grow anything right here in the United States. Anywhere that a building with electricity can exist these technologies can reliably produce foods in record speed, without needing the right weather all while creating jobs for American workers and putting foods on American tables. At AMPS, we believe this technology is a major opportunity for America’s future— a second way of making food, offering security, prosperity, and continued global leadership.
Food Security Is National Security
A primary obligation of any nation to its people is to ensure they are fed, and America does this by providing care for its farmers and farmland above all. Food, feed and textiles are fundamental to American economic stability and the livelihood of millions of Americans. Recent years have exposed major vulnerabilities in our agricultural system: avian flu, African swine, screwworm, and drought significantly impaired our agricultural productivity. The U.S. also imports huge amounts of our human food supply. For example 70-85% of seafood is imported with much of it from China, which carry risks of forced labor and dangerous contamination. Securing our food supply is not only an opportunity for American businesses, it is a defining mission for American precision cultivation. We can keep American prosperity and economic strength by diversifying revenues on farms and overall throughout the food supply chain.
Precision cultivated foods offer a resilient alternative. They’re disease-resistant, drought-resistant, and can be produced anywhere, including near American population centers without competing for farmland. They are not intended to replace traditional American farming; modern technologies simply ensure Americans always have access to the foods they love, without depending on foreign suppliers. Enabling traditional farmers to partner with modern precision cultivation agriculturalists can help diversify their income sources when their standard production is limited. A strong, diversified economy benefits all Americans, producers and consumers alike.
Precision Cultivated Agriculture Strengthens American Farming
Precision cultivated agriculture isn’t a competitor to American farmers, it’s actually a customer. The same feedstocks of American soy, corn, wheat and sugar are used as feedstocks for American cultivated foods, too. More cultivated foods means more demand for what American farmers already grow. Best of all, sidestreams and out of grade crops can be fermented and processed for use as feedstocks here ensuring more revenue even from underperforming yields.
It also means more American jobs. Cultivated production facilities need technicians, scientists, and construction workers, some need ranchers and farmhands too. Training programs are creating a new workforce of skilled manufacturers which can revitalize rural communities and small cities that have filled American plates for generations. With traditional and modern agriculture side by side, we can usher in a new American era of agriculture innovation and prosperity.
Keep American Innovation in America
Many American companies are producing cultivated foods, frequently in partnership with American farmers and ranchers. Whether produced in the USA or elsewhere, some of these foods are already available to American consumers and it’s in the best interest of the USA to keep those jobs and that production right here.
The competition is fierce. China has named cell-cultivated agriculture a national strategic priority. Israel, Singapore, and the Netherlands are investing aggressively. To keep America First we must create business friendly legislation and policy to keep American companies operating within the USA, and enable them to work directly with traditional farmers to increase farm revenue, jobs, and U.S. tax revenue. We cannot afford to lose our global leadership in these technologies the way we lost our solar and semiconductor manufacturing leadership. It’s not if, but when companies bring new foods to consumers, and it’s also a question of where. We want that to be in the United States.
America has always been a leader in technology and agriculture innovation is no exception. America can lead by supporting American patent development, building factories, supporting workforce development and American exports. Our export deficit in human foods can be turned around by bolstering new food production systems like precision enabled food and agriculture. Precision cultivated agriculture is ready to strengthen the American food supply without taking a single acre from an American farmer. Precision agriculture is ready to keep Americans first in a rapidly modernizing landscape.
By Elizabeth Horst
Elizabeth Horst is the AMPS Director for Strategic Communications and Partnerships. She joins AMPS following a career as a diplomat in the U.S. State Department, with postings in Europe, Central and South Asia. After supporting national security and trade from the government side, she is drawn to food security and biotech, as the next frontiers she sees shaping both national security and global stability.