Impact

Traditional food production relies on agricultural means, requiring massive amounts of water and land. The impact of Solar Foods comes from breaking the connection between agriculture and food. Solar Foods’ first commercial production facility Factory 01 demonstrates how this impact works on scale. With protein grown without vast tracts of field and irrigation, natural resources are liberated and biodiversity can flourish. From a capital perspective, decoupling from natural variability reduces volatility, improves predictability, and lowers long-term risk. Solein is produced in a continuous process with minimal environmental impact, with steady quality and no price fluctuations. This is how we feed the world, sustainably.

Throughout history, humanity has found success by harnessing the bounty of nature. Modern agriculture has created an era of well-being, but also led us to exceeding the limits of the planet. To create a prosperous future, we must find ways to spend natural resources more wisely.

The weight of water use

In the last century water use increased at almost twice the rate the world’s population grew. On average agriculture accounts for 70% of global freshwater withdrawals. The production of Solein lightens the load by requiring only a fraction of the water needed for agricultural food production.

Solein land use efficiency

For centuries, conventional food production has been based on meat and dairy. Livestock is the world’s largest user of land resources, with grazing land and cropland dedicated to the production of feed representing almost 80% of all agricultural land. Plants are more efficient, but even they pale in comparison to Solein.

Solein greenhouse gas reduction

Cattle produces 45 kilos of CO2 per kilo of protein which amounts to 14.5% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Again, plants are more efficient than animals, but Solein beats both in efficiency.

We’ve spent decades optimising agriculture, and that work matters, but optimisation has limits. Making a true impact means disconnecting food production from land and climate, and building systems that are repeatable, reliable, and fast to deploy. Feeding billions requires new production logics, not incremental improvements to old ones.