This will be a good news, bad news column. Some of the good news is the nation’s cow herd is at it smallest since 2015 and with the uptick in moisture so far this winter, calf market should be bullish across the country. Corn futures for September are favorable year to year for feeders, so we should see a vigorous auction season for calves.
More good news exists in the arena of plant-based protein and so-called fake meat products. I know most of you have some knowledge of these meat alternatives. Along with the good news (more about this below) is some bad news. The very fact huge investments are being made in creating a plant based alternative protein to meat from chickens, beef cows and pigs should give any farmer or rancher a great deal of pause about the future of animal agriculture. Couple the development of these protein replacements with a desire on the part of consumers to make sure animals are humanely raised and livestock growers have a sustainability ethic and the prospect for more growth in the alternative sector exists.
In fact, the producers of these alternative products attempt to separate themselves from real meat producers by claiming their products and production are better for the planet. Unfortunately, these claims resonate with some consumers. There’s evidence the fake messages about fake meat have an impact on buying choices. This is some of the bad news. By the way, I don’t like to use the phrase “fake” meat because even though it is not real and the phrase is catchy this “meat” is not MEAT. Some of the evidence the proponents are using to sell the idea that cattle are a chief cause of climate change is simply dead wrong. An old debunked United Nations study claiming cattle are a big problem has been found to be wrong on every point for close to a decade.
About four years ago when Impossible Foods partnered with Burger King to market the Impossible Whopper and Beyond Meats launched an IPO that saw a stock price rise dramatically for a while, it seemed like real meat production was going to take a big hit. Then we all hunkered down and stayed at home. When we shopped for groceries we emptied meat cases, bought real meat, and weathered COVID.
In that time beef demand rose and the search for recipes to cook at home surged. Also, people tried some alternative protein products and found as I did the stuff tastes terrible. This is where the good news starts to show up. How many of you have ever made a salad out of your grass clippings? I would bet very few to none of you have ever experimented with trying to eat the forage utilized by cattle, pigs, and chickens.
Beef cattle are masters of upcycling. They turn sunshine, water and grasses into a healthy, tasty food product enjoyed by humans across the planet. For the most part, the forage cattle eat is grown on lands unsuitable for crop farming because of poor soils, steep terrain, insufficient rain, and other factors, but is otherwise suitable for grazing livestock. It is true crops such as corn are fed to cattle, but this is done for a short period of their life. Furthermore, all of the cropland devoted to producing this kind of feed is a small fraction of the arable land in the United States.
While beef demand and purchases of other real meats was rising Burger King and other restaurant companies discontinued or stopped promoting alternatives and the early highs seen in the share prices of these companies fell dramatically. Also, large layoffs of employees of some of these companies have recently been publicized. Not only were customers turned off by the taste but efforts to publicize how animals are humanely grown and processed were becoming more transparent.
I’ve written some of this before. Much of what’s in this column comes from research and education materials produced by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association in its role as a contractor using beef checkoff funds from producers. To me this organization and other contractors play a vital role in telling the true story of beef production which in turn helps to drive demand for the product higher.
When you buy a pound of ground beef it contains one ingredient – beef. When you buy a pound of ground plant protein made to seem like beef or a pound of product grown in a factory lab from beef cells, you have a package in your hands containing many, many ingredients.
The process to grow that product takes much electricity, the transport of these ingredients or the components of those ingredients and flavor additives to create a real beef taste experience which always misses the mark. I know this because I have tried some of these composite products and with the addition of excessive amounts of sodium they still taste like hot cardboard.
Recently, I went to a local supermarket that has consistently quality meat and chicken. We were having family visiting from out of town and I wanted to speed up the grilling season start. I went to a middle aisle meat case and picked out a large roast to put in my smoker. The case was about ten or twelve feet long and four feet wide with a capability of accessing from both sides. In one side at the end of the case for a dimension of four by one foot was some alternative meat product made from plants. There were soybeans, chick peas, sweet potatoes and various spices, emulsifiers and chemicals listed on the ingredient label that were unfamiliar to me.
One might conclude, as an advocate for high quality real meat based upon the above problems I see with the alternative products, there is nothing for a person engaged in animal agriculture to worry about. Companies cannot compete on taste. The animals are raised in a healthy environment utilizing otherwise unpalatable forages humans cannot use for most of their lives. The environment is not suffering from grazing cattle. In fact, proper grazing helps to fix carbon storage into the soils of the earth so the net effect of grazing animals is positive.
The creation of plant-based meat alternatives or lab grown meat from similar genetic material as from real animals is labor and resource intensive with no particular benefit to the issue of climate change and is quite possibly a real harm to our environment. Be mindful, even with recent successes in this sector in favor of animal agriculture there are entities who want you to go out of business.
I’ll see you soon.