From synthetic eggs, milk and meat to vegetables grown under LED lighting, an American futurist think-tank is forecasting so-called disruptions will sweep through agricultural industries.

Kaila Colbin the New Zealand ambassador for the futurist think tank Singularity University based at NASA Ames in the Silicon Valley, US ( Supplied: Singularity University )

The California-based Singularity University is far from modest about its aims to address global challenges by empowering leaders to use new technologies.

Its New Zealand ambassador Kaila Colbin said a 90 per cent drop in LED lighting prices had made it cheaper for the vegetable industry to use the technology.

Where once LEDs were once used for high value but illegal indoor crops like marijuana, they are now powering multi-storeyed vegetable crops.

"What we're seeing is indoor farms in disused nightclubs in New Jersey supplying produce to New York at price parity with organic produce out of California.

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"The world's largest indoor farm in Japan is 100 times more productive per square foot, than a traditional farm.

"It uses 40 per cent less power, and generates 80 per cent less food waste and uses 99 per cent less water."

Australia has an abundance of natural sunlight, and sources in the indoor vegetable industry say the LED investment is not widely used as there is not yet a return on investment.

Singularity University is hosting its first global solutions programs in Australasia.

Ahead of the conference, Ms Colbin told Australian farm and food entrepreneurs that cheap technology like LED was one of the major disruptors of agriculture.

Synthetic burger meat created by Impossible Foods in California is attracting attention from chefs and future thinkers. ( Supplied: Impossible Foods )

She said synthetic protein was another.

"The really intense thing for the agriculture sector is not that we can have a hamburger that a vegan can eat, it's that we will have a hamburger that a meat eater will eat and will love.

"We have Impossible Foods out of California making burgers that sizzle, ooze blood, they char, they are delicious and have a tiny fraction of the carbon emissions so if you have to deal with an emissions trading scheme that's important.

"Synthetic burger meat also use a fraction of the water.

"We have also bio-engineered milk, it's the same thing as milk but hasn't been through a cow.

"We have bio-engineered eggs where this one company in the US [is] marketing not to vegans but to industrial caterers who buy eggs by the thousands of kilos.

"What they care about is 'does it come in powder, liquid or tube form, and will it brown nicely around the edges, have the right taste, last longer on the shelf, salmonella free and is it cheaper'."