Lab grown meat is something I have been following avidly, but this goes so far beyond what I've heard about. I am very excited, and the time frame (<2 years!) is highly encouraging. This fills so...
Lab grown meat is something I have been following avidly, but this goes so far beyond what I've heard about. I am very excited, and the time frame (<2 years!) is highly encouraging. This fills so many basic needs, from growing food in places without arable land, to eliminating methane produced by cattle, to growing food in environments beyond our planet (such as Mars.)
As someone who loves meat but is Vegetarian due to moral objections to the way meat is "made", I can't wait. Lab grown, cruelty free meat can't get here fast enough.
As someone who loves meat but is Vegetarian due to moral objections to the way meat is "made", I can't wait. Lab grown, cruelty free meat can't get here fast enough.
I'm usually skeptical about such things... but apparently, you can already buy Impossible Foods meat in the shops? It's hella expensive, but it is there, for anyone to try. Man... With all the...
I'm usually skeptical about such things... but apparently, you can already buy Impossible Foods meat in the shops? It's hella expensive, but it is there, for anyone to try.
Man... With all the terrible news around, seeing people who care bring about the sci-fi of food industry in such a short time span is nothing short of amazing.
It takes livestock out of the supply chain, though, high-tech or not. This is what technological change looks like in real life. You don't go out of your way to avoid cheap, plentiful ingredients.
It takes livestock out of the supply chain, though, high-tech or not. This is what technological change looks like in real life. You don't go out of your way to avoid cheap, plentiful ingredients.
This is probably the most important and critical part of the article. If we don't build/enact a way out for those working in farms and affected industries they will end up just needing to 'deal...
Farmfree production promises a far more stable and reliable food supply that can be grown anywhere, even in countries without farmland. It could be crucial to ending world hunger. But there is a hitch: a clash between consumer and producer interests. Many millions of people, working in farming and food processing, will eventually lose their jobs. Because the new processes are so efficient, the employment they create won’t match the employment they destroy.
RethinkX envisages an extremely rapid “death spiral” in the livestock industry. Only a few components, such as the milk proteins casein and whey, need to be produced through fermentation for profit margins across an entire sector to collapse. Dairy farming in the United States, it claims, will be “all but bankrupt by 2030”. It believes that the American beef industry’s revenues will fall by 90% by 2035.
While I doubt the collapse will be quite that fast, in one respect the thinktank underestimates the scale of the transformation. It fails to mention the extraordinary shift taking place in feedstock production to produce alternatives to plant products, of the kind pioneered in Helsinki. This is likely to hit arable farming as hard as cultured milk and meat production will hit livestock farming. Solar Foods thinks its products could reach cost parity with the world’s cheapest form of protein (soya from South America) within five years. Instead of pumping ever more subsidies into a dying industry, governments should be investing in helping farmers into other forms of employment, while providing relief funds for those who will suddenly lose their livelihoods.
This is probably the most important and critical part of the article. If we don't build/enact a way out for those working in farms and affected industries they will end up just needing to 'deal with it' and job hop until they find something they can work in, regardless of whether they are actually knowledgeable or skilled in it, something that seems really hard if you're working on a farm potentially a few dozen kilometers away from a decently sized city. If that's the fate that rural workers end up facing, they might just come flooding into the cities in the millions, looking for 'whatever job isn't replaced by technology in a few years', which inevitably turns out to be 'not many jobs, most requiring a high educational degree' meaning many of these people will need to go to college/university at potentially 50 years of age and more, many for for the first time in their lives, meaning learning could be far more difficult for them, not to mention how universities would keep up and their reaction to tuition fees and meshing them with modern college where the average age is in the low 20s.
In some ways this has already happened. Apparently 1.3% of US employment or about 2.6 million jobs are actually on farms. The population in many agricultural areas has dwindled. I expect this new...
I expect this new "farmfree" production is still going to require a fair number of people doing various kinds of maintenance? Going fully robotic is expensive.
You could see this as more of what Andrew Yang is talking about, though.
No need to soft sell it, this is exactly the kind of thing Andrew Yang is taking about. Technological innovation has unequivocally made the world a better and safer place. At the same time, each...
You could see this as more of what Andrew Yang is talking about, though.
No need to soft sell it, this is exactly the kind of thing Andrew Yang is taking about. Technological innovation has unequivocally made the world a better and safer place. At the same time, each new innovation that makes life easier means some amount of people no longer need to do that labor. If this is the pattern (and historically, it is), then it was inevitable that we need to redefine how a modern economy works, because there just aren't going to be enough jobs for everyone. Even if you buy into the idea that new jobs will always appear, and people are both willing and able to retrain (which isn't historically the case) the net trend had always been that there is less work that needs to be done in order for everyone to live. So we as a society need to redefine what it means to be a productive member of society, and how we take care of everyone.
It's tough love, but necessary though. Our current agricultural model is doing harm to the ecosystem (not just animals, either... the land we use to grow crops destroys the surrounding habitats.)
It's tough love, but necessary though. Our current agricultural model is doing harm to the ecosystem (not just animals, either... the land we use to grow crops destroys the surrounding habitats.)
What we need to do is focus on an exit strategy now, something akin to an anti-homesteader's act. Not force them to move, but some free training in jobs that don't require being in an urban...
What we need to do is focus on an exit strategy now, something akin to an anti-homesteader's act. Not force them to move, but some free training in jobs that don't require being in an urban environment. Or help moving if that's what they want. But modern farming is not sustainable.
I'm so ready for this. I'm prepared for the usual political friction and discussions about how it's "unnatural". But I want my lab-grown burgers! It's a fantastic development! The only potential...
I'm so ready for this. I'm prepared for the usual political friction and discussions about how it's "unnatural". But I want my lab-grown burgers! It's a fantastic development!
The only potential issue I see is an interesting point he brought up towards the end of the article: That such a technology could be caught up in patents, further monopolizing the food market.
I literally went vegetarian 4 years ago with the explicit vow to stay vegetarian until I could buy reasonably-priced lab-grown meat (or any other "green" option that might emerge in the future)....
I literally went vegetarian 4 years ago with the explicit vow to stay vegetarian until I could buy reasonably-priced lab-grown meat (or any other "green" option that might emerge in the future).
My test-tube burgers cannot get here soon enough.
ETA: Commented before reading, shame on me. Comment stands, but this article is about a lot more than just lab-grown burgers. Yet another paradigm-shifting tech breakthrough that's about to turn global economies on their heads. Definitely worth a read.
Lab grown meat is something I have been following avidly, but this goes so far beyond what I've heard about. I am very excited, and the time frame (<2 years!) is highly encouraging. This fills so many basic needs, from growing food in places without arable land, to eliminating methane produced by cattle, to growing food in environments beyond our planet (such as Mars.)
As someone who loves meat but is Vegetarian due to moral objections to the way meat is "made", I can't wait. Lab grown, cruelty free meat can't get here fast enough.
I'm usually skeptical about such things... but apparently, you can already buy Impossible Foods meat in the shops? It's hella expensive, but it is there, for anyone to try.
Man... With all the terrible news around, seeing people who care bring about the sci-fi of food industry in such a short time span is nothing short of amazing.
It takes livestock out of the supply chain, though, high-tech or not. This is what technological change looks like in real life. You don't go out of your way to avoid cheap, plentiful ingredients.
but muh sci-fi
This is probably the most important and critical part of the article. If we don't build/enact a way out for those working in farms and affected industries they will end up just needing to 'deal with it' and job hop until they find something they can work in, regardless of whether they are actually knowledgeable or skilled in it, something that seems really hard if you're working on a farm potentially a few dozen kilometers away from a decently sized city. If that's the fate that rural workers end up facing, they might just come flooding into the cities in the millions, looking for 'whatever job isn't replaced by technology in a few years', which inevitably turns out to be 'not many jobs, most requiring a high educational degree' meaning many of these people will need to go to college/university at potentially 50 years of age and more, many for for the first time in their lives, meaning learning could be far more difficult for them, not to mention how universities would keep up and their reaction to tuition fees and meshing them with modern college where the average age is in the low 20s.
In some ways this has already happened. Apparently 1.3% of US employment or about 2.6 million jobs are actually on farms. The population in many agricultural areas has dwindled.
I expect this new "farmfree" production is still going to require a fair number of people doing various kinds of maintenance? Going fully robotic is expensive.
You could see this as more of what Andrew Yang is talking about, though.
No need to soft sell it, this is exactly the kind of thing Andrew Yang is taking about. Technological innovation has unequivocally made the world a better and safer place. At the same time, each new innovation that makes life easier means some amount of people no longer need to do that labor. If this is the pattern (and historically, it is), then it was inevitable that we need to redefine how a modern economy works, because there just aren't going to be enough jobs for everyone. Even if you buy into the idea that new jobs will always appear, and people are both willing and able to retrain (which isn't historically the case) the net trend had always been that there is less work that needs to be done in order for everyone to live. So we as a society need to redefine what it means to be a productive member of society, and how we take care of everyone.
It's tough love, but necessary though. Our current agricultural model is doing harm to the ecosystem (not just animals, either... the land we use to grow crops destroys the surrounding habitats.)
I agree, but there are real people working there, and if we just tell them to scram, bad things will happen.
What we need to do is focus on an exit strategy now, something akin to an anti-homesteader's act. Not force them to move, but some free training in jobs that don't require being in an urban environment. Or help moving if that's what they want. But modern farming is not sustainable.
I'm so ready for this. I'm prepared for the usual political friction and discussions about how it's "unnatural". But I want my lab-grown burgers! It's a fantastic development!
The only potential issue I see is an interesting point he brought up towards the end of the article: That such a technology could be caught up in patents, further monopolizing the food market.
I literally went vegetarian 4 years ago with the explicit vow to stay vegetarian until I could buy reasonably-priced lab-grown meat (or any other "green" option that might emerge in the future).
My test-tube burgers cannot get here soon enough.
ETA: Commented before reading, shame on me. Comment stands, but this article is about a lot more than just lab-grown burgers. Yet another paradigm-shifting tech breakthrough that's about to turn global economies on their heads. Definitely worth a read.