Government investment in alt proteins

• Alt proteins are underfunded
• Investing in alternative proteins can improve national security and defence
• alt proteins and VC funding

The Department of Energy invested close to $8.4 billion in renewable and clean power technologies in 2020, which in turn kicked off a massive surge in solar and wind power capacity over the next four years. We spent as much as 49 times more on energy innovation than food technologies

In a similar phase in the development of renewable energy, from 2004-12, Abhi Kumar estimates that governments invested about $30B in renewable R&D, matching private investment roughly 1:1. By contrast, recent government funding for alternative protein R&D has lagged private investment by about 12:1.

A decade ago, almost no government had mentioned alternative proteins — let alone funded them. Today they’re in China’s five-year agricultural plan, the European Union’s protein strategy, the Japanese Prime Minister’s plans, and even the US Department of Agriculture’s research priorities.