Abstract text: Sufficient calories are embodied in plants in the form of lignocellulosic biomass to feed everyone on our planet for over a century. However, humans cannot easily digest many of the components of plant cell walls, and these materials are nutritionally unbalanced, being rich in carbohydrates and minerals, but low in protein and lipids. We have developed and tested several strategies for converting plant cell walls into foods and food precursors. In one approach, we found that sequentially growing oyster and shiitake mushrooms on woody biomass both yielded nutritious, protein-rich food in the form of edible mushrooms and enhanced the enzymatic digestibility of the remaining plant biomass. In a second approach, we found that converting lignocellulosic biomass into acetate, then feeding this acetate to edible algae grown under low light yielded high levels of total lipid and protein. Together, these and related strategies could allow people to convert lignocellulosic biomass into food under circumstances when conventional agriculture is difficult or impossible.