GUEST BLOG: Jon Carapiet – Lab-grown Fruit – utter nonsense, except in a dystopian future.

Scientists at Crop and Food developing lab-grown fruit have hit the headlines internationally.

There was wide-eyed admiration in the media. Emile Donovan, said “it’s definitely a thing Very Clever Science People are looking into – and we know this because we chat to one of them on the show today, all about how you grow fruit in vitro from cells, and why it could really help with food security heading into the future.”

But for some people the arguments for lab-grown fruit seem utter nonsense.

Dr Ben Schon, lead scientist at Plant & Food Research, says the technology would probably be suitable for growing fruit tissue within cities. “There’s a lot of change coming with population growth, increasing urbanisation and climate change.”

Dystopian futures and the culture war

The Cambridge dictionary defines Dystopia as a very bad or unfair society in which there is a lot of suffering, especially an imaginary society in the future after something terrible has happened.

An example might be the vision some experts have for the end of farming. Populations will be concentrated only in cities and the world left for rewilding. This requires removing people from our relationship with natural food and instead feeding people with synthetics. All in the name of conservation.

Crop & Food’s lab-grown fruit will fit in with this vision.

The idea of ‘cellular fruit’ will also appeal to the makers of Ultra Processed Foods. The trifle with fake fruit and cream; the new health drink with real fake fruit pieces.

It all makes sense, when the planet is so devastated by climate change, nuclear war, or other misdemeanors that we are forced to survive in contained facilities, above or under ground.

Lab-grown fruit makes sense in a dystopian future that humanity must not allow to happen.

The latest warning is that we are exceeding 6 out of 9 earth system boundaries.

These are points after which the risks of fundamental changes in the Earth’s physical, biological and chemical life support systems rise significantly.

There are also urgent warnings for countries to ban Solar Radiation management.

In the culture war radical technical solutions are being hyped as necessary to save the world.

The chair of the Climate Overshoot Commission warns “there is an increasing international discussion of solar radiation management” which needs a total ban.

The future is already here for millions of people in the world’s most crowded cities.

Cynics argue why not just also feed ‘them’ lab-grown fruit as well as lab-grown meat?

Which solutions to the world’s problems will be actioned?

One stream of thought is ‘open source’, agro-ecology, organics, diversity and heritage seeds, public interest science, working within natural system boundaries.

Another stream is industrial monoculture and ultra processed food, chemical pesticides, patenting of Gene Edited plants and animals, technological fixes, and innovation tied to Intellectual Property as the driver. Replacing what is authentic with the synthetic. 

The idea of lab-grown fruit is nonsense – unless one day we need it.

The research to create lab-grown fruit is a bit like research to make nuclear bombs, or the creation of the global seed bank deep inside a mountain. Planning for worst case scenarios.

But the narrative is shifting around overshooting climate targets of 1.5%. This is becoming an excuse for hyping expensive new technology fixes rather than to support proven, existing alternatives. There is a role for both. We need both technology and existing solutions.

But that is not what’s happening.

The money is not going into Natural climate solutions which could remove huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as plants grow.

These methods receive only a fraction spent on cutting emissions according to a film by Greta Thunberg and George Monbiot. The protection and restoration of living ecosystems can repair the planet’s broken climate but are being overlooked.

Luxon’s Oppenheimer Moment

The National Party, ACT and TOP have put themselves into the centre of the culture war. Climate action is deferred. Existing solutions of agro-ecology are ignored. Their intention is the commercialisation of GE biotechnology in the open environment. This includes exempting Gene Edited plants and animals from regulation and labelling, so denying consumers and farmers the right to choose.

This policy was recently described at an EU conference to be like “contemplating dropping a bomb on our food system, and on nature and justifying this with deficient science, disregard for ethics and environment, and nationalistic rhetoric about being innovators and winners.”

The Green Party’s colleagues in Europe have been challenging this agenda. They strongly oppose exempting Gene Editing from regulation. Austrian Green MEP, Sarah Wiener, criticised the EU.

The Greens/EFA agricultural spokesperson in the Agriculture Committee, Martin Häusling MEP, warned against abandoning the precautionary principle in favour of indiscriminate innovation in service of new markets.

Sounds familiar.

If Chris Luxon becomes Prime Minister but refuses to regulate Gene Editing this could be his own Oppenheimer moment. And a collective loss for Aotearoa New Zealand.

The drive to technologise food and the lack of funding for existing solutions is happening in the context of a culture war over different futures. In a future dystopia it makes sense to invest millions of dollars to develop and patent lab-grown fruit.

Strive for a world where we don’t need lab-grown fruit

If one day the world really needs lab-grown fruit, we will have failed.

To really need it, we must have destroyed the integrity of our life systems to an enormous extent. We will have lost our connection to Nature.