Is it a farm or is it a factory? ProFood World doesn’t usually spend its pages covering the agricultural side of the business, our industry coverage firmly rooted in the equipment and technologies found on the factory floor. But as the food industry comes to terms with a world in which rising population and climate change present enormous challenges to our food supply, we must also come to terms with what food “production” might look like going forward.
One of the winners of this year’s Manufacturing Innovation Awards (MIA) presents one possible new model. At its new Swersey Silos operation, MyForest Foods grows large beds of mycelium in a vertical farm. There are more standard operational procedures along the way as it shapes and slices and cures those blocks of mycelium into a plant-based bacon alternative, but it is the growth step—precisely manipulated, at industrial scale—that is particularly innovative.
