First, I’d like to thank all the attendees of our webinar last week. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. Here is the link to watch and share the video for all the 200+ attendees and those who couldn’t attend. Also, if you’d like access to the slides, please email me.
Today, I’d like to share a couple of graphs that illustrate some of the trends discussed in our trends report and webinar.
1 – Environmental events have impacts on the price of products and act as stimulants for the innovation ecosystem
Egg prices have again soared in the US, reaching $5 for a dozen eggs, twice the price of last year and above the previous record.
This is directly related to flu concerns, with many flocks still being killed. In a word, prices are high and will remain so for quite some time. As we said earlier this year in our “predictions for 2025”, we expect that more and more environmental events such as climate shocks or animal pandemics will cause prices to rise here and there.
As observed over the past couple of years for coffee and cacao (and as detailed in this insight) this can create a wave of innovation.
That’s precisely what we are observing with egg alternatives. Entrepreneurs have not waited for price rises, but they are now surfing it with new funding deals, partnership announcements and product launches. As for cacao, we observe companies going in multiple directions, such as:
- Plant-based alternatives for B2C applications (Just Egg, Veggs)
- Plant-based for B2B applications (Yumgo)
- Precision fermentation startups focused on specific functionalities (Every)
2 – A carbon tax on meat could have very noticeable impacts
A recently published study by the University of Oxford looked at the effects of different versions of a meat tax. More specifically, it studies 3 scenarios around VAT:
- increasing VAT on meat and dairy products to the maximum in each European country
- cancelling any VAT on fruits & vegetables
- combining the above
Interestingly, and unlike previous studies, this study went beyond environmental impacts and also looked at health consequences (averted deaths), cost for consumers and for the state. At a European level (UK included), combining both a rise in VAT on meat & dairy (which is in many countries quite lower than the national maximum) and a decrease for fruits & vegetables could achieve significant results with a 6% decrease in environmental impacts, 100,000 or more death avoided each year, and $80B in increased revenue for governments while being almost neutral for consumers.
Few environmental policies could achieve such results while being cost-effective from both the consumer and government point of view. Even if, in the current political context, it seems to be a very complex idea, it shouldn’t be discarded.
