"Eat up. Save Earth." Alternative proteins and the myth of inevitable sustainability

Abstract

The emerging agri-food tech sector promises to solve myriad environmental problems. This article considers the sociotechnical imaginaries that animate these claims. We focus on plant-based meat and dairy substitutes, or 'alternative proteins' (APs). To examine how APs are constructed as environmental solutions, we analyzed marketing materials, sustainability reports, and interviews. Our study illustrates how environmental metrics (Life Cycle Assessments) and corporate marketing make environmental issues legible to agri-industrial logics by reducing them to a narrow, technical issue: inefficient livestock. To critique this problem closure, we develop the concept of inevitable sustainability–where the increased adoption of a technology is equated with the assured reduction of environmental harm. We caution that APs support a neoliberal model of environmental governance that propagates apolitical and deterritorialized solutions. To reflect on the limits of agri food tech environmental fixes, we discuss three myths surrounding inevitable sustainability. We outline this concept's applicability to similar instances of environmental solutionism in agri-food tech and beyond.