The 'World's First' Cultivated Meat Farm Is Coming To The Netherlands

An international consortium of agricultural businesses and alternative protein experts is designing and building the world’s first cultivated meat farm in the Netherlands.

The CRAFT Consortium includes RespectFarms, Wageningen University & Research, Mosa Meat, Aleph Farms, Multus, Kipster, and Royal Kuijpers. The group is co-funded by the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) Food and the European Union, and has been awarded €2 million of a €4 million grant request.

The CRAFT Consortium model supports farmers to integrate cultivated meat production into their existing businesses, thereby diversifying output and reducing the industry’s reliance on animal protein. According to RespectFarms, this diversification will allow farmers to reduce their water consumption by 78 percent, land use by 95 percent, and societal costs by 56 percent.

A key part of the model is ensuring that cultivated meat production is “farmer-led and locally embedded,” thereby demonstrating that alternative proteins represent an opportunity for the struggling agricultural sector rather than a threat. It will also allow farmers to gradually adopt emerging protein cultivation technologies alongside the traditional methods already in place, rather than demanding an immediate overhaul.

“CRAFT involves farmers to create new ways of making food,” said Ralf Becks, co-founder of RespectFarms. “We use what works in agriculture and combine that with new technology. This will accelerate the path to market and to impact. CRAFT boils down a world problem to farm size. So we can solve it. And once it works, we scale this out to the world to increase impact. Let’s export technology instead of meat and animals.”

‘We need to find other ways to provide for our food’

Photo shows the logos of all the companies involved in The CRAFT Consortium, an international collective designing a cultivated meat farm — RespectFarms / The CRAFT Consortium The CRAFT Collective features a range of industry experts and scientific leaders, as well as agricultural and economic advisors

Animal farming has a significant negative impact on the environment, from resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) to pollution and biodiversity loss. Meat production also comes with unavoidable animal welfare issues, while its consumption has been linked to various diseases and chronic health conditions.

As the climate crisis has an increasingly visible effect on the food system in general, a broader shift in how agricultural work is funded and carried out could help build a more equitable food system for everyone, including farmers themselves.

In January, British farmers said that they would be open to collaboration with cultivated meat producers as the industry progresses. Meanwhile, access to farming byproducts could help make cultivated meat production even more sustainable.

“The consumption of the current amount of animal products is not sustainable within the planet’s capacity,” said Ruud Zanders, co-founder of RespectFarms and Kipster. “So, we need to find other ways to provide for our food. Within the Earth’s capacity and with as little impact as possible on animals, humans, the climate, and with a future for the (livestock) farmer. Et voila: the cultured meat farm.”