14 Jul Australia’s changing landscape of protein production
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A study by the Australian Farm Institute tells us that despite the trend towards alternative proteins, large opportunities exist for animal proteins in the future.
The Australian population is growing, forecast to be nearly 29 million by 2030. This will inevitably result in an increased demand for protein. While alternative protein substitution has increased and will continue to do so in the next 10 years, this will not diminish the demand on animal agriculture. Rising demand for protein driven by that population growth will outweigh any additional market share that alternative proteins may gain. However, the current production systems have finite resources. Therefore, both animal and plant production will need to become more efficient and productive if Australia wants to avoid relying solely on food imports to sustain their future population
It is worth noting that the current global food system is plant-based and animal-optimised. Approximately 85% of all biomass leaving the world’s farms is plant–sourced. For any sustainable food system to nourish the global population, both animal and plant–sourced foods will continue to be required. Animal-sourced foods are particularly important to meet global requirements for micro-nutrients such as iron, zinc and vitamin B12. In fact, scenario testing of possible global food systems with the DELTA Model® repeatedly demonstrates that animal-sourced food production will not only continue to be needed to provide adequate nutrition to a global population, but that production will also need to be sustainably increased.
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Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash
