Pasture to Plate (P2P): realising the enormous potential of UK grasslands

我们的愿景是通过使用有针对性的化学加工和新型生物技术将草转化为营养丰富的可食用部分，以获得更健康，更实惠的替代食品，从而最大限度地发挥英国牧场的食物潜力，使英国农业更具弹性和可持续性。我们的建议旨在使用新的化学加工方法从草中提取中心可食用部分（蛋白质，可消化的碳水化合物，维生素，脂质，纤维），然后在纤维素部分上培养酵母Metschnikowia pulcherrima，以生产真菌蛋白和适合作为棕榈油替代品的脂质。这些成分将被结合在一系列替代肉类和乳制品中，取代目前使用的对环境有害的进口成分。对该过程中的废物进行进一步处理将生产出营养丰富的肥料，并有助于为未来的循环农业经济创造一个模式。当优化该过程时，仅需要10至15公斤鲜草（20%干物质含量）即可生产1公斤可食用食品配料，其中约25%为脂质和35%为蛋白质。虽然在营养基础上不完全可比，但与肉用牛相比，这意味着生产力提高了10倍，或者是奶牛生产力的两倍。通过将草转化为可食用的食品成分，实现了许多优点，包括：-英国生产的棕榈油，大豆蛋白和其他进口食品成分的替代品。这在英国和国外都有环境效益。它将为在前雨林地区种植的成分提供英国生产的健康营养替代品，同时大大减少食物里程;-生产英国食品替代品，每年进口价值超过20亿英镑的食品，并有机会出口大量剩余产品;-提高英国对气候变化的适应能力，因为草比大多数其他作物更能适应洪水和其他极端天气条件;- 由于该方法是原料不可知的，因此它应该同样适用于野花丰富的牧草。这可能使重新引入具有更大生物多样性的草地，而不会影响草的可用性，这是该过程的环境有益的副产品;- 将草纳入可耕地轮作中，以帮助防治黑种草和其他抗农药杂草，这是有利可图的;-目前，在某些地区，建造和维护牲畜围栏是不经济的，导致这些地区的草地几乎没有商业农业价值。这些草地现在将成为商业上可行的，并有助于英国的粮食生产;-扩大规模的风险有限，因为没有必要投资于新的农业机械，现有的饲料设备和储存设施就足够了，生物加工技术已经成熟，并已用于许多其他工业应用;-投资新的英国食品工业的机会;- 通过生产更易消化的部分，该项目将为单胃牲畜生产更可持续的英国来源饲料;-初步研究表明，P2P过程中有足够的未利用草，因此，该系统对奶牛和畜牧业的草供应影响很小或没有影响。

Our vision is to maximise the food potential of UK pasture by using targeted chemical processing and novel biotechnology to convert grass into nutritious edible fractions for healthier and more affordable alternative foods, making UK agriculture more resilient and sustainable. Our proposal aims to use novel chemical processing methods to extract the central edible fractions from grass (protein, digestible carbohydrates, vitamins, lipids, fibre) before culturing the yeast Metschnikowia pulcherrima on the cellulosic fraction to produce mycoprotein and a lipid suitable as a palm oil substitute. These ingredients will then be combined in a range of alternative meat and dairy products, displacing environmentally damaging imported ingredients currently used. Further processing of the waste products from the process will produce nutrient rich fertilizers and help create a model for future circular farming economies. When optimised this process would only need 10 to 15kg of fresh grass (20% dry matter content) to produce 1kg of edible food ingredients, of which approximately 25% would be lipid and 35% protein. Whilst not entirely comparable on a nutritional basis this represents a ten-fold increase in productivity compared to cattle raised for meat, or twice the productivity of dairy cows. By converting grass into edible food components, a number of advantages are realised including:- UK produced substitutes for palm oil, soya protein, and other imported food ingredients. This has environmental benefits in the UK and abroad. It will provide UK produced healthy nutritional substitutes for ingredients grown on former rainforest sites, whilst significantly reducing food miles;- Produce UK food substitutes for over two billion pounds worth of annual food imports, with the opportunity to export significant quantities of surplus produce;- Improved UK resilience to climate change as grass is more resilient to flooding and other extreme weather conditions than most other crops;- As the process is feedstock agnostic, it should work equally well with wildflower rich pasture grass. This potentially enables the reintroduction of grasslands with greater biodiversity without having an impact on the grasses usability, an environmentally beneficial by-product of the process;- Providing a commercially viable non-livestock based market for forage production that would also allow arable land that is prone to flooding to profitably return to meadow grass production;- The profitable inclusion of grass in arable rotations to help combat blackgrass and other pesticide resistant weeds;- At present, in some areas it is uneconomic to build and maintain livestock fencing, resulting in grassland in these regions having little commercial agricultural value. These grasslands will now become commercially viable, and contribute to UK food production;- Limited risk in scaling up as there is no need to invest in new farm machinery, existing forage equipment and storage facilities will suffice and the bio-processing technology is mature and already used for many other industrial applications;- Opportunities for investment in a new UK food industry;- With the production of more digestible fractions, this project would produce more sustainable, UK sourced, feed for monogastric livestock;- Initial research suggests that sufficient unutilised grass is available for the P2P process, therefore, this system should have little or no impact on grass supplies for dairy and livestock farming.