biotope calls for smarter biotech investment to build more resilient food systems

Biotechnology has often been judged by how quickly it reaches the market. According to Belgian biotech community builder biotope, that is the wrong question. In a new position paper, Biotech: High Risk, High Impact for the Planet, the organization argued that biotechnology should not be viewed as a universal solution to sustainability challenges or measured against technologies that are inherently faster and easier to commercialize. Instead, it said biology should be applied where conventional approaches have reached their limits and where entirely new production pathways can strengthen food systems, industrial manufacturing, and supply chain resilience.

Speaking to Protein Production Technology International, biotope Stakeholder Manager Ilana Taub said recent experiences in alternative proteins highlighted that many of the sector's biggest setbacks stemmed from unrealistic expectations around commercialization rather than failures in biology itself.

• biotope published a position paper arguing biotechnology should be deployed where biology creates entirely new production pathways rather than incremental improvements.
• Ilana Taub said the alternative protein sector's biggest challenges stemmed from scaling complexity and unrealistic market expectations rather than failures in biology.
• The report argued that climate change, resource constraints, and geopolitical instability will increase demand for resilient biomanufacturing across food, chemicals, and industrial production.

The report arrives as biotechnology occupies an increasingly important position in the transition toward more sustainable manufacturing. Advances in genome sequencing, microbial engineering, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology have dramatically expanded what scientists can produce using living systems. At the same time, many companies continue to face long development timelines, difficult scale-up, expensive infrastructure, and complex regulatory pathways.

Rather than seeing those challenges as evidence that biotechnology is too slow or too risky, biotope argued they reinforce the importance of applying it selectively.

"The real challenge is not whether biotech is too slow or too complex, but whether it is being applied to the right problems," the paper stated.

For biotope, those problems increasingly lie in two interconnected areas: producing food for a growing global population while reducing environmental pressures, and developing new ways to manufacture ingredients, chemicals, and materials that are less dependent on fragile agricultural and fossil-based supply chains.

Alternative proteins: a lesson in expectations, not biology

Few sectors illustrate biotechnology's commercial challenges better than alternative proteins.

After attracting unprecedented levels of investment and optimism, many companies encountered slower-than-expected consumer adoption, tougher fundraising conditions, and the realities of scaling sophisticated bioprocesses from laboratory benches to industrial facilities.

Taub believes those experiences have often been misunderstood.

Rather than demonstrating shortcomings in biological innovation, she says they exposed how difficult industrial scale-up can be, even when the underlying science is sound.

"How hard it is to scale some of these bioprocesses – what works in the lab doesn't easily or necessarily translate into large scale, even with the best resources," she said.

"There was some naivety there. There were also wrong expectations on certain market growth like alternative proteins and plant-based, the assumptions that consumers would drive market growth quickly, but it hasn't materialized in the way people expected."

The position paper reaches a similar conclusion, arguing that setbacks across alternative proteins reflected misaligned expectations around timelines, commercialization, and value creation more than failures of biology itself.

That distinction, Taub believes, matters because it changes how investors should evaluate the next generation of biotechnology companies.

Rather than expecting software-style growth trajectories, she suggests investors need to recognize that industrial biotechnology inevitably involves manufacturing infrastructure, regulatory approvals, and production systems that take considerably longer to mature.

Falling in love with the problem

Another theme running through both the report and Taub's comments is the importance of solving meaningful problems rather than searching for applications for new technologies.

"We always say fall in love with a problem worth solving, not with your technology," Taub said.

"We see a lot of teams trying to apply a tech to a problem they identify in retrospect – that's difficult to make succeed."

She is careful not to present that as a criticism of research itself.

"We also need innovation, research into many different technologies to actually achieve breakthroughs so it's not black and white."

The report echoes that balanced view. It argues biotechnology should not automatically be considered the best answer to every sustainability challenge. Many problems can be addressed more effectively through engineering improvements or other technologies.

Instead, biotechnology delivers its greatest value when biology enables something fundamentally different from conventional production methods.

As the paper notes, "The biggest mistake is applying biotech where simpler solutions would scale faster."

Creating products conventional agriculture cannot

Taub believes biotechnology becomes most compelling when it enables products that simply could not exist through traditional manufacturing.

One example is precision fermentation-derived whey protein.

While dairy proteins have long been produced through livestock farming, companies such as Perfect Day have demonstrated that identical proteins can be produced without cows by using engineered microorganisms.

She also points to emerging gas fermentation technologies.

"Making protein from air or CO2 like Solar Foods – there is no agricultural way to do that," she said.

"Of course this is still an early-stage technology in the grand scheme of things, but it's definitely an example of something that could not exist through traditional agriculture."

The report highlights similar opportunities beyond food.

It points to companies including Amphistar, which produces biosurfactants through fermentation using waste streams, and Lantana Bio, which develops natural pigments through microbial fermentation instead of relying on climate-sensitive crop production.

These technologies are not intended to replace existing supply chains overnight. Instead, biotope argues they create complementary manufacturing routes that reduce dependence on land, weather, agricultural inputs, and geographically concentrated production systems.

Supply chains under increasing pressure

Climate change is already reshaping agricultural production around the world, and Taub believes several supply chains are likely to face increasing pressure during the next two decades.

She identifies protein ingredients, vegetable oils, specialty fats, cocoa, coffee, natural rubber, and petrochemical-derived specialty ingredients among the sectors facing the greatest risks.

"These sectors face a combination of climate stress, land and water constraints, biodiversity loss, and concentration of production in a small number of regions," she said.

She notes that cocoa and coffee are already experiencing climate-related yield pressures, while palm oil, soy, and other oil crops face growing challenges linked to land use and sustainability.

For biotope, biotechnology offers an opportunity to diversify rather than replace existing production systems by creating manufacturing approaches that are less vulnerable to climate volatility and geopolitical disruption.

Biomanufacturing as strategic infrastructure

Taub also believes Europe should broaden its conversation around strategic autonomy.

Recent years have seen governments prioritize domestic capabilities in areas such as energy, semiconductors, and digital technologies. She argues food ingredients, industrial biotechnology, and biomanufacturing deserve similar attention.

"Europe's focus on strategic autonomy should extend beyond energy and technology to include food ingredients, chemicals, and biomanufacturing, which are increasingly critical to economic resilience and supply security," she said.

"Dependence on external suppliers for key inputs, whether amino acids, specialty chemicals, enzymes, or fermentation-derived ingredients creates vulnerabilities similar to those seen in energy markets."

Strengthening Europe's domestic biomanufacturing capabilities, she says, would improve supply chain resilience while supporting sustainability objectives and creating high-value industrial jobs.

The report similarly argues biotechnology should increasingly be viewed as industrial infrastructure rather than simply scientific research.

The scale-up challenge remains

Despite rapid advances in biological science, commercialization continues to present biotechnology's biggest challenge.

The report identifies three persistent barriers.

The first is market economics. Food, agriculture, and industrial materials typically operate on relatively low margins, requiring new technologies to compete simultaneously on cost, performance, resilience, and regulatory acceptance.

The second is industrial scale-up.

Producing promising laboratory results is only the beginning. Manufacturing at commercial volumes introduces entirely new engineering challenges involving downstream processing, formulation, equipment, consistency, and capital investment.

Many companies must finance demonstration-scale facilities before achieving regulatory approval or significant commercial revenue, creating difficult funding gaps.

Finally, regulatory pathways, particularly within Europe, continue extending commercialization timelines.

Biotope argues that successful companies increasingly distinguish themselves by considering industrial manufacturing from the earliest stages of development rather than treating scale-up as a later challenge.

Looking toward an invisible biotechnology future

Asked how biotechnology might look by 2040, Taub expects many of today's emerging technologies to become almost invisible to consumers.

Rather than associating biotechnology primarily with food innovation, she believes future consumers will routinely use products manufactured by engineered microorganisms without giving the production process much thought.

"Biomanufactured chemicals and materials – just as few people think about semiconductor fabrication when they use a smartphone, consumers may not think about the fact that their detergents, textiles, or packaging materials were produced by engineered microorganisms rather than extracted from animals, crops, or fossil resources."

The position paper reaches a similar conclusion. Biotechnology, it argues, will not become foundational because it is necessarily faster or simpler than conventional approaches. Its importance will come from enabling production systems that alternative technologies simply cannot deliver.

To realize that potential, however, the wider innovation ecosystem must evolve alongside the science. Investors will need to adopt more realistic expectations around development timelines, industrial partners will play a critical role in supporting scale-up, and policymakers can help reduce risk through earlier-stage support and more efficient regulatory pathways.

For biotope, the greatest long-term risk is not investing in biotechnology. It is failing to deploy it where biology can make the greatest difference.