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One of the most out-of-world experiences in my lifetime was walking through my elementary school at 18 years old.

As a final send-off before graduation, my high school tucked away in the Chicago suburbs would encourage its alumni to return to their early stomping grounds to reconnect with former teachers about their next chapter post-graduation.

While certainly a nice trip down memory lane, my biggest takeaway from the venture was just how small everything was.

As a 4’ tall, 56-pound 2nd grader back in 08’, the school seemed absolutely huge.

Yet, upon walking around the same school at 18, I was baffled by the miniature desks, the 6-foot-tall basketball hoops, and the smallest toilets I had ever seen.

Today, as an adult, there is one place in this world where I still feel like my 4-foot-tall, former 2nd-grade self…where even at the ripe old age of 23, I can’t grasp the sheer scale of everything around me: Costco.

Every month, when I go for my recurring massive haul, I seem to lose track of time in the place.

Wandering in between the 4 story-tall shelves, along aisles lined with enough granola bars and 30-pound rice bags to feed a small country, I remain in awe of the sheer amount of food in a single store.

If there is one thing I would show aliens (assuming they were to magically show up on Earth tomorrow demanding to understand the human race's greatest achievements), I would point them toward the iconic, $1.50 hot dog-serving grocery conglomerate.

Why?

Costco represents the idea that, unlike any other animal on the planet, we have conquered hunger.

Every year, we produce roughly 4 billion metric tons of food, enough to feed 1.5 times the global population.

To put this in perspective, we create enough food annually to sustain an additional 4 billion people than there currently are on Earth.

Shockingly, we live in an age where obesity is a greater global health concern than starvation.

From Foragers to Farmers

For tens of thousands of years, homo sapiens spent their days walking 12+ km in search of wild fruit, nuts, and animals to eat. They lived off the land around them, constantly on the move to sustain themselves.

The advent of agriculture changed everything. With the domestication of plants and farming, former hunter-gatherers now had the optionality to learn other skills, grow their families, and achieve greater security.

Initially, farming was a far less healthy avenue to feed oneself. Often reliant on a single plant or grain (i.e. maize, corn), farmers' diets were less nutrient-rich, varied, or protein-packed than those of their nomadic counterparts.

Over time, the spread of nutritious crops through trade, domestication of animals used for food, and improved farming techniques (such as seeding and irrigation) eventually replaced the hunter-gatherer lifestyle practiced by most people.

Today, farming has become one of the most efficient enterprises on the planet.

In the last 100 years, we have made massive strides to improve the ag industry from an incredibly manual and labor-intensive enterprise to one driven by mechanization and automation.

For context, check out the below chart from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, indicating that despite almost zero change in total agricultural inputs (i.e. labor, capital), the productivity and output of U.S. agriculture have skyrocketed.

From 1948 to 2019, U.S. agricultural output grew a whopping 175 percent, while labor inputs decreased 74 percent.

Enabled through advanced technology, agriculture today requires less labor and allows farmers to buy increasingly lower-cost heavy machinery (shoutout John Deere) and fertilizers to push products to market more efficiently.

While only 2% of the population are farmers in the U.S. today, small but mighty, they feed the remaining 98%.

We may have mastered food production, but underlying issues remain…

.A growing population and extreme weather events will further strain land available for farming.

Greenhouse gas emissions from mass-produced meat and crops continue to drive climate change in the wrong direction.

Hundreds of millions of people around the globe still go to bed hungry every night while, as a planet, we throw away 2.5 billion tons of food each year. 

The food and beverage industry has made incredible strides over the last century to feed the masses in the industrialized world. However, there is still a long way to go to make the sector more sustainable while providing equitable outcomes for all.

Fortunately, numerous exciting startups, with expertise from vertical farming to lab-grown burgers, are dedicated to solving these problems.

Growing Up, Not Out

While technology has made traditional farming ventures much more efficient, the industry is still in the hands of Mother Nature.

Thunderstorms, droughts, and extreme weather continue to make global food production unpredictable.

Land previously available for farm use becomes untenable, as desertification and soil erosion reduce its’ productivity and force farmers elsewhere.

Couple this with growing populations spreading across finite land, and the question becomes – how will we continue to feed the planet?

One encouraging startup, Bowery Farms, aims to solve this challenge through innovative hydroponics and software solutions.

Founded in 2015, the company is the largest vertical farming operator in the country, with a retail presence in more than 2000 stores including Amazon, Walmart, and Whole Foods.

Like the 4-story-tall racks in Costco, Bowery uses stacked shelves and hydroponics (aka farming without soil) to grow different crops in a stable, predictable environment.

Powered by its own BoweryOS software system, the team’s plethora of engineers can monitor, analyze, and adjust moisture levels, temperature, and even the soil pH of their plant products.

While the company experienced some turmoil last year, as funding for ag-tech dried up and evaluations dropped, its business proposition remains incredibly attractive.

The company claims it can produce 100x the amount of food per acre compared to traditional farms, all while using 95% less water.

Bowery Farms is one of several vertical farming startups that have popped up in the last 20 years and promises exponential yields in this space.

As our world reaches its peak population in our lifetime, and the need for sustainable farming solutions increases, I remain incredibly bullish on this ag-tech company reshaping farming for the future.

The Cost Of A Good Steak

While vertical farming is a great solution for improving agricultural yields with less space, it doesn’t solve the underlying problem: cows.

Driving through the vast cornfields of Indiana on my way to Purdue each year, I always assumed that most of these crops were for human consumption. 

The reality is this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Of the 38 million square kilometers of agricultural land in America, more than 80% is used to grow crops for animals.

The barley, corn, and oats grown each season are turned into livestock feed that gives your next Ribeye the oh-so-perfect level of marbling.

Yet, in Pareto-like fashion, this 80% of land only ends up delivering 20% of the world’s global supply of calories.

Put plainly, we are using way too much land on meat that doesn’t end up feeding us a whole lot. To combat this, some companies have taken to the lab for alternatives. 

Unlike popular plant-based meat companies like Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods, lab-grown meat maker Upside Foods wants to bring fabricated meats to the masses.

Grown from animal cells in large steel tanks not too different from that brewery you visited last Saturday, Upside Foods has already rolled out the world’s first cultivated beef meatball, chicken, and duck.

These fabricated meats are much more sustainable than their methane-producing cousins, using significantly less land and water.

While loved by some, these futuristic options have received significant pushback.

In May 2024, Florida Governor Rob DeSantis signed a bill banning cell-based meat consumption in the Sunshine State, citing his rejection of the “global elite's plan to force the world to eat meat grown in a petri dish or bugs”.

His ban was quickly followed by a similar outright ban of lab-cultivated meats in Alabama.

While I have yet to try any engineered meat (and am not sure I will), I don’t believe banishing these foods outright is the right solution. People should have the option to exercise their free will and decide the foods they want to eat.

Whether these science experiments make it to commercial markets (as in Singapore), they present an interesting preview into what could be the future of meat consumption around the globe.

Finding A Home For Ugly Apples

Every Saturday, I head over to the Mountain View Farmer’s Market to try and overcome the Sunday scaries and buy fresh produce for the week.

One weekend last fall, I was picking out Honey Crisps when I saw a giant basket of what looked to be perfectly good apples in the back for half the price.

I asked the guy running that stand what was up with those apples and he noted that due to discolorations, bruises, or just being a little bit funny-looking, they were severely discounted.

If unsold, they would likely be thrown away in the nearest dumpster. Needless to say, I was shocked…and bought a dozen. 

Around the U.S., food waste is a huge problem.

It is estimated that we lose almost half a trillion dollars in economic value in thrown-away food every year. This chalks up to over a hundred billion potential meals left uneaten.

While much of this wasted food is that extra chicken tender or half-eaten bag of nacho fries from last night’s impromptu Taco Bell order, a substantial portion can be attributed to food that never even made it to the market.

A study from Santa Clara University found that on-farm food waste accounted for more than a third of unused edible produce.

Huge batches of crops rot and decompose back into the Earth, as farmers find it difficult to sell or economically inefficient to harvest.

While most food waste management efforts focus on post-consumption, one company is tackling the problem at its roots.

Full Harvest is a “leading produce business-to-business marketplace with expertise on imperfect and surplus produce” that aims to solve the food waste dilemma starting at the farm.

This savvy company helps commercial growers and distributors by bringing the exchange of food online through an end-to-end digital platform.

Their focus is on foods that fail to meet the U.S. No. 1 grade category, ensuring apples or other products that might not be pretty enough for display, don’t end up in the trash. 

As the eBay of ag, the company has already helped growers sell over 85 million pounds of surplus and imperfect produce to date.

Not only will Full Harvest help reduce water consumption and global gas emissions, but provide more food to be distributed to the roughly 44 million food-insure people in the U.S. 

The food industry is experiencing its greatest period of change yet, and there is a long road ahead.

Rising populations, extreme weather, and a changing climate threaten how we will feed what will be 10 billion mouths across the world in near decades.

However, there are dozens of unique startups rising to the occasion each year, leading the charge to drive innovation in the industry from a million different directions.

I only mentioned three of these in this article, but you can find a plethora of other fascinating companies tackling the future of food here.

While I may never be able to grasp the entirety of Costco and its glorious $1.50 dogs, I believe the future of food is going to be even bigger. 

-John Henry

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