In the 21st century, agriculture is facing major challenges: the rural labor force is declining, urbanisation is expected to accelerate, and the population is growing and will reach more than 9 bilion people around 2050. These trends indicate that market demand will continue to grow and the current food supply will not be enough. And although undernutrition is already an issue in todays world, it will only be more severe in the upcoming 30 years.
Feeding over 9 bilion people in 2050 would require to increase overall food production by 70 percent in 2050 compared to 2005. But how can we achieve this?
Investment in new land to be converted into agricultural production production will not be enough. The agricultural industry needs to be transformed (again) to make it more efficient, productive and sustainable. In recent years we see the emergence of weed-killing robots that intelligently can pluck individual weeds to reduce reliance on herbicides. In the Netherlands, mini-drones are already killing flying insects. In the United states, a few startups are in a race to create lab-grown meat. And innovators are already thinking about and creating ‘robobees’ to deal with the ‘beepocalypse’. 
The question is thus not whether we are going make it in 2050 and be able to serve all the 9 bilion hungry mouths. The question is how crazy innovative we are to get there?
Hi Bert! Very interesting topic!!
World hunger is gonna be an important and crucial topic in the following years, and such innovation might have an impact. I however believe that we would have to find other solutions to guarantee that every human being has access to food in the coming years (which is already nowadays not guaranteed).
Reading your article, it made me think of another innovation that have been developed, based on the ressemblance of animals, in order to interfere with the natural world. A team of researchers have based their design for a new water-drone on the jellyfish. Its purpose is to enable scientists to study more easily the coral reefs, and to monitor their health. You ca have a look here : https://techxplore.com/news/2018-09-guardians-ocean-robot-jellyfish.html
I realize this innovation is not related to the agriculture topic. But it is interesting to see that most innovations, when dealing with natural environments, are based on designs and patterns observed in the natural world. In a way, through these innovations, we give back to the nature what it offered us, and acknowledge that the natural world is smarter than us.
The issue with the lab-grown meat is its nutritional value.
Of course, the idea sounds sweet on the paper. You just go to the lab, take a few chemicals, mix them up really nice, add secret sauce and there you go, you just created lab meat. However, this meat will never substitute the real thing, and I will explain why.
The problem is, meat is not just protein. protein is actually quite common, and cheap protein is even more common. meat is also fats, vitamins, microelements, minerals and so on. Lets talk about fat first.
With fat, a problem already exist in the meat that is sold today. Because a lot of the aniamls like cows are grain fed instead of grass fed, they lack a lot in omega 3 fatty acids. because of that I have to take a separate supplement just to be sure I my body gets enough of it.
Secondly, Vitamins, microelements and minerals. The thing is, some of the vitamins can only be created through the fermentation process inside the gut of a cow. Such fermentation would be unfeasible to create artificially.
Lastly, there is a quality check issue. Now if you go to the supermarket and buy beef, you can at least tell that it is beef, because you can see the tissue. Even meat mince is quite risky to buy. And with artificially created meat there are just way too many opportunities to put stuff there you are not supposed to put there.
So to conclude, artificial meat does not sound like a good idea. what we should do instead is to support local ethical farmers who have grass fed animals. This is especially true for countries that have low standards for growing animals, as in some countries farmers feed huge amounts of antibiotics and hormones to their animals, and that has a devastating impact on the quality of the food.