Farmers and ‘Pharmas’ are the unsung heroes of bringing the Covid-19 pandemic to its knees in developed and developing economies. Enabled by the most prolific marketing campaign the world has ever seen, the phrase ‘eat your greens’ has taken on a new meaning.

For decades, ‘Big Pharma’ has successfully scaled vaccines and antibodies to fight the world’s most infamous diseases, including smallpox and MMR, through bacterial and animal-based systems. Late in the 20^th century, vaccine development was still widely regarded as having an R&D lead time of 10 years. But in 2020 and 2021, the Covid-19 pandemic exponentially accelerated the process to only several months. At face value, this seemed remarkable, but the new vaccines lacked global penetration. Inconsistent vaccination rates led to further virus mutations, which has fueled temporal resurgences every other quarter over the past nine years.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, Pharma has also been developing and testing a vaccine that can be delivered by plant molecules in gene-edited leafy greens, such as your average household butter lettuce – a method that would increase global vaccine accessibility and acceptance by over 30%. In a bid to ramp-up production of the lettuce hosting their breakthrough vaccine, Pharma rapidly needed to access plant-producing factories and fields in all corners of the globe. This is where Pharma truly met farmers, and in a meeting of minds, Pharma entrusted the ‘CRISPR Vax-lettuce’ to the gentle hands of commercial and emerging farmers.

The world-wide production of these special leafy greens drove exponential adoption by communities and households, shifting global penetration of the Covid-19 vaccine to an effective rate of 72%, and stopping the virus in its tracks.

Today, alliances are being forged between major Pharma producers and farmers globally to create the perfect fruit salad, suited to the deployment of common cancer treatments and cell regeneration therapies. It’s safe to say that the proof will be in the pudding!