A comparison...

[Guest]

The reality of feed conversion ratio, water use, and the dismal protein conversion efficiency. For example beef is 2.5% and chicken is 21%.

1 kg of Beef produces 35 kg of CO2 while chicken 4.5
High levels of methane and nitrous make beef an easy target for making it out to destroy the environment.

Beyond meat isn't the beef industry's problem, It's being the poster child of waste and cause of climate change. Good marketing will keep focusing on that fact which beef can't even begin to push back on. Do yourself a reality check and have a Farmers Breakfast wrap at Timmies, they are actually quite good.

Cost will come down significantly for isolate based proteins, more companies are already getting in on the action. More and more really good home made beyond meat recipes will replace even more "evil" beef.

But since Ag sucks at anything to do with public perception, they'll just keep calling it names and dog food while the ship sinks.

Is it “kick a rancher in the nuts day” ?
I love my beef , keeps me strong
Thanks to those that work their asses off to produce it
I see them trying to bale hay on my way to the lake every weekend and appreciate their efforts

[Guest]

Of course it is, but perception is reality - something Ag will never understand. You just roll your eyes and say idiot under your breath and keep pumping out the arrogant facts of "science" to the choir, meanwhile GMO's, glyphosate, chuckwagon races, pesticides in general get banned as the Austranada's of the world are way more effective and social media savvy.

While you say 50 cows are grazing in a grassy wldlife area that gets tweeted, instagrammed and facebooked to 12 people, millions of the public gets shown images of hundreds of thousands of feeder cattle belly deep in cowshit, destroying ground water, wasting energy, and creating methane and NOx causing global warming over and over and over on every conceivable social media channel and media as well.

So keep up the ignorance of what's actually going on.. Maybe it'll all just go away if we keep telling each other how dumb they are.

Which is publicly more acceptable? A feedlot or field? - which is where most of those burgers come from

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Not mine

[grassfarmer]

Which is publicly more acceptable? A feedlot or field? - which is where most of those burgers come from

The field of course - where these cattle are being fattened.


Compared to the alternative


Two can play at this game and arguably those in primary ag production have never before had a better opportunity to influence the general public the way they do now through social media. I've had posts on Facebook shared over 100 times and videos viewed over 20,000 times. We're not all dumb in agriculture.

[bucket]

grassfarmer

That top picture of the animal grazing ....is making my mouth water....deeeelicious looking beast....I am picturing a baked potato , beets, and a small salad beside it along with horseradish and to drink an ice cold coke....mmmmmmm!!!

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Here is another way of looking at this. The cost of any product or service is a reflection of the cost of the energy that went into creating that product or service. Every step of the way, from the direct energy or fuel for mining, growing, processing and transporting to the indirect, the employees, engineers, accountants, lawyers, advertisers etc. wages all of which goes to buy energy or products made with or from energy etc. At the root of the economy, we don't pay the earth to yield its bounty, we extract energy from it, and convert it into work and use that to make useful products. Even the cost of that energy is a reflection of the amount of energy it takes to get it into a useful format.

If you accept that, then the fact that fake meat costs multiple times more per kg, indicates that there is much more energy (directly or indirectly) that went into producing it than actual meat. Yet it is being marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative. For those who still "believe" that CO2 is bad, what are the full cycle CO2 emissions of fake meat? Total water use? How much more finite fossil fuels are being consumed to create a product to make it cost that much more? Beef can be( key word being can) produced using virtually no fossil fuels, can the same be said about fake meat?

Considering the demographic this is being marketed to, both consumer and producer look a lot like hypocrits.

[bucket]

Here is another way of looking at this. The cost of any product or service is a reflection of the cost of the energy that went into creating that product or service. Every step of the way, from the direct energy or fuel for mining, growing, processing and transporting to the indirect, the employees, engineers, accountants, lawyers, advertisers etc. wages all of which goes to buy energy or products made with or from energy etc. At the root of the economy, we don't pay the earth to yield its bounty, we extract energy from it, and convert it into work and use that to make useful products. Even the cost of that energy is a reflection of the amount of energy it takes to get it into a useful format.

If you accept that, then the fact that fake meat costs multiple times more per kg, indicates that there is much more energy (directly or indirectly) that went into producing it than actual meat. Yet it is being marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative. For those who still "believe" that CO2 is bad, what are the full cycle CO2 emissions of fake meat? Total water use? How much more finite fossil fuels are being consumed to create a product to make it cost that much more? Beef can be( key word being can) produced using virtually no fossil fuels, can the same be said about fake meat?

Considering the demographic this is being marketed to, both consumer and producer look a lot like hypocrits.

Interesting comments because I was told Roquette didn't come to saskatchewan for water reasons....which is a bullshit argument ....

[tweety]

The field of course - where these cattle are being fattened.
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Compared to the alternative
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Two can play at this game and arguably those in primary ag production have never before had a better opportunity to influence the general public the way they do now through social media. I've had posts on Facebook shared over 100 times and videos viewed over 20,000 times. We're not all dumb in agriculture.

Wow, a whole hundred times. You're not dumb, you're just naive.

[grassfarmer]

When in history could an individual farmer or rancher sit in their house and get to broadcast their message for free to hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of consumers around the world? The power is in our hands if we choose to use it.
You don't have to be defeated, sitting at home wringing your hands because "the farm groups" aren't spreading the message you want to convey.

[tweety]

When in history could an individual farmer or rancher sit in their house and get to broadcast their message for free to hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of consumers around the world? The power is in our hands if we choose to use it.
You don't have to be defeated, sitting at home wringing your hands because "the farm groups" aren't spreading the message you want to convey.

That's the thing about social media, mostly those in ag follow the "Agvocates". Take a peak at Megz followers, this isn't rocket science.

You don't have too look very hard to see what's happening. While the media shows farmers can't compete, vertical integration is changing the landscape. Food industries with vi can easily remove farmers from the chain.
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/walmart-farming-milk_n_5c9d2dc0e4b0474c08cb0aec https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/walmart-farming-milk_n_5c9d2dc0e4b0474c08cb0aec

[tweety]

Here is another way of looking at this. The cost of any product or service is a reflection of the cost of the energy that went into creating that product or service. Every step of the way, from the direct energy or fuel for mining, growing, processing and transporting to the indirect, the employees, engineers, accountants, lawyers, advertisers etc. wages all of which goes to buy energy or products made with or from energy etc. At the root of the economy, we don't pay the earth to yield its bounty, we extract energy from it, and convert it into work and use that to make useful products. Even the cost of that energy is a reflection of the amount of energy it takes to get it into a useful format.

If you accept that, then the fact that fake meat costs multiple times more per kg, indicates that there is much more energy (directly or indirectly) that went into producing it than actual meat. Yet it is being marketed as an environmentally friendly alternative. For those who still "believe" that CO2 is bad, what are the full cycle CO2 emissions of fake meat? Total water use? How much more finite fossil fuels are being consumed to create a product to make it cost that much more? Beef can be( key word being can) produced using virtually no fossil fuels, can the same be said about fake meat?

Considering the demographic this is being marketed to, both consumer and producer look a lot like hypocrits.

Big difference between profitability of a product versus COP.

Enviro:

The team discovered that the Beyond Burger generates 90% less greenhouse gas emissions, requires 46% less energy, and has 99% less impact on water scarcity and 93% less impact on land use than a quarter pound of U.S. beef. That means a 41-square-foot plot of land can produce just one beef burger for every 15 Beyond Burgers.

A spokesman for the brand explained that, by this assessment, Americans switching from beef to plant-based patties would be the equivalent of taking 12 million cars off the road for an entire year–or saving enough electricity to power 2.3 million homes.

Or:

While producing a Beyond Burger requires 99% less water, 93% land, 90% fewer greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 50% less energy than a 1/4lb beef burger, one Impossible Burger has been shown to save the equivalent of 75 square feet of land, half a tub of bathwater and 18 miles of emissions in a car, compared to a burger made from cows.

ARE THEY BETTER FOR THE EARTH?

Experts say reducing overall red meat consumption would be better for the planet. Beef is considered taxing on the environment because of the resources it takes to grow crops to feed cows. Cows also produce the greenhouse gas methane, mostly through burps .

Christopher Field, who is at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and who knows the founder of Impossible Foods, noted people don't have to give up meat entirely to make a difference, and that pork and chicken have much smaller environmental footprints than beef.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

I am basing my assumptions on the prices today. If in the future those prices end up lower than beef, then my assumptions are wrong, and perhaps this is entirely collusion and monopoly today.

Otherwise, it is much like the renewable energy industry, as long as the end user costs continue to be higher than fossil fuels, one can only draw the conclusion that the EROEI is worse than fossil fuels

Time will tell, but I'm thinking that the analysis presented above is not considering the full life cycle of both. If it were, fake meat would be pennies compared to real meat.

[grassfarmer]

.... and that pork and chicken have much smaller environmental footprints than beef.

Talk about dumb statements.

The industrial pig or chicken that lives in a building it's whole life with all the electricity needed to cool/heat/light it, the materials needed to build the barn, every feed of it's life delivered to it mechanically - often grown provinces away using fossil fuel based agriculture. The fertiliser, spray, fuel, machinery and environmental impact of monoculture agriculture. Then there is the negative environmental impact of air and water pollution of concentrating animals so densely and the costs of hauling away and spreading the manure.
Neither species can have any beneficial impact by grazing land and sequestering carbon as they are housed and aren't ruminants.

You should maybe just have stopped at the claim that "pork and chicken have smaller footprints."