Fons Burger Facebook ad: “THE COW OF THE FUTURE IS MADE OF…”

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THE COW OF THE FUTURE IS MADE OF STAINLESS STEEL Yesterday I pressed a few hundred liters of wine. Because I make natural wine, the magical time of waiting begins now. Waiting for fermentation to start. Every few days, I measure how far the yeast has gotten in converting the sugar into alcohol. Then I wait for the second fermentation. And after that, another few months until the wine is mature and tastes good. I mention this because fermentation may become one of the most important technologies of our future. We've been using it for thousands of years to make wine, beer, bread and yogurt. But now we're learning how to use microorganisms to produce proteins that, until now, have come from animals. More than half of the Netherlands is used for agriculture. Almost two-thirds of that consists of grassland and land used to grow animal feed. A while ago, I met Jaap Korteweg, founder of The Vegetarian Butcher. He had been an organic farmer himself, but decided he didn't want to treat animals lovingly only to have them slaughtered and eaten anyway. He wanted to take them out of the food chain. His meat substitutes came closer and closer to real meat, and eventually he sold his company. When I met him, he was already working on his next adventure: Those Vegan Cowboys. This time, he wanted to replace the rest of the cow as well. His dream was beautifully simple: grass in, milk out. After all, a cow is itself a kind of fermentation factory. Microorganisms in its stomach break down grass. Why couldn't we skip that intermediate step of an animal weighing hundreds of kilos? Those Vegan Cowboys uses precision fermentation to make casein, the milk protein that gives cheese its special properties. Last week I read in de Volkskrant that they are far from alone. In Ede, the Biotechnology Fermentation Factory is taking shape. Its small pre-pilot lab is already operating, while much larger reactors, eventually reaching 10,000 liters, are being installed. Pilot production is expected to start in 2027. Producing these proteins is already possible. Making them cheaply enough, in huge quantities, is the challenge now. Korteweg has meanwhile come quite a bit further than when I met him. Those Vegan Cowboys is working with the German company Formo on casein that is now going through the FDA's GRAS process in the United States. They have also recreated casein from other animals, including goats, sheep and buffalo. So we could eventually have mozzarella without keeping buffalo, or goat cheese without having to keep goats for their milk. In 2125, we produce as much of our food as possible close to home. By then we have learned how absurd it is to use enormous amounts of land, water and food to maintain billions of animals when we can produce much of the same food more efficiently. Industrial livestock farming no longer exists. Large areas of pasture can return to nature. Forests, food forests and wetlands come back. They absorb CO₂ and retain water, while wildlife gets much more space. Farmers don't disappear. Their work changes. Some still grow food, others produce raw materials for fermentation or manage food forests and nature. Some may run local fermentation facilities themselves. Meanwhile, my wine is quietly fermenting. Billions of yeast cells are at work. I'm waiting for alcohol. Back From The Future is a series of short stories in which I look back from the year 2125 at the world we are creating today.