The Second Agricultural Revolution: The new tech that will change what you eat and END WORLD HUNGER

A second agricultural revolution is coming.

What you eat is about to change forever, and it comes with a lot of other perks and advantages. For example, ending world hunger. Memphis Meats has served the first cultured meats to consumers and the reviews are in. The verdict? It's good. But what does this new technology mean for us?

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) -- What you eat is about to change within the next decade, and it will be the second most dramatic shift in diet in human history.

The most dramatic change in human diet came during the Neolithic Revolution, about 12,000 years ago. That's when our ancestors learned how to domesticate animals and crops which saved them from having to hunt and gather food all day. This change allowed people to settle in one place, and civilization to develop.

What is about to happen next is almost as big. Scientists have nearly perfected cultured meat. Cultured meat is animal tissue grown in a lab, instead of on an animal. Once perfected, a milestone that will be reached very soon, startups such as Memphis Meats will move from the lab to a factory. From there, meat will be mass produced in an industrial scale, sans animals.

The meat itself is real meat. It is derived from animal stem cells. The only difference is it will grow in a vat as opposed to on an animal. The taste and texture will be identical to animal-grown meat, although there's sure to be a few holdouts who insist otherwise.

Cultured meat can be produced within a few months without the need for breeding, or a ranch, or all of the land, labor, and capital that go into breeding, raising, and slaughtering live animals. Slaughterhouses will disappear. Cultured meat factories can be built anywhere, which will allow local production of meat. Some futurists have even suggested we will grow cultured meats in our own homes, the same way we might bake bread in a bread machine or grow our own vegetables.

Since the meat is raised in a laboratory, the conditions can be controlled preventing the need for vaccinations, hormones, or taking the risk of disease. It is also possible the stem cells could be genetically engineered to produce meat with lower fat and cholesterol content while retaining its original flavor.

In all, cultured meat will be just as enjoyable as regular meat, but it will be cheaper, cleaner, healthier and cruelty free.

Even better, since cultured meat can be produced anywhere it should be cheap and easy enough to produce to provide food for the entire world, possibly solving world hunger in a single blow. There will be fresh, healthy protein available for everyone, and it will be produced locally, even in the most remote areas of the world.

At the same time cultured meats are emerging, vertical farming is coming online. Vertical farms are factories that are converted or built to grow crops indoors under controlled conditions. Such crops can be harvested and replanted daily, and they need much less land and water to raise. They are grown indoors, so they don't need pesticides. The first vertical farms are already in operation in the U.S. and Japan.

Combined, cultured meats and vertical farms will revolutionize food production. Farming and ranching will move indoors over the next century freeing up land for homes or natural reclamation. The foods you know and love will remain, but they're about to get cleaner, cheaper, and a lot more plentiful.

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