How China can dominate the future of plant-based meat production

The growth of plant-based meat presents a great opportunity for crop producers in Asia, especially China. A shift away from industrial animal agriculture could also help the country combat the threat of climate change

Ryan Huling

Published: 10:15am, 12 Dec 2020

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Plant-based meat, made primarily from soy and wheat, has existed in China for centuries, mostly catering to Buddhists who seek to avoid eating animals. But, increasingly, brands are diversifying their recipes by incorporating new ingredients and flavours to create products aimed squarely at meat eaters, not vegetarians.

This 2.0 version of plant-based meat is designed to replicate the taste, texture and appearance of animal meat, and consumers can’t get enough.

This new generation of plant-based meat has now begun to appear on select Asian menus at KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks – and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Even during a year when the global food system is under extraordinary strain and uncertainty, Asia-Pacific-based companies focused on alternative proteins like plant-based meat have raised more than US$230 million in funding to accelerate their growth. This presents an enormous opportunity for agricultural powerhouses like China.

In a groundbreaking new report that I helped author for The Good Food Institute Asia Pacific, titled “Asian Cropportunities: Supplying Raw Materials for Plant-Based Meat”, my colleagues and I outline how rising fears of animal-borne diseases and demand for natural products – both of which have accelerated amid Covid-19 – stand to disproportionately benefit farmers and producers of certain crops in the Asia-Pacific region, and China in particular.

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This shift away from industrial animal agriculture also has the potential to help the nation combat the threat of climate change by transitioning towards more sustainable forms of food production.

Thanks to its diverse landscape, China already produces large volumes of prominent ingredients for plant-based meat, including rice, wheat, potatoes and peas. And yet, cultivation of nutritious pulses and grains, which also show tremendous promise as alternative protein sources, continues to lag behind.

Crops like millet and lentil, for example, can be cultivated in more arid landscapes, making them sensible options for China, given the nation’s water scarcity. Millet, in particular, could open up drier regions of the country to agriculture.

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Thinking beyond traditional crops, production of an innovative ingredient like lion’s mane mushroom could also be expanded, as it does not require typical arable land and there is already a market awareness in China of the health benefits of this mushroom with a naturally meat-like texture.

One major area where China is already scaling up is the production of processed protein, such as protein extracted from crops and exported as plant-based protein isolates and concentrates. Pea protein, for example, is a central ingredient in many of the hottest new plant-based foods, such as the Beyond Burger from Beyond Meat.

In 2017, there were seven producers in China processing protein from peas, with a total capacity of 67,453 tonnes per year. By the end of 2019, that capacity had more than doubled, to 146,313 tonnes. If China continues on this trajectory, and expands its protein extraction capacity to a wider array of crops, the nation will dominate the global market.

Government leaders have signalled that they understand the potential benefits of ramping up production of alternatives to animal meat. Suhe Meng, head of the Chinese Institute of Food Science and Technology, has said: “The development and implementation of plant-based meat in China is not only a market opportunity, but also an effective way to improve the food structure of Chinese residents and solve environmental and social problems.”

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Consumers’ embrace of meats made from a diverse range of plants like peas and lentils, instead of animals, carries many advantages for China’s efforts to mitigate natural-resource depletion. Conventional animal agriculture is an inherently inefficient system that contributes to ecological devastation at both a local and global scale.

Producing meat from chickens, for example, requires feeding nine calories of plants to an animal, to get only one calorie back in the form of meat. Instead of funnelling crops through animals, many leading food producers – including multibillion-dollar global brands like Cargill and Nestlé – are increasingly looking at innovative ways to make meat from plants directly.

National government leaders have already taken action to accelerate the spread of advanced farming technologies, and used preferential tax rates to encourage investment in sustainable forms of agriculture.

These wise decisions – when combined with an infrastructure system that is already connected to the world’s largest consumer markets – have laid the groundwork for local food producers and business leaders to capitalise on the massive opportunity that plant-based meat presents, if they are forward-thinking enough to seize it.

Ryan Huling is head of communications and programmes for The Good Food Institute Asia Pacific. He previously served as an international expert on nutrition and sustainable food systems for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization

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