Eco-friendly, Lab-grown Coff ee is on the Way but it Comes with a Catch

Eco-friendly, Lab-grown Coffee is on the Way, but it Comes with a Catch

By Nadra Nittle

NOTE: Your DAWN Team presented a companion article on Lab-grown Coff ee in the Dawn October-November issue on page 52 available on the ABA website at www.africabusinessassociation.org.

HEIKO RISCHER ISN’T QUITE SURE

how to describe the taste of lab-grown coff ee. This summer he sampled one of the fi rst batches in the world produced from cell cultures rather than coff ee beans.

“To describe it is diffi cult but, for me, it was in between a coff ee and a black tea,” said Rischer, head of plant biotechnology at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which developed the coff ee. “It depends really on the roasting grade, and this was a bit of a lighter roast, so it had a little bit more of a tea-like sensation.”

Rischer couldn’t swallow the coff ee, as this cellular agriculture innovation is not yet approved for public consumption. Instead, he swirled the liquid around in his mouth and spit it out. He predicts that VTT’s lab-grown coff ee could get regulatory approval in Europe and the US in about four years’ time, paving the way for a commercialized product that could have a much lower climate impact than conventional coff ee.

The coff ee industry is both a contributor to the climate crisis and very vulnerable to its eff ects. Rising demand for coff ee has been linked to deforestation in developing nations, damaging biodiversity and releasing carbon emissions. At the same time, coff ee producers are struggling with the impacts of more extreme weather, from frosts to droughts. It’s estimated that half of the land used to grow coff ee could be unproductive by 2050 due to the climate crisis.

In response to the industry’s challenges, companies and scientists are trying to develop and commercialize coff ee made without coff ee beans.

VTT’s coff ee is grown by fl oating cell cultures in bioreactors fi lled with a nutrient. The process requires no pesticides and has a much lower water footprint, said Rischer, and because the coff ee can be produced in local markets, it cuts transport emissions. The company is working on a life cycle analysis of the process. “Once we have those fi gures, we will be able to show that the environmental impact will be much lower than what we have with conventional cultivation,” Rischer said.

American startups are also working on beanless coff ee. In September, Seattle-based Atomo Coff ee released what it called the world’s fi rst “molecular coff ee” in a one-day online pop-up, charging $5.99 a can.

The startup, which has raised $11.5m, makes its coffee by converting the compounds from plant waste into the same compounds contained in green coff ee. Ingredients, including date seed extracts, chicory root, grape skin as well as caff eine, are roasted, ground and brewed. This method results

Tanks in Atomo’s factory. The food tech startup is making beanless coff ee from plant waste. Photograph: Atom

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Lab-grown from page 45

in 93% lower carbon emissions and 94% less water use than conventional coff ee production, as well as no deforestation, according to Atomo.

“The industry has known about the deleterious eff ects of coff ee farming for a long time, whether we’re talking deforestation or major water usage,” said Atomo’s co-founder Jarret Stopforth. “[Before starting Atomo] I was thinking to myself, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this.’”

Atomo’s facility can produce about 1,000 servings of coff ee a day. The goal is to increase that to 10,000 servings a day over the next 12 months, said Stopforth, and in two years to move into a facility that can produce 30m servings of coff ee a year. Stopforth says that Atomo will start the initial phase of the new factory build within the next three months.

Alternative coff ee companies like Atomo not only have the potential to help tackle the climate crisis but to benefi t the industry generally, said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Take arabica beans, said Charlebois. “You need specifi c climatic patterns, and it’s much better if you’re more in control in a laboratory environment than just trying to rely on Mother Nature.” Technology can help stabilize production and make it more predictable, he said.

But it’s unclear how many people would be willing to give up conventional coff ee for one of its beanless counterparts. A 2019 survey by Dalhousie University found that 72% of Canadians say they would not drink lab-grown coff ee.

Maricel Saenz, founder and CEO of San Francisco-based Compound Foods said she was working to “reinvent” coff ee and to show people why doing so matters. Compound Foods, which has secured $4.5m in seed funding, says it recreates coffee farm production in the lab. The startup uses microbes and fermentation technology to grow a variety of fl avors and aromas, Saenz said.

Preliminary results from a carbon life cycle analysis indicate that the company’s coff ee produces a tenth of the greenhouse gas emissions and water use of traditional coff ee, Saenz said. She plans to introduce her product by late 2022 and expects pricing to be similar to specialty coff ees. “As we improve our processes, we aim to decrease our prices,” she said.

As the population grows and pressure increases on natural resources, Saenz said, “we need to be producing food in more effi cient ways, using a lot of the biotechnology and fermentation tools that are now at our disposal.”

But Daniele Giovannucci, president and cofounder of the Committee on Sustainability Assessment, a consortium that focuses on agricultural sustainability, is concerned that scaling up lab-grown coff ee could aff ect the livelihoods of the millions of workers in the traditional coff ee industry, especially in countries such as Ethiopia where coff ee is central to the economy. “What’s going to happen to all these people?” Giovannucci asked. “What are they going to do, because this is a key cash crop?”

There’s a risk, he said, that lab-grown coff ee could create signifi cant socio-economic problems that could drive even greater climate change eff ects. “It is not clear if, in the end, its net eff ect may worsen global sustainability, along with many millions of lives.”

Saenz, who is from Costa Rica, a coff eeexporting country, said, “I know many coff ee producers, so it’s something that I defi nitely worry about.” But, she added, “the number one threat that coff ee farmers have today is climate change” – whether that’s heat that disrupts ripening times, or unexpected frosts as Brazil experienced in the summer, which severely damaged crops.

Saenz said her company will collaborate with nonprofi ts to support small coff ee farmers transitioning to more sustainable agricultural practices, including providing training and crop insurance.

While lab-grown coff ee shows real promise, said Charlebois, the politics should not be underestimated, especially as so many farmers depend on conventional methods of producing crops and many of them live in developing economies. “Scalability is not an issue for lab-grown coff ee,” he said, “but regulations and general acceptance of the technology will be greater challenges.” www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/16/ lab-grown-coff ee-eco-friendly