Conversations with the Granddaddy of Grass-Fed Beef: Part Two
It’s Not the Cow, It’s the How
Back in May, the plant-based meat company, Beyond Meat, had its initial public offering on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange. One of the most anticipated and successful IPOs of 2019, BYND continued to go up, and by July, it was trading for as much as 10 times its original offer price.
Fake meat is everywhere. Beyond, Impossible, Incogmeato, they all have catchy names, hot branding, and vocal CEOs touting them as the panacea (or should I say, plant-acea) that will save us all from climate change, heart disease, and socio-economic collapse.
Pat Brown, CEO of Impossible Foods, the maker of the soy-based Impossible Burger, summarized the industry’s sentiments in a recent interview. “The mission is very simple. It’s to completely replace animals in the food system by 2035.”1
Wow!
Not “wow” like I’m afraid—as a butcher—I might be out of a job in fifteen years. But wow because this Stanford scientist turned CEO, who has the backing of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Beyoncé, has completely lost site of the pasture through the cows.
Let me explain.
A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed White Oak Pastures’ Will Harris, and got things straight from the horse’s (or dare I say steer’s) mouth. You can learn more about Will and his beautiful Georgian regenerative farm in last week’s post, but suffice it to say, he’s got plenty of grass-fed street cred. The largest grass-finished beef rancher in the country, Will is also one of the biggest advocates for “radically traditional agriculture,” which he claims could be the solution to all our environmental, economic, and social sustainability problems.
Got your attention yet?
Despite making his living from real beef, Will isn’t one to rail against the anti-meat crowd. In fact, in his slow Southern drawl, he concedes that fake meat is a good alternative for person who can’t stand the idea of consuming a real animal. But what gets Will upset is when folks blame him and his cattle for destroying the Earth, while suggesting that the Impossible Burger and it’s plant-based competitors are going to change things for the better.
In fact, folks like Will are growing increasingly concerned that the fake-meat movement might actually be a huge step backwards for sustainable food.
“The way we run our farm, we are the answer, the solution for climate change, not the problem.”
Back in May, I wrote about how an expensive study done by well-respected Environmental Analyst firm, Quantis, showed that 4kgs of CO2 was emitted for every kilo of Impossible Meat—that’s less than half of the green house gases emitted by factory-farmed beef. However, the study also analyzed Will’s pasture-raised, grass-finished beef and found some startling results. It turned out that Will’s regenerative methods of crop rotation, pasture composting, all grass-diet, and reduced transportation actually helped his cows sequester—or reduce—CO2, not emit it. Even more ironically, White Oak cows were sequestering the same exact amount that Impossible Burger was producing.
In other words, you would have to eat a hamburger made from Will’s beef just to offset the environmental harm of an Impossible Burger.
“I’ve seen God hand out a few gifts in my life. But when we were given the opportunity to tell this story, you just can’t make that up.”
Harris even issued a press release about the findings, several blog posts, and was interviewed by CNN and dozens of other media outlets. The ruckus started a spitting match between Impossible Foods, Regenerative Farmers, and the famed Savory Institute. It’s good reading if you have the time.
“We say it's not the cow, it's the how."
But wait, there’s even more environmental irony.
For more than a decade, many food manufacturers have been trying to get GMOs (genetically modified organisms) out of their supply chains, mainly because half of consumers don’t want them in their food. Some regions of the US have even banned their cultivation.
That’s why it was horrifying to many environmental advocates and vegetarians alike when Impossible Food announced in May that the company would switch to GMO-based soy in order to improve profitability and meet growing demand.
Sustainable Food advocates were even more frustrated because they knew that the real culprit responsible for meat’s green house gas emissions is not cow farts, but rather the energy to produce it’s feed (mainly GMO corn and soy).
So Impossible Food’s decision to switch to GMOs meant that the product—launched as a solution for climate change—would now actively participate in the environmentally-damaging sector of the agricultural economy that it was trying to change.
Ready for my conspiracy theory?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame Impossible Foods for trying to make their product cheaper or more profitable. But I fear that this switch to GMOs could be the single greatest supply chain slight of hand ever executed. The GMO industry (Monsanto, DuPont, Dow AgroScience, etc.) may have just hijacked the fake meat movement to grow demand for GMO grains.
The risk is that every fake burger you consume will gobble up the same climate-killing soy that feedlot beef has been chowing down on for decades. As more people hop on the fake-meat band wagon, thinking they’re saving the planet, they could be making things worse, contributing to a system that will use even more energy, produce even more GHGs, and further industrialize our farming practices.
Are you scared yet?
The solution is super simple. The only chemistry we need to right the agricultural wrongs we’ve done to our planet is photosynthesis. If we start supporting carbon cowboys like Will, or Loren Poncia at Stemple Creek, or Seth Nitschke at Mariposa—all of whom are carbon neutral or carbon sequesterers—we could sleep better at night knowing that our carnivorous cravings were sucking down carbon.
I’ll leave you with this last bit of irony.
On October 29th, 2019, Beyond Meat’s stock dropped almost 25%. By the end of November, BYND was worth half of its record-breaking high. Analysts are still deciphering why. Could it be a sign of the fake-meat bubble about to burst? Only time will tell.
But what I do know is that October 29th should also sound familiar to economists and historians alike. Ninety years ago to the day, it was a Tuesday, more specifically, Black Tuesday, when the New York Stock Exchange lost about 25% of its value and started what would become the Great Depression. Could it be a harbinger of what’s to come for the plant-based meat industry and the factory farm economy?
Maybe Will’s gift from God is only starting to be realized….