Beyond the biomass: Why Europe’s food bioeconomy needs a systemic overhaul, not a simple resource swap
As the European Commission moves to revise its Bioeconomy Strategy, France’s national agricultural and environmental research institute, INRAE, has issued a detailed set of recommendations urging policymakers to treat the bioeconomy as a complex socioeconomic system rather than a technical substitution exercise. The implications for the food and agri-food industries are profound – and the stakes, from biomass competition to regulatory architecture, are high. Food Engineering & Ingredients reports.
The systemic challenge: Bioeconomy is not a resource swap
When the European Commission launched its call for evidence on a revised Bioeconomy Strategy, it invited input from the scientific community on what a “circular, regenerative and competitive” bio-economy should look like in practice. INRAE – the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, and one of Europe’s foremost agricultural science bodies – responded with a document that is, in places, a pointed corrective to prevailing assumptions.
The institute’s central argument is straightforward but consequential: bioeconomy is not simply a matter of substituting fossil-based inputs with biological ones. “Bioeconomy is not a simple shift in resources,” the submission states. “Developing bio-based products requires the emergence of value chains, manufacturing and social organizations.” This framing has direct implications for the food and agri-food sector, where the competition for biomass – between food, feed, packaging materials, biofuels, and novel ingredients – is already creating pressure that existing policy frameworks are ill-equipped to manage.
INRAE defines bioeconomy as “a concept grounded in the use of renewable biological resources that directly or indirectly result from photosynthesis (animal, plants, microorganisms and biomass derivatives including organic waste).” The breadth of that definition captures the problem: a single crop residue stream might simultaneously serve as a substrate for fermentation, a soil amendment, an energy feedstock, and a source of functional food ingredients. Decisions about allocation – which use takes priority under which conditions – require, as INRAE puts it, “science-based multi-criteria approaches and multi-stakeholder decision-making processes.”
The institute is particularly pointed in its critique of the current emphasis on “regenerative agriculture” as the organising concept for the revised strategy. While acknowledging that regenerative approaches usefully target soil health and carbon capture, INRAE argues that the framework is too narrow. Agroecology, by contrast, “provides a more comprehensive framework, including ecosystem services and social dimensions, with cascading consequences for the entire agri-food system.” The recommendation is explicit: the Commission should support “a semantic shift from regenerative to agroecology-based bioeconomy to highlight more dimensions of the system.”
For food industry stakeholders, the territorial dimension of INRAE’s argument is equally significant. Unlike petrochemical supply chains, which can be globalised and standardised, biological resource streams are inherently local: they vary by season, geography, soil type, and land-use pattern. INRAE calls for bioeconomy strategy to be “embedded in systemic territorial policies, via the deployment of bioeconomy projects aligned with ecological transition,” and for “spatially explicit simulations” to model where resources will be available and what new territorial organisations might look like. The food processing industry, which depends on predictable, high-volume biomass inputs, has an obvious stake in how those simulations are conducted and who controls their outputs.
Primary producers – farmers, foresters, aquaculture operators – are cast by INRAE as central actors in this transition, not passive suppliers. The institute calls for their “active and effective inclusion” in the co-construction and decision-making processes related to bioeconomy deployment, including via citizen science approaches. This is not merely a point about equity: it reflects a scientific position that sustainable biomass supply systems cannot be designed without granular, place-specific knowledge that only producers possess.
From laboratory to loading dock: The scale-up bottleneck
If the first challenge for Europe’s food bioeconomy is conceptual – understanding what it is and what it requires – the second is emphatically practical. Europe has a strong research base. It accounts for 21% of the world’s top biotech publications, according to figures cited in the European Commission’s own Biotech Act factsheet. Yet that scientific output has not translated into industrial leadership at the rate that policymakers and industry had hoped.
The gap lies at the point of scale-up: the transition from laboratory-proven processes to economically viable production at industrial scale. Michael O’Donohue, INRAE’s Scientific Director for Bioeconomy, is direct on this point. In comments accompanying a high-level event co-organised by INRAE, the IBISBA European research infrastructure, and the B-BEST priority research programme in Brussels, he described the core challenge: “Our primary aim must be to turn the know-how and innovations already produced in the laboratory into successful industrial-scale processes that make economic sense.”
The obstacles are both scientific and infrastructural. On the infrastructural side, Europe’s research and innovation capacity remains highly fragmented: IBISBA, the only European distributed research infrastructure dedicated to industrial biotechnology and biomanufacturing, was established precisely to address this, centralising access to R&D platforms and services and promoting the standardisation of data and shared practices across national systems. O’Donohue identifies two further compounding factors on the scientific side. “Many setbacks are encountered, unfortunately, at the point when operations need to be scaled up, that is, the transition from the research and development phase to implementation at industrial scale,” he explains. “A further major scientific challenge lies in harnessing digital tools and artificial intelligence as levers to accelerate the maturation of bioprocesses.”
Biotechnologies are central to the scale-up agenda for food and agri-food applications. Unlike chemical technologies designed around fossil inputs, biotechnological processes – enzymatic reactions, microbial fermentation, biocatalytic systems – are inherently compatible with biological raw materials. INRAE’s submission argues that “the potential of biotechnology to empower the bio-economy has not yet been fully realised,” and that there is “a strong need for accelerating the design, construction, testing, and learning cycles, and for the development of more robust microbial eco-systems and biocatalysts.”
These are not abstract goals. Fermentation-based food ingredients, precision fermentation for alternative proteins, enzyme-enabled reduction of processing energy and chemical inputs, valorisation of post-harvest food waste into functional compounds: all of these depend on exactly the biotechnological capabilities INRAE identifies as underdeveloped. The institute calls for amplified R&D funding on biotechnology “while rationalising investments, promoting cooperation through instruments such as research infrastructures (e.g., IBISBA) of European importance.”
The data and AI dimension is equally pressing. INRAE’s submission notes that artificial intelligence creates considerable opportunities for bioeconomy but that integration “is often hampered by technical complexities, a lack of standardised high-quality datasets for training algorithms, or difficulty in accessing data.” For food manufacturers seeking to optimise fermentation parameters, predict biomass quality variation, or model supply chain resilience, this is a live operational constraint, not a future aspiration. O’Donohue notes: “As a research body and data provider, INRAE has an important role to play in this area. We have significant capacity at our disposal, thanks to our laboratories and research infrastructures.”
France has already invested substantially in bridging the laboratory-to-industry gap. The France 2030 Plan, launched in 2021, funds Priority Research Programmes and Equipment (PEPR) and Acceleration Strategies in strategic scientific fields. The B-BEST PEPR programme – co-led by INRAE and IFP Energies Nouvelles, with a budget of €65M over seven years – funds research at Technology Readiness Levels 1 to 4, precisely the early-stage work that private investors are most reluctant to support. Ferments du Futur, a public-private partnership of 42 members including companies, research institutions, and trade bodies, received €48M over ten years and opened a dedicated innovation centre at the Paris-Saclay cluster in 2024. These are the practical mechanisms INRAE wants to see replicated and scaled at EU level.
Regulatory architecture and competitive positioning
The regulatory dimension of Europe’s bioeconomy ambitions has acquired new urgency with the publication, in December 2025, of the first part of the European Biotech Act. This initial phase focuses on health biotechnology and covers a range of measures: accelerating EU clinical trials authorisations, encouraging innovation through regulatory sandboxes, supporting funding and investment via a pilot with the EIB Group, boosting bio-manufacturing capacity, and incentivising human and veterinary biotech medicine with high added value. A second part of the Act, centred on industrial policy – and therefore more directly relevant to the food and agri-food sector – is expected in 2026.
The scale of the sector that this legislation is designed to serve is substantial. The EU biotechnology industry has grown more than twice as fast as the overall EU economy. Forty per cent of all medicines sold in the EU are bio-medicines, including biosimilars. Health biotechnology alone accounts for 685,000 jobs, representing 75% of all biotechnology employment in the EU. The industrial bioeconomy – encompassing food processing, bio-based materials, and agri-industrial applications – represents a further layer of economic activity that the forthcoming industrial section of the Biotech Act will need to address. INRAE’s position on regulation is clear and consistent with the Commission’s stated direction: “The creation of a more favourable regulatory framework is certainly required to stimulate innovation and spur the delivery of new technologies, processes and products, while favouring the emergence of related EU-based companies and start-ups.” But the institute places particular emphasis on the evidentiary foundations of that framework, calling for regulation to be grounded in rigorous risk/benefit analysis supported by solid scientific evidence.
For the food industry, the regulatory challenge is multi-layered. Novel food approvals, novel ingredient classifications, and the regulatory status of precision fermentation outputs all sit within frameworks that were not designed with the pace of biotechnological development in mind, creating approval timelines that can outlast a product’s commercial window and, in some cases, the viability of the company that developed it. INRAE’s call to “streamline regulation and improve the competitiveness of the bioeconomy” is shared by much of the industry, but the institute’s emphasis on scientific evidence as the basis for streamlining is a significant qualification: speed without rigour, in a sector dealing with food safety and environmental release of biological systems, carries its own risks.
The institute also draws attention to the role of pre-industrial demonstrators and research infrastructures as critical intermediaries in the innovation pipeline. The European Commission, it argues, should “recognise and support the crucial role of hybrid entities such as pre-industrial demonstrators, as well as research infrastructures, that bridge gaps and mobilise public-private partnerships to nurture the early stages of innovation pipelines.” This is a structural point with direct regulatory implications: demonstrators operate in a space that existing regulatory categories – designed for either research or commercial activity – often fail to accommodate cleanly.
Biomass logistics present a further regulatory and competitive challenge. INRAE warns against “strict allocation of certain raw materials to certain value chains that generate sector lock-in,” arguing instead for a system that preserves flexibility and enables cascading use of resources. For food manufacturers, this has concrete implications: a regulatory framework that locks crop residues into bioenergy production, for example, removes them from the pool of potential substrates for food ingredient fermentation. The institute calls for policy that “recognises this flexibility, avoiding strict allocation.” Equally, INRAE advocates investing in pre-industrial and industrial scale infrastructures to support local value creation, specifically to prevent raw biomass from being exported unprocessed – a form of resource drain that undermines the economic case for domestic bioeconomy development.
On the question of Research & Innovation (R&I) investment, INRAE is unequivocal that food systems have been under-funded. The submission states that it is “imperative to increase funding on this area,” specifically identifying post-harvest food processing as “an area greatly neglected in the last few years.” This is a pointed criticism of Horizon Europe’s allocation decisions and a direct call for correction in the next framework programme.
Public trust, skills, and the long game
Technical excellence and favourable regulation are necessary but not sufficient conditions for a functioning bioeconomy. INRAE’s submission devotes significant attention to two further requirements that are often treated as secondary concerns in industrial policy discussions: public understanding and human capital.
On public perception, the institute is frank about the scale of the challenge. “Innovations may generate indifference, reluctance or even rejection from parts of the population,” it notes, attributing this to “distrust of new technologies, political options, cultural habits, misinformation, cognitive biases or past mistakes.” For the food industry, this observation has particular resonance. Consumer acceptance of novel food technologies – whether precision fermentation, enzyme-produced ingredients, or bioactive compounds derived from waste streams – cannot be assumed, and has been conspicuously absent in previous episodes of innovation introduction.
INRAE’s proposed response goes beyond conventional science communication. The institute calls for “a scientific dissemination programme coordinated at EU level, capitalising on existing tools and actions such as those implemented in some Horizon Europe projects (open and participatory science activities, living labs, etc.).” It also recommends the use of social media to “promote connectivity within the scientific community, overcome barriers to access to sources, increase debate, and reveal layperson perspectives and preferences” – while insisting that such communication must remain “in line with the general principles of ethics, deontology, and scientific validity that guide science.”
The emphasis on understanding consumer and civil society concerns is not merely tactical. INRAE frames it as a scientific imperative: “To improve the acceptability of biotechnology, it is necessary to better understand consumer/civil society concerns and reactions regarding these novelties.” This positions social science and humanities research as a core component of the bioeconomy R&I agenda, not an optional addition. The document calls explicitly for mobilising “a wide range of disciplines, including social sciences and humanities” in designing methodologies for sustainable resource use.
The skills dimension is equally urgent. The INRAE 2025–2030 priorities document, published in January 2026, identifies “bolstering French and European biotechnology leadership” and “developing the bio-economy within regions” as two of fifteen specific research and innovation challenges for the coming period. The Bioeconomy Strategy submission reinforces this by calling for “sustained investment in building and upgrading skills and novel competences, including initial training and long-life learning, namely for farmers and other primary producers.”
Researcher and technical staff mobility is identified as a further lever, with INRAE recommending support for programmes “that allow researchers, students and technical staff to move between countries (e.g. MSCA programme), foster research capacity and therefore improve the creativity, efficiency and quality of research related to bioeconomy.” For a food industry facing its own workforce transformation – as fermentation engineers, data scientists, and bioprocess technologists become as important as traditional food technologists – the pipeline of skilled people is a strategic constraint that deserves more attention than it typically receives in bioeconomy policy discussions.
The cumulative picture that emerges from INRAE’s submission is of a European bioeconomy at a genuine inflection point. The research base is strong, the policy intent is present, and the industrial need is clear. What remains is the harder work: aligning territorial realities with policy frameworks, converting laboratory excellence into scaled production, building regulatory systems that are simultaneously rigorous and agile, and earning the public understanding that any technology touching the food supply ultimately requires demonstrated safety, transparent governance, and a credible account of who benefits and on what terms. INRAE’s recommendation that the Commission adopt a systemic, agroecology-grounded approach – rather than defaulting to a resource-substitution narrative — is, in essence, a call for that harder work to begin in earnest.
Sources
INRAE Contribution to the EC’s Consultation on the European Bioeconomy Strategy (2025) https://shorturl.at/twtbz ; INRAE 2025–2030 Research and Innovation Priorities (January 2026) https://shorturl.at/J25pn ; INRAE Biotechnology for Agro-industries and the Bioeconomy (February 2026) https://shorturl.at/8oP8f ; European Commission, The European Biotech Act Factsheet (December 2025).
