The environmentalist George Monbiot has claimed the product could have a revolutionary impact on food production.Apocalypse Cow (Channel 4 2019 documentary) Solar Foods envisions carbon-neutral food production in which agriculture would no longer be needed to produce food and the land freed from agriculture could be reforested and converted into carbon sinks. They believe this would also reduce agricultural nutrient pollution and subsequent water supply problems. The company has said the land efficiency for Solar Foods methods would be about 20,000 times greater than for conventional farming. In 2020, Michael Le Page, writing in the New Scientist, took a more sceptical view, noting that the 20,000-fold improvement only applies to the factories themselves. If land use for solar panels is taken into account, then land efficiency only improves by about 10-fold. Despite his doubts over how beneficial the technology would be overall, Le Page stated that "the potential rewards are so immense that we should be pouring vast sums of money into finding out."
