“Elephant in the room” - Will there be a monopoly corporation, driving all farmers out of their jobs?” - Slides originally prepared for New Harvest 2020, on cell-based meat, industrialization of cellular agriculture, and how "being a farmer" can change in the future.
Presentation and talkscripts are here : https://medium.com/shojin-meat/will-there-be-a-monopoly-corporation-driving-farmers-out-of-work-727ec488bf10?source=---------3------------------
Boost Fertility New Invention Ups Success Rates.pdf
New Harvest 2020 slides from Shojinmeat Project - Will there be a monopoly corporation, driving all farmers out of their jobs?
1. “Elephant in the room” - Will there be a monopoly
corporation, driving all farmers out of their jobs?”
2020.04
“NH2020”
2. “Shojinmeat Project” - Who we are
“Democratization of cellular agriculture”
Nonprofit non-corporate non-university citizen science community of DIY bio/fab
enthusiasts, students, researcher, artists, writers etc. for cellular agriculture
Open source cellular agriculture” by DIY bio Public communication by art and education
4. Ongoing cellular agriculture projects
Wild Type
Fish without
catch
IntegriCulture
Foie gras without ducks
Shiok Meats
Shrimp
without pond
or catch
The products are not “imitations” - they are (or try to be) molecularly the same!
Perfect Day
Milk without cows
Clara Foods
Egg white without chicken
Ginkgo Bioworks
Vanilla, scent, various
ingredients
5. Dr. Marianne Ellis, 2017
Implementation of scaled
production methods
⇒”Chemical engineering”,
“Plant Engineering”Integration and
systemization
Cell-ag going for scale
6.
7.
8. Farmers out of jobs?
Culinary diversity lost?
Repeat of GMO?
Will people like it?
10. The conditions of cell-ag entering mainstream
Time
Cost-benefit
(Customer satisfaction
divided by the price)
conventional
meatPrice
Parity
(PP)
cell-based
meat
11. World around PP
Photography:
Fujifilm and Kodak
・A “disruption” occurs with its
ripple effect to surrounding
industries like processing,
byproducts, packaging etc.
・PP is reached earlier for beef
than chicken, for meat importers
(i.e. Japan) than for exporters
(i.e. US)
“Kodak Moment”, sooner or later
12. The scenarios after price parity
Time
Cost-benefit
(Customer satisfaction
divided by the price)
conventional meat
Price Parity (PP)
PPNow
Capital intensive
Not capital intensive
cell-based meat
?
13. How much do you need to launch a business?
“It is customary to to consider the cost of the plant as varying
by about the 0.6th power” (New Scientist vol.17, No.326 p355)
CA = The construction cost of Plant A
CB = The construction cost of comparable Plant B at different capacity
SA = The capacity of Plant A
SB = The capacity of Plant B
CB=CA×(SB/SA)^0.6
The upfront investment
appears relatively large,
hinting a community-
scale facility.
Scale Cost Cost per kg meat
100kg/mon. $0.3M $33
1t/mon. $1.2M $13
10t/mon. $4.8M $5
100t/mon. $19M $2
1000t/mon. $75M $0.8
Q: “What is the minimum
efficient scale (MES) of
cell-based meat?”
(Estimated by IntegriCulture Inc. / 2017)
0.6th power rule & 7-year depreciation
assumed
14. High-MES “Capital intensive” scenario
・2 to 3 cell-ag companies per country (like automotive industries)
・Very high minimum efficient scale - economy of scale is everything
・Foxconn-style “cell culture foundries” is possible
↑Transport of amino acids to
cell-ag plant with big tankers
←Littoral petrochemical plants are
replaced by cell-ag plants
15. ・Economy of scale is not everything - room for other competitive edges
・Equipments and ingredients are commodities, like restaurant industry
・Open source cultured meat, nonproprietary recipe, DIY cell culture vats
Low-MES “Not capital intensive” scenario
16. ・The minimum efficient
scale at the price parity
determines the
outcome.
・Potentially, the same is
true for other cell-ag
products i.e. fur, timber,
seafood.
Minimum efficient scale (Required size of capital for market entry)
time
PP not
reached
Capital
intensive
Not capital
intensive
Cell culture &
cooking - not
distinguished
Democratization
Reach PP
High-MES
scenario Reach PP
Low-MES
scenario
Under which scenario cell-ag enters mainstream?
17. “DIY meat” shifting that balance?
More manuals
https://drive.google.com/drive/folder
s/13TsVy0JrSxFl4ZoYe6D_uPfDYr
3d2P5e
https://www.slideshare.net/2co/diy-cell-
culture-manual-the-roadmap-to-diy-cell
based-meat
Home cell culture manual
18. Development of DIY bio equipments
DIY incubator
Temperature can be set to ~40℃ by
reducing the AC input voltage of a
towel warmer from ~100V to 30V.
The blueprint of DIY incubator is on
GitHub. Both are at ~$100.
https://github.com/sotakan/RPi-Incubator
by @okgw_
Household fan centrifuge (~100G at ~1000rpm)
Egg white antimycotic and DIY clean bench
http://interestor2012.hatenablog.com/
entry/2015/01/05/202524
(@earthlyworld
19. ・“DIY meat” may reduce
the minimum efficient
scale, pushing the balance
toward the right.
・Continued development
in DIY meat acts as a tidal
force pushing industry
decisions toward the right.
time
PP not
reached
Capital
intensive
Not capital
intensive
Cell culture &
cooking - not
distinguished
Democratization
Shifted scenario
“DIY meat” may shift the balance
Minimum efficient scale
Reach PP
High-MES
scenario Reach PP
Low-MES
scenario
20. Scenes beyond “Scenario 2”
・Local farmers and town butchers
can develop their own cell-based
meat recipe.
・Brand ownership opportunity
opens up for local farmers.
・Hobbyists come up with unique
meat recipe.
21. Celebrity Star Cow branded beef
The cell source
Star Cow is alive
Scan the QR code
printed on package
Watch the
Star Cow
22. Less cows
Bioreactors in
the backyard
Many cows
Cows are the product Cells or meat is the product
Traditional farmscape Cell-ag farmscape
The Cell-Ag Farmscape
Farmers sell meat ($70/kg), not cow ($15/kg)
Farmers may sell or license cells
23. AsoftodayA day of a cell-ag farmer
Cell-ag
farmer
Less number of cows mean less cleaning, feeding, waste treatment
More facility management and cell culture protocol dev., as in brewery
cleaning,
feeding,
health checks
Feed (hay, corn, whole
crops) preparation
Manure waste management
cleaning,
feeding,
health checks
4:00
wakeup
breakfast
lunch
dinner
tobed
break break
8:00 Noon 16:00 20:00
24. Business models of meat in cell-ag era
Fabless
farmers
Contract
farmer
Lend
cows
Meat
brewery
Sends
cells
Sells
meat
Fabless
farmer
Farmers
Cell
licensing
Cell
bank
Sends
cells
Food
companies
Sells
meat
Shared
recipe
Recipe
website
Warehouse
People cell culture
protocols
Domestic
culture vat
Down-
load
Farmers Stores
cells
Sends
cells
Cell-Ag
Firms
People
Cell-ag firm
“New farmer”
People
Sells
meat
Food
companies
Meat
brewery
Sells
cells
More info↓
https://www.slideshare.
net/2co/the-cellular-agri
culture-farmscape
25. Urban Cell-Ag Farmscape
One cow is
sufficient
Unnoticeable biopsy:
Hair cells to stem cells,
Stem cells to everything
Farm in a
downtown
skyscraper
27. Technological frameworks needed
Inexpensive & accessible bioreactors
Commodity
culture medium
Open cell culture
recipe platform
Cheap? DIY? Easily rentable?
Accessible non-exclusive
cell bank and market
Prevention of “pirated meat” &
room for end users to develop
their own competitive edge
29. Points of caution in regulatory frameworks
Cell certification
& indexing
Is the certification
process something
farmers can afford?
Standard Food
safety rules
Are they practically
adherable by SME’s
and local restaurants
But, who can observe these rules in practice?
Availability of raw
materials & facilities
Are they something
farmers, SME’s & local
restaurants can get?
30. Rulemaking, lead by what interests? Inclusiveness?
Food companies
Farmers
Cell-ag startups
Academics
Policy makers
General public
Additional Potential
stakeholders (New Harvest / GFI equivalent in Japan)
Wishlist
Wishlist for policy
makers & regulators,
with representations
of included parties
Ideally, No one left
behind in “cell-ag
revolution”
31. Who will do bat meat?
There will always be some demand for exotic meat, but big
companies are unlikely to do such niche product.
Without democratized cellular agriculture, meat from the wild will
stay and pandemics would repeat
32. Key takeaways
・Farmer job losses and corporate monopoly (and repeat of
GMO’s) has been an “elephant in the room”.
・As cell-based meat reaches price parity, the MES is one of
the factors that determines the industry landscape.
・DIY cellular agriculture technology pushes the balance
toward democratization, opening various business models
and product ideas for farmers, individuals and SME’s.
・Democratized cellular agriculture comes with some
technological, regulatory and rulemaking considerations.