The opportunity
Produce meat, dairy, and other animal products directly from cell cultures, potentially reducing the environmental impact of traditional livestock farming, improving animal welfare, and enhancing food safety.
From “Agriculture 2020! Innovation, growth & opportunity!” (April 2011)
My role? To encourage this group to think about future trends in the world of agriculture and food production; opportunities for innovation; and how to live out on the edge in terms of thinking about big ideas.
On the first issue — we are going to witness many nation states work fast to ensure the security of their food supply. We are seeing it happen now with China, in order that it can ensure a sustainable reliable supply of food for its population in the future. How big an issue this is this? “Food security will be the greatest challenge to civilization this century, with shortages leading to higher prices, political instability and mass migration, warn scientists, farmers and academics.” Looming food crisis showing on our shelves Sunday Age, April 2011
This will trickle right down to the farm and the ranch: agriculture is going to have to demonstrate sustainability at a micro-level: “A group of cattle producers in Gippsland, Victoria, is marketing beef sourced from properties with independently audited environmental management systems that comply with the international ISO 14001 standard. Their “enviromeat beef”, sourced from 15 suppliers, is thought to be the first labelled food product backed by an environmental management system in Australia.” Unlikely alliance, Sydney Morning Herald, February 2011
From “Daily Inspiration: 24 Strategies for 2024 #5 - “Elevate your enthusiasm!”” (December 2023)
Sustainable Agriculture: Environmentally friendly farming methods that are respectful of climate science
Advances in Food Technology: Creating sustainable and nutritious options by the accelerating of food science.
Advances in Agricultural Efficiency: More sustainable food production through concepts of ‘precision farming’
From “The Trends Scorecard: Agriculture & Food - What I Predicted, and What Actually Happened” (June 2026)
This is part of my Trends Scorecard series, where I go back into my own archive, dig up the predictions I actually made about an industry, and grade them honestly against the world as it really turned out. This time the industry is Agriculture & Food. I have been telling farmers, ranchers, and food companies for two decades that their world was about to be reinvented from the soil up. So how did I do? Here’s the scorecard.
In 2023 I went big on vertical farming, the idea that we would stop being restricted to growing outdoors and move serious production indoors and upward, into controlled environments and even into the heart of the city: “Imagine skyscrapers full of plants. That’s what begins to happen when the marriage of radical concepts, technology, and a pressing need for innovative thinking collide together to provide for a very BIG trend.”
The grade: Live, but early, and I want to be honest about it. The technology works. The science works. But the economics have been brutal. Between 2023 and 2026 a string of high-profile vertical farming companies stumbled, scaled back, or went under, crushed by energy costs and the hard math of growing under artificial light. The vision is not wrong. It just collided with a power bill. This one is real, it is coming, and it will matter most where food security and land scarcity force the issue, but my timeline was more optimistic than the balance sheets allowed.
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Agriculture 2020! Innovation, growth & opportunity!
Daily Inspiration: 24 Strategies for 2024 #5 - “Elevate your enthusiasm!”
The Trends Scorecard: Agriculture & Food - What I Predicted, and What Actually Happened