The unfamiliar ingredient in a school lunch of 2035 will arrive in an ordinary sack.
A cook will mix it into a sauce, a filling or a piece of dough. The children will recognise the meal. Part of its protein will have grown inside a fermentation vessel, where microorganisms converted sugars or gases into edible biomass.
The factory will have delivered something the kitchen understands: an ingredient with a specification, a predictable price and a reliable supply.
ParallaxSee forecasts that by 2035, fermentation and cell cultivation will supply at least 5% of the protein available for human food worldwide. That means one gram in every twenty, measured by protein weight. It includes harvested fungal and bacterial protein, precision-fermented proteins and cultivated animal cells.
House confidence: 15%. The 5% figure is the forecasted share of protein supply. The 15% figure is our estimated probability that the world reaches that threshold in 2035; it is an editorial judgement, not a measured industry growth rate.
This is an ambitious forecast. Existing research establishes useful production routes and potential efficiency gains. Achieving a 5% global share requires factories, financing, lower costs and sustained demand to advance much faster than today’s modest commercial volumes.
It would also leave most food protein coming from conventional agriculture. The importance of the new industry would lie in adding another dependable source to a food system under pressure.
The latest United Nations report estimates that 645 million people experienced hunger in 2025, while 2.69 billion could not afford a healthy diet. Food factories could help improve those figures. Their output would still need to reach households through functioning markets, public programmes and distribution networks. FAO’s 2026 food security report
The industrial foundation already exists.
Quorn has sold food made from fungal biomass since 1985. Its production process grows a microorganism using nutrients derived from wheat and maize, then turns the harvested material into food with a useful texture. This route demonstrates that microbial protein can become an established ingredient with decades of manufacturing experience behind it. How Quorn is made
Our expectation is that fungal and other microbial biomass will do much of the early work towards the 5% threshold. Producers harvest the organism itself, obtaining a protein-rich material that can enter food formulations. A successful ingredient can spread through several manufacturers and products without requiring each company to build its own fermentation plant.
That makes the purchasing department an important participant in the transition.
A manufacturer needs consistent composition, acceptable flavour, regulatory compliance and dependable deliveries. Environmental advantages may help secure attention. A useful ingredient at a workable price secures repeat orders.
By 2035, we expect more microbial protein to reach consumers through familiar foods. Its role may be a portion of a recipe rather than the identity of the whole product. A manufacturer could use it alongside crops and conventional animal ingredients, gradually expanding demand as supply becomes dependable.
Some of those factories will still depend on fields.
When microorganisms consume crop-derived sugar, farmland and harvests remain part of the production system. Fermentation changes how the feedstock becomes food, but the agricultural inputs continue to matter.
Production using hydrogen and carbon dioxide offers a different possibility.
Electricity can split water to produce hydrogen. Suitable microbes use that hydrogen for energy and carbon dioxide as a carbon source. Supplied with the necessary nutrients and controlled growing conditions, they multiply into protein-rich biomass.
Finland’s Solar Foods operates a facility designed to produce approximately 160 tonnes of its Solein ingredient annually. The company describes plans for a larger successor. Those figures are company-reported, and proposed capacity must still become sustained output. The existing facility nevertheless demonstrates the route on commercial equipment. Solar Foods’ Factory 01
This could change where some food ingredients are produced.
A country with limited farmland could gain another production option. A region exposed to drought could diversify part of its supply. The factory would depend on electricity, equipment, nutrient deliveries and skilled operators, allowing governments and businesses to manage a different set of risks alongside those of agriculture.
Research suggests that the potential land advantage is substantial.
A study published in PNAS modeled solar-powered microbial food production, including electricity generation, carbon dioxide capture, cultivation and processing. It estimated that such systems could produce more than ten times as much protein and at least twice as many calories per unit of land as staple crops. These are modeled possibilities that commercial systems must demonstrate economically. Solar-powered microbial food research
The distance between that possibility and our forecast remains large.
For an illustration of scale, assume a future population of nine billion and an average food protein supply of 85 grams per person per day. A 5% share would require approximately 14 million tonnes of actual protein annually. These are illustrative assumptions, but they reveal the size of the industrial task.
A 2025 study explored a deployment scenario producing roughly one million tonnes annually of electricity-based microbial protein by 2035. Its scenario covers food and feed uses, so that output cannot all be counted as human food. Its authors included Solar Foods employees, and its expansion pathway was a modeling assumption. Our 5% forecast therefore requires substantial contributions from other fermentation routes, as well as faster growth across the wider industry. Microbial protein deployment study
Precision fermentation will provide another contribution.
Scientists engineer microorganisms to manufacture particular molecules. FDA documentation for Perfect Day describes production of beta-lactoglobulin with the same amino acid sequence as the protein found in cow’s milk. The process produces a specified component that food manufacturers can incorporate into recipes. FDA’s assessment of fermentation-produced beta-lactoglobulin
The economics will differ by ingredient. A protein with valuable functional properties may justify a higher price in a particular formulation. That can sustain a business while producers improve yields, processing and manufacturing scale.
Our forecast assumes that some of those improvements eventually support wider food markets. A sector permanently concentrated in expensive specialty ingredients would contribute too little volume to reach 5%.
Cultivated meat faces a more demanding production challenge.
Animal cells require suitable nutrients and carefully maintained conditions. Several cultivated products, including chicken, salmon and pork fat, have completed FDA safety consultations. Their commercial future depends on operating reliably at greater volumes and acceptable costs. FDA’s cultured-cell food inventory
A 2024 study used experimental results to model continuous cultivated-chicken production in a hypothetical industrial facility. It projected production costs of approximately $13.70 per kilogram. The model concerns a hypothetical 50,000-litre facility, and several authors were affiliated with Believer Meats. It offers a possible route towards competitive products, while leaving sustained commercial performance to be demonstrated. Cultivated-chicken production study
We expect cultivated animal cells to make a smaller contribution than microbial fermentation to the 2035 threshold. Their importance could grow later as production improves. The near-term volume opportunity appears stronger in ingredients that can be incorporated into existing foods.
The strongest objection to our forecast is the pace of industrial investment.
Factories take time to finance, build and operate. Biological processes can behave differently in larger vessels. Products need customers willing to keep buying them. Capacity announcements alone establish little about annual deliveries.
In GFI’s industry dataset, fermentation companies raised $357 million in 2025, down from $632 million in 2024. GFI advocates alternative proteins, and its figures depend on the companies and transactions captured in its analysis. The decline nevertheless illustrates why rapid expansion cannot be assumed. GFI’s fermentation industry report
Reaching 5% would require that constraint to ease. Producers would need successful operating records that justify larger investments. Food manufacturers would need prices and performance that justify long-term purchasing commitments. Several production routes would have to advance together.
Even then, a protein milestone would settle only part of the hunger question.
A complete food supply must also provide affordable calories, fats and essential micronutrients. Researchers have demonstrated a pathway that synthesizes starch from carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Other work has examined industrial production of edible fats. These approaches could eventually broaden synthetic food’s contribution, although they have yet to establish cheap, widespread supplies of staple calories. Artificial starch synthesis, research on synthetic fats
Access remains decisive.
FAO states that the world already produces enough food to nourish everyone. Conflict, economic instability and climate shocks nevertheless undermine reliable access to affordable nutrition. WFP identifies conflict as the main driver of hunger in most food crises. FAO on food access, WFP on conflict and hunger
The latest UN projections suggest that approximately 510–520 million people could still face hunger in 2030. Synthetic food’s progress must therefore be judged alongside incomes, agricultural investment, public support and humanitarian access. FAO’s hunger projections
Our 15% estimate reflects the difficulty of building that industry within nine years. We assign an 80% chance that scalable, food-compliant production routes remain available; conditional on that, a 30% chance of sufficient worldwide factory output by 2035; conditional on both, a 70% chance that enough output reaches human food markets to clear the threshold; and conditional on those steps, a 90% chance that the global share can be established reliably. Multiplying these conditional estimates gives 15.12%, rounded to 15%. These are editorial assumptions rather than frequencies from a comparable historical cohort. The buildout estimate is the largest uncertainty: changing it from 30% to 15% or 45% moves the overall estimate to about 8% or 23%.
Our 2035 test will concern actual food supply. We will count protein originating in harvested microbial biomass, precision fermentation or cultivated animal cells and supplied for human food. Animal feed, announced capacity and demonstration batches will be excluded. Conventional milk or crop protein carried through a fermentation process will remain conventional protein. Each gram will be counted once. Food-grade yeast biomass is included; processing aids are excluded. We will use actual recovered protein weight, rather than the weight of a finished product or its entire dry biomass.
The measurement period is calendar year 2035, ending on 31 December at 23:59 UTC. The denominator is the protein available for human food worldwide, following FAO food-balance accounting, with qualifying new ingredients added if the statistics omit them. Food availability differs from protein actually eaten. The numerator and denominator will use the same year and count every gram once. FAO food-balance statistics
We will resolve the claim from official national statistics and FAO balances, reconciled with independently audited producer shipments and protein-composition records. Where official coverage is incomplete, transparent independent research may fill gaps. A documented global share of at least 5% passes; a documented lower share fails. We will allow reporting through 31 December 2038. If the available evidence cannot establish the global share, the forecast will remain unresolved or be marked ambiguous rather than treating missing data as proof of failure.
A share of at least 5% would establish a substantial new source of food protein. It would give manufacturers and countries more options for maintaining supplies when harvests, trade or weather become unreliable.
Its contribution to ending hunger would appear in a more ordinary place.
The school kitchen would receive its delivery. The ingredient would perform as expected. The cook would prepare a meal at a price the school could sustain.
The children would eat.