High value pharming: Is the future of farming measured in components?

When you get right down to it, farmers don’t raise grain or meat. Really, they produce three things: protein, carbohydrates, and fat.

As luck would have it, humans need those things, in varying quantities, for nutrition.

If we look more closely at one of those three things — protein — we discover that this particular component is so much more than a steak or part of a grain.

Proteins are actually amazing things — they can be enzymes, health promotants, and even medicine. Insulin is protein. Lactoferrin is protein. Humans need protein not just as nutrition in the form of hydrolyzed amino acids, but also for health as protein therapeutics.

Dr. Illimar Altosaar is the CEO and founder of Proteins Easy Corporation.

Housed within the University of Ottawa’s Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Immunology, Altosaar has been patenting his “ah-ha” moments regarding useful gene transfer into grains for the last 15 years.

Recently, his team began refining a very promising technique of tethering specific proteins to the surface of starch granules of corn and rice and, soon, durum wheat.

Altosaar explains that scientists have had limited success in creating protein in a lab setting. A few short chains of amino acids is the best humans have done so far.