The agricultural sector in transition

What has worked well for a long time cannot suddenly be wrong? A supposedly proven principle is also widespread in the agricultural sector: Functional optimisation. With it comes the hour of the engineers and software engineers in technology companies. The hour of farm successors with an affinity for technology and new software-supported agricultural processes. Both are concerned with making better what has always been done before.

Companies have recently come onto the market with "cultivated meat", i.e. meat from the fermenter. We call it a meat substitute - almost helplessly, because you can't have what you can't have. The international researchers and pioneers are more straightforward. They call it meat because it is biochemically meat and tastes like it. No one wants to talk barbecue Americans out of eating meat or to put it down - only the way to the barbecue and onto the plate should be different, more sustainable, cheaper and healthier. With 90 % less water and 70 % less energy consumption, protein provision is being thought about differently and done differently. By new players with new rules of the game. This is no longer functional optimisation, no longer "more animal welfare", no longer the question of whether one should really only eat the animal's tenderloin and not also offal ("nose-to-tail"'). This is an overarching process pattern change - in this area of meat production alone.

Beer is produced in exactly the same way. Breweries are fermentation plants in small- or large-scale industrial design. Cultivated meat is similar in production. Biotechnology and fermenters and extruders are changing the way meat is made for the millions of burger patties, lasagne mince and large-scale kitchen soup patties around the world. This requires other ways of providing biomass, less feed grain, other varieties of protein crops. Immediately the question arises: Where then does the well-kept steak come from, which we, with all our understanding of industrially used meat products, do not want to do without? Here, too, there are drivers of substantial process pattern change like Allan Savory who should be listened to, whose approaches should be thought through and widely implemented.

These two terms need to be contrasted to understand where change can come from, what real change can mean and encompass.

In order to better understand both terms, we will now finally tell the story of 20 October 1968 - when Dick Fosbury jumped backwards over the bar at the Olympic Games in Mexico. It was the glimpse behind the bar that rewarded him with the gold medal. That was a while ago. But for anyone over 60 today, the "Fosbury flop" has become proverbial.

Dick Fosbury previously jumped "belly-down" using the traditional straddle technique. But he, like his competitors, increasingly jumped against the bar. Any optimisation in inrun and take-off was not enough. The end of a "process technique" became obvious, despite all efforts. But there was a parallel development, even if imperceptible at first: behind the bar, the world was changing. With the development of polyurethane in the sixties, the mats behind the bar became thicker and softer - so soft that for the first time there was no danger of breaking one's neck if it hit the mat first.