COVID-19 Is the Opportunity Plant-Based Alternatives Have Waited For

Covid19 has wreaked havoc with certain sectors of America’s food chain -- most recently and notoriously, the meat industry.  The nonprofit Food & Environment Reporting Network estimates that U.S. meat industry, comprised of meatpackers, processors and farmworkers, suffered more than 17,000 infections and 66 deaths by the end of May, 2020. 

Also, significant: supplies of meat at the retail level are dwindling.  A May, 2020 report from CoBank, a national cooperative bank serving key food industries across rural America, projects that meat supplies in grocery stores could shrink as much as 35 percent, meat prices could spike 20 percent, and the impact could become even “more acute later this year” as the pandemic’s continuing effects on the U.S. agriculture supply chain are felt.

What COVID-19 has made clear is that America‘s consumers are paying attention to the growing plant-based protein sector of the food industry in ways not previously seen.

And yet, plant-based…