Transcript for Ep3. Efficient meat - Problem or solution?
Jayson Lusk 0:05
So let me start with a premise, which is that, number one, consumers in many parts of the world like to eat meat, it's something they enjoy having in their diet.
Matthew 0:14
Jayson Lusk, agricultural economist at Purdue University has conducted many studies that have found it’s really hard to get people to change their diets by providing them more information.
Jayson 0:24
Talking to them about the environmental consequences, or even animal welfare consequences, doesn't seem to have a big impact on people's consumption decisions. So just making people feel bad doesn’t seem to do much.
Matthew 0:38
And taxing meat products are also really politically unpopular.
Jayson 0:41
We seem to be at a bit of a conundrum that we know there are some environmental concerns associated with meat eating. Are we going to produce enough calories and protein to meet a growing world population? How can we do that in a responsible way? So I think about innovation and intensification as a way to get around these conundrums.
We know people like to eat meat. How can we give them what they want, while reducing the impacts that that consumption has on the environment? One way to do that is to try to increase efficiency.
Matthew 1:17
Welcome to the Efficient meat 2.0 episode of the Meat the Four Futures podcast, presented by TABLE.
I’m Matthew Kessler, your guide for the series, where we explore four competing visions for the future of meat and livestock - alternative meat; less meat; no meat, and efficient meat.
Jayson 1:36
Can we get more pounds from each cow or chicken? Can we use less feed to produce a pound of meat? Can we use less water, less land to produce an egg or a gallon of dairy?
Matthew 1:50
There’s are many ways to think about efficiency. In this episode we focus on efficient animal production. So, increasing yields and output for the least amount of input.
Jayson 2:01
I'm somebody who believes that productivity growth is a cornerstone of sustainability. If we can produce what we like to eat in a way that has fewer impacts on natural resources and the environment, that's a more sustainable future for us.
Matthew 2:16
Today we farm and eat meat at a scale not matched in human history. We raise 80 billion animals a year for food at a really low cost to the consumer. Here we look at how technology, research, and innovation have made animal agriculture much more efficient.
Lars Appelqvist 2:34
We are part of the problem today. But we can see that with the right steps, we can actually be a part of the solution also.
Matthew 2:43
Is this the only way to feed a growing population, or is it creating more problems than it’s solving?
In this episode we look at how animal farming systems have dramatically scaled up in size in the last half century and have become much more productive - through a combination of improved diets, genetics and breeding, housing and veterinary care.
Some see efficiency improvements in animal agriculture as essential for feeding a growing population, and we should strive for continued productivity gains.
Others emphasize that the drive to increase yields and keep meat affordable comes at the expense of the environment, public health, and animal welfare. This group says we should eat less meat, switch to plant-forward diets or create competitive meat alternatives. We’ll hear these views in more depth later in the series.
We hope you listen to all the episodes, so you can hear the whole story.
First, a thought experiment.
Part 1: A world without efficiency gains
Jayson 3:59
If you go back to say, like the 1970s and calculate the amount of beef produced per cow. Imagine that hadn't changed over time.
Matthew 4:09
Agriculture economist Jayson Lusk
Jayson 4:13
How many more cows would we need today, if we wanted to enjoy the amount of beef consumption we actually enjoyed in 2020, but we wanted to do that using 1970s technology? And the answer is, in the United States, we need 11 million more feedlot cattle, if we had not innovated and we wanted to enjoy the amount of beef consumption that we enjoy today.
Matthew 4:33
Speaking of 1970s technology – when was the last time you listened to a cassette tape or put a movie in the VCR? Technological advances continue to change the world and our food system. Not only in beef production, but also with chickens.
DJ De Koning 5:03
If we were in the 60s of the last century, If I wanted 1000 kilo grams of broiler meat, I would need to get about 3000 kilograms of grains to feed to the chickens. And that would cost me 1.7 hectares to grow that amount of grain.
Matthew 5:26
No need to get out the notepads and calculators. We’ll help you with the math.
DJ 5:30
Now if we look in the modern day, I only need 1700 kilograms of grain, so almost half of that. And also to grow that amount, I only need like .37 - .4 hectares to grow.
Matthew 5:47
So 60 years ago, you needed almost twice as much feed and 4 times as much land to produce the same amount of chicken meat as today.
DJ 5:56
So that's because of the increased efficiency in crop production.
Matthew 6:00
Growing feed for these animals has become much more productive. This is through a combination of harvesting higher yields and breeding bigger birds.
DJ 6:08
So putting those two together means that I can get those 1000 kilograms broiler meat, four and a half, five times more efficient than I could in the 60s.
Matthew 6:21
And why does this matter?
Jayson 6:23
We would needs billions more chickens today, if we hadn't improved the amount of yield, the amount of meat that's being produced per chicken. Those are billions of chickens that would have required feed, that would have required housing, that would have required land, that would have required water. And we got to save all those resources, because we improved the efficiency of our production process. We got more from each animal.
Matthew 6:46
It isn’t only chickens that have seen these improvements. But also cows. This is largely due to finishing cattle on feedlots. This is where cows finish their lives in confined areas and are fed high energy diets to gain weight faster before slaughter. So while cattle are commonly raised on pastures, many are fattened in these feedlots. Again, Jayson Lusk explains what this means.
Jayson 7:11
If we save 10s of millions of cows, that's 10s of millions of cows that would have been emitting methane. We would have manure that we would have had to deal with and think about how to judiciously dispose of. And so all those things are savings that came about because of innovation and science and entrepreneurship.
Matthew 7:29
In high income countries, we’re eating twice as much meat as we ate 50 years ago - and this has been made possible by these efficiency gains, which is a good opportunity to talk about the Jevons Paradox.
Jevons paradox asks if you improve the efficiency of your production, how will that affect consumption? Typically, the price will go down. And if something is cheaper- in the case of food at least, we tend to eat more of it. Let’s take the chicken example – say we are raising individual chickens 4 or 5 times more efficiently than 60 years ago.
At a global scale we’re also eating 10s of billions of more chickens than in the past, and that’s expected to increase in the future.
So the paradox is there’s less greenhouse gas emissions per individual bird, the industry as a whole is increasing their emissions.
I want to stress that how much we consume and how much meat we eat is really uneven across the world. As incomes and population sizes across the world increase, we expect people will eat more meat - and most notably chicken! If current trends in poultry consumption continue, estimates suggest that India alone could experience an eightfold increase in eating chicken. So if we are using older, less productive technology, we would need multiple planets to feed this growing population.
So assuming that the world continues to eat the same amount or more meat in the future, these efficiencies are absolutely crucial.
Part 2: The logic of efficiency
Matthew 9:20
This system didn’t happen by accident. It’s been a combination of scientific breakthrough and public policy funded by governments. So while advancements in breeding, nutrition and infrastructure have made these farms and factories more productive, this system was also incentivized. In the 1970s the US Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz famously told farmers - “get big or get out.”
Jayson 9:59
As economists, we tend to believe in economies of scale, which tends to mean that as the size of a firm or an industry grows larger, you can reduce the cost of production.
Matthew 10:00
That’s Jayson Lusk again. Here he tells the story of the increased productivity of livestock in the United States, though the scenario might be familiar in other countries.
Jayson 10:10
So one way to think about that, that's maybe easiest for people to imagine is in crop production. So imagine you have a small farm, one acre, and you're planting something like corn. And you think about the cost of doing that. Okay, now, you want to get a little bit bigger, so you go from one acre to say 100 acres, you can get a bit more efficient if you had a tractor, and you can plant stuff by hand, you can plant with a big tractor that's pulling a plow behind and it’ putting the seeds in the ground. But that tractor is expensive, like today, hundreds of 1000s of dollars to buy a tractor. So to make that big capital investment make sense, you need to be able to spread that cost over lots of acres. And so that provides an incentive to grow bigger. And so if you can go from 100 acres to more something like 500 to 1000 acres.
Once you have that tractor on that larger piece of land, the cost of planting and the cost of harvesting, per bushel of corn that gets produced falls. And that same phenomenon can play itself out in animal agriculture, whether we're talking about chickens, or cows or pigs, we see a similar phenomenon that if we can have more production that enables us to buy capital that we wouldn't be able to afford otherwise.
Matthew 11:28
And maybe the farm is then able to then pay for full time veterinarians to take better care of the health and welfare of the animals. A healthier herd or flock of animals makes for a better return on investment.
Jayson 11:40
So as a result, we generally see patterns in which the cost of animal production falls as size gets larger. That's particularly true in the slaughtering phase, or the packing phase of the process.
There's a lot of good research on this that as the size of those plants grow the cost of processing those animals falls. So as a result, the most efficient way, the lowest cost of production way. And again, efficiency is often very much associated with improvements in sustainability
Matthew 12:10
So scale really helps with efficiency. But you can’t just increase the size of the plant, since it’s only one part of the value chain.
Jayson 12:18
So if you want to build a larger plant, though, you need a lot of animals around it, because you want to be able to run that plant at something close to full capacity. Remember, these are large facilities, they're refrigerated facilities, because they're turning animals into meat. Once they're in the form of meat, we need to keep them cold for food safety reasons. And that refrigerated space is expensive. So as a result, you want to achieve those low costs, you want to run as many animals through that plant as you can. So what that means is, once somebody makes an investment to build a large processing facility, there's going to be an economic incentive to locate a lot of animals around that processing facility so that they can keep that plant full. And what we've seen over time is this emergence of these economic forces leading to a situation and where you tend to see more of a concentration of animals around where plants are located.
Matthew 13:15
Another economic term to bring in here is environmental comparative advantage. Which means that different regions have favorable economic and climatic conditions to raise animals and grow crops. Because they are more suited for these ecosystems, they require fewer inputs. For example, coffee is grown in sub-tropical climates and not in greenhouses in temperate regions or the Arctic. Jayson Lusk makes this argument for livestock.
Jayson 13:45
It's also the case that animals often tend to either be located where the feed is grown so around the Corn Belt in the United States, or in areas where the environment is particularly suited to that animal production. So in the United States that would often be in the West, where it's a little drier, where cattle, at least in the feedlot stage of the process. You know, you don't want them in an environment where it's really wet and muddy, because that can cause a lot of problems for them. And let's be frank, too. There's also some advantage to putting a lot of animals where there's not a lot of people, and so that you avoid some externalities by locating in places where there aren't as many people. You don't have some of those problems as well.
Matthew 14:30
There are some social and ecological downsides that come with the concentration of livestock. The covid19 pandemic has put a spotlight on some appalling working conditions in meatpacking plants – for example keeping plants running at full capacity even when there were severe health risks to the workers.
And on the environmental side, one specific challenge that comes with keeping so many in the small area is dealing with the large volumes of manure. While some manure can be stored in lagoons or large pools and used as fertilizers. In other places - where the concentration of animals is so high - the nutrients from these manure pools can leak into waterways and the air and cause harms to the health of humans and the environment.
Another risk is if there is a disease outbreak or a disruption of major trading ports near a region that intensively produces meat. This can have big impacts on global food trade. We saw this in 2022 with Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine and the blockage of both wheat and fertilizer exports.
We’ve now heard about these theories of economies of scale and environmental comparative advantage - what does it look like on the ground?
Matthew 15:45
So just to give an example, in the United States, if you draw about, you know, a 100 mile radius around Des Moines, Iowa, you'll have 60-70% of all US hog production within that area. For cattle, again, if you draw probably 100 mile radius around Wichita, Kansas, you'll have 60 to 70% of total processing capacity in that particular area.
Chicken production is more concentrated around Arkansas and other parts of the southeast United States. But there are these geographic locations that emerge as centers where economies of scale emerge and comparative advantages exist.
So once that happens, then it makes sense to let those locations do what they do well and ship us the meat we want. And then send them the things that they want. And that's just the classic economic story of comparative advantage and trade.
Matthew 16:38
But what about food miles - is it better economically and environmentally to ship food products across the world?
Jayson 16:45
Sometimes I think it seems a little bit odd, it may be bad for the environment to say, “Well, why are we shipping pork, let's say from Iowa, all the way to China. Don’t all those food miles have a lot of negative consequences for the environment?” Well, the truth is, the mileage part of the production process is a relatively small part of the overall carbon picture.
Matthew 17:09
Estimates vary, but transportation may account for as little as 3% to somewhere around 15% of all the emissions from the farm to your plate. The range is wide because so much depends on the type of transportation.
Jayson 17:25
Remember, we were sailing the ocean blue well before we had fossil fuels. So you can use the ocean currents and those things to help efficiently move products across the ocean. So on the water, that's a very efficient form of transportation. Often, it's the case that most of the environmental impacts are happening where the production occurs. And so one lesson from that is we want to grow products, where they can be most efficiently grown and then transport them to where the consumption is.
Matthew 17:55
We’ve talked about efficient production, but what about efficient consumption? Are we just eating specific cuts of the animal and wasting the rest - or are we eating the whole animal?
Jan Dutkiewicz 18:07
So, the average consumer of course does not eat nose to tail. The average consumer eats very specific parts of animals for which increasingly animals are bred.
Matthew 18:17
Jan Dutkiewicz, policy fellow at Harvard Law, points out that we aren’t necessarily wasting the animal by not eating all of it.
Jan 18:25
There's a fantastic book by the anthropologist Alex Blanchette called Porkopolis, which is an ethnography of pork factory farming in the Midwestern United States, which shows that animal bodies at the biological level are actually changed and optimized to produce specific cuts of meat. So for instance, pigs are optimized to produce more bacon, to have more belly. So where once bacon wasn't sold, now bacon is absolutely everywhere. Americans are bacon obsessed. Actually, pigs at the physical level are changed to produce more bacon.
Matthew 18:54
You can go back over 100 years to the stockyards in Chicago in the US and see early traces of the modern intensive farms we have today.
Jan 19:05
That model is predicated on maximizing the use of animal tissue. So as the line went, “even the early meat packers used everything from the pig except the squeal.” So even if the average consumer isn't eating nose to tail, virtually the entirety of the animal is used for different uses, right?
Matthew 19:26
If it’s not for eating, where might you find other parts of the pig?
Jan 19:30
So for instance, if you look at a hog slaughterhouse, you've got the normal cuts of meat that will come from the pig for the standard Western diet, but you've also got things like ears and trotters and even bungs that are exported for specific markets for specific foods. You've got things like heart valves that are used for biomedical purposes, you've got the hair of hogs, which goes to things like hogs’ hair brushes and other applications. I mean this goes on and on to the use of plasma to the use of fat.
Matthew 20:01
So this is a part of the highly efficient system of production, consumption and trade, within and outside the food industry.
Jan 20:12
There are traces of the industrial pig in almost everything we use. From bullet casings to concrete to the very paper that as Alex Blanchett writes, his book is printed on.
So you've actually got a system that uses the entirety of the animal, that does actually consume the animal nose to tail in an extremely efficient way. It's just that that's not how the average consumer engages with that animal.
Part 3: From backyard bird to super-chicken
Matthew 21:02
Cecile Steele was a housewife living in Delaware in the United States in the early 1900s. One day in 1923, she ordered 50 chicks for her flock of laying hens. There was a mistake in the shipment which, some say, marked the beginning of the industrial poultry sector.
Cecile Steele ordered 50 chicks, but instead she received 500. She decided to adapt really quickly and raise these animals in the best way she could. Four and a half months later she sold 387 birds to market. The next year she ordered 1,000 birds. And three years from the day of the accidental delivery, Cecile and her husband were raising 10,000 birds.
These chicks were sold to her by Delmarva. If you fast forward nearly a 100 years to 2021, the Delmarva Chicken Association recorded 4.2 billion dollars in profit from wholesale chicken sales.
DJ 22:10
You look 100 years ago, then it has really developed from a small scale system with mixed farming to very specialized systems.
Matthew 22:20
DJ De Koning again of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
DJ 22:25
So if you look at the farm, now, you're talking 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of birds per farm. So that has really scaled up dramatically.
Matthew 21:36
People have been eating some chicken meat for the last 2000 years. And in the last few hundred years, many families who have access to land would keep a small flock nearby in a field, a yard or even inside their home. But now these farms, or warehouses, have become highly specialized.
DJ 22:53
From my horizon, which is the breeding - the concentration of the breeding activities - if we look at all the laying hens in the world and all the broilers for the broilers, there's maybe only really two big companies worldwide that provide all the broilers to the industry. And likewise, for laying hens, you could say it's maybe two or three.
Matthew 23:20
Broilers are chickens produced for meat, and laying hens are chickens that produce eggs. They both share a common ancestor, but have been transformed into very different creatures.
So two companies in the world now house the genetic lines that become the commercial broilers. There’s really no equivalent for that level of consolidation in any other agricultural production sector. This means it’s both ultra-efficient in terms of production and distribution, but it also could be a risk if you - excuse the pun – put all your eggs in a single basket.
These breeding companies select chickens for their desirable traits for humans - which could be physical or even personality traits. They aren’t editing the genes or splicing DNA, but through these breeding programs, they’ve increased the size of the birds by four times in the last 100 years, and have bred them to gain weight faster. So they can turn animal f eed into flesh at a much more efficient rate.
Farmers can’t breed these birds themselves because they are crosses, so they are dependent on the breeding companies for new stock. This is another impact of the specialization of this industry.
DJ 24:33
When we start to genetically improve animals to become more efficient, it doesn't just happen by themselves. We cannot have a modern layer or a modern broiler in a barnyard system where we give them some scraps. So we need all these improvements need to be accompanied by health and nutrition and management.
Matthew 25:00
So modern broilers and laying hens need special housing systems and specific feeding routines. Raising poultry at scale has become a lot more technical than your backyard chickens!
And not only more technical, but the conditions that these birds are living can be pretty horrific. These efficiency gains, where some of these chickens have been bred to reach their slaughter weight in as little as six weeks, are sometimes packed together in their cages so tightly that they can barely move.
DJ de Koning research focuses on the bone strength of these birds, particularly laying hens. Strong bones are important for their health and their productivity, and they can be strengthened by both genetics and by having more access to exercise and moving around.
DJ 25:45
The other thing that we observe in our data related to different housing systems is that in the housing systems where the birds can move more, they do develop stronger bones. That is a fact - and that is really a good point. Unfortunately, that also gives them more opportunities to hurt themselves. So they're more accident prone in those systems.
Matthew 26:18
Poultry housing systems vary. With laying hens you could have intensive battery cages stacked on top of each other, to larger cages where there is more room to perch, nest and scratch - to free range systems where there is access to outdoor areas during the daytime. Broilers on the other hand are not kept in cages. And across Europe, and an a few other countries, keeping laying hens in cages has either been banned or in the process of being phased out.
Each of these systems have different costs, to humans and to the chickens themselves.
DJ de Koning suggests that the housing systems of the future will in some ways be shaped by consumer demand and he reflects on how far the poultry industry has come and some challenges it will continue to face.
DJ 27:05
With broilers we no longer want faster growth. We actually see that, okay, slightly slower growth, which costs more feed - there is a goal conflict there. But we realize, actually, with a little bit slower growth, we get birds that are more in pace with their development and have a better health and welfare. So that's where we say, okay, we can't go all the way for efficiency. We don't want any more efficiency there, because that's when it's growing too fast for its own good, so to say.
Matthew 27:48
How far should we go with efficiency? Can productivity gains continue indefinitely? As DJ de Koning mentioned, there is a conflict between animal welfare and becoming ultra-efficient. Would you prefer a system that keeps costs down as much as possible and cuts greenhouse gas emissions - or one that might cost a little more and give more consideration to the welfare of these farmed animals. We’re going to visit a pig farm in Sweden that’s betting on that next.
But If feeding the population as efficiently as possible and using little agricultural land is your primary concern, then you might end up with a 26-story pig skyscraper like the one that opened in China in 2022, where each floor is specialized for breeding, feeding and growing the pigs at different life stages. You heard that right – a 26 story pig skyscraper. So no access to natural sunlight or wind or fresh pasture in the field. They do have some space to maneuver and their health and production is highly supervised. There’s even a control center on the bottom floor to monitor temperature, ventilation, and food and water intake. If you’d like to learn more about this system, we’ll link to an article that has pictures of the facility in our show notes.
We didn’t visit China for this podcast, but we did head to a Swedish pig farm that has grown in size and scale over the last few generations. Ylva Carlqvist Warnborg, science journalist and Meat the four futures producer takes us there.
Part 4: A pig farm in Sweden
Anders Gunnarson 29:42
Hello, my name is Anders Gunnarsson and I produce sustainable pig here. That was a pig going against an electric fence. It learned a lesson.
Ylva Carlqvist Warnborg 29:58
Touching an electric fence hurts. But apart from that necessarily limitation of freedom, these 3500 pigs at Halla farm in southern Sweden are probably just about as free as can be, while still being part of a large scale, efficient meat production system. This farm has been in Anders Gunnarsson’s family for generations.
If your great, great grandfather could see this, what do you think you would have thought?
Anders 30:27
Oh, this is… this is big! I think it’s the first thought. And after that: wow! Is it possible to have so many pigs outside? Maybe one thought.
Ylva 30:40
As we speak, the sun is rising, as well as the temperature.
Anders 30:42
The further the day will go, the more pigs will go out.
Ylva 30:48
The 3500 pigs that live here for sixteen weeks, until ready for slaughter, can choose between running free in a large open area, or staying inside with about 1.2 square meters of space each. They live on a farm with a cutting edge mindset when it comes to sustainability, climate impact and animal welfare. But this is not a typical large scale meat producing farm.
Lars Appelqvist 31:13
We are part of the problem today. But we can see that with the right steps, we can actually be a part of the solution also.
Ylva 31:22
Lars Appelqvist is the CEO of HK Scan Sweden, one of the large meat producing companies in the nordic region of Europe.
Lars 31:31
We need to take actions to change a lot of things to be more sustainable.
Ylva 31:38
We meet on this exceptional production site for HK Scan to demonstrate that sustainable, large scale meat production could possibly be the future of meat.
Lars 31:49
Now we are on a pork farm. But if we look at beef, for example, which is painted up as the big, big problem here, we see, actually, if we have the energy to take the right steps, we can actually reduce carbon dioxide, and also methane, if we produce it right, to actually cope with the Paris Agreement, which is quite exciting. Because it's much more fun to work if you're part of a solution than just part of the problem.
Ylva 32:21
Lars Appelqvist considers meat nutritious, delicious food that can be produced while considering animal welfare, as well as climate and environmental impact.
Lars 32:32
I mean, standing here looking at Anders’ fields here, I think we see the great parts. You know, when you have entrepreneurs and farmers like Anders who has really, you know, focused and tries to approach the problems and really tries to find the solution. There are solutions there and we can really find them! The bad thing with meat production today is when it's so focused and specialized only to grow animals as quickly as possible, without any holistic thinking, which we can see in certain parts in the world.
Ylva 33:12
Unsustainable meat production is often associated with large scale production, but Lars Appelqvist considers that a misconception.
Lars 33:20
Yeah, I think so. Large scale means that you can use resources very efficiently. You can use less energy,
you can use less input on more units produced. And that is really good for the climate to do that. You make it too easy if you say that large scale is not good and local small scale is good. I think it's actually sometimes - very often - the opposite, in a way. If you look at large scale production, I think you have a choice there. You can do it in a really climate friendly way - or not. And we have so many good examples of large scale production, which really have a low impact when it comes to carbon dioxide and methane. It's very much about using less resources, the input that you use.
Anders
(Swedish… )
Ylva 34:20
While some of Scan’s meat producers import feed that has traveled across the globe to feed their animals, 99% of what the pigs eat here is produced on Anders Gunnarsson’s farm. Circular thinking is at the very core of everything produced here.
Anders 34:36
When I, for example, grow peas, I give it to the pigs and the pigs give me meat, and give me manure, and from the manure, I can get my own electricity, my heat, and I also get fertilizer for next year.
Ylva 34:52
Do you believe in a world where this type of meat production is the norm, and not the exception?
Anders 35:00
It's actually up to the consumer to decide that. It's a little bit more expensive, but the pigs have a better life, and we have a much lower impact of the environment on this way to produce meat.
Ylva 35:18
We get some eye contact with a group of about ten pink and gray pigs, racing round in the morning chill in one of the fenced pastures before stopping a few meters away, sniffing in the air. To some, the fact that you need to slaughter an animal to get meat is the reason they don't eat meat. Anders sees things differently, as meat to him is a natural part of yesterday's, today's and the future’s food.
Anders 35:48
The reason why these pigs are living is for giving us very good meat. So I give them the best opportunities in life that I can give, and they give me a very good meat.
Matthew 36:07
That was Swedish pig farmer Anders Gunnarsson and Lars Appelqvist, CEO of HK Scan Sweden, one of the big meat producing companies in northern Europe.
Part 5 - What’s the beef?
Matthew 36:30
Pigs and chickens are the prototypes for the efficient farm animal - since they can turn animal feed into meat more efficiently than ruminants like cows, sheep and goats. But they eat about half of global soy bean production, which plays a big role in cutting down rainforests across South America..
Out of all the debates about the future of food - beef production probably gets the most attention. But many advocates of ruminants also see the need for efficiency gains in their industry.
Jude Capper 37:03
We all have conscious and unconscious biases, and I think those of us who work with livestock often feel that we're sort of under pressure all the time. Everyone hates us, the whole world doesn't want to eat beef, you know, etc, etc.
Matthew 37:18
Can you introduce yourself?
Jude 37:20
Absolutely, my name is Jude Capper, I am a livestock sustainability consultant.
Matthew 37:25
Jude Capper is also professor of beef and sheep production at Harper Adams University in the United Kingdom.
Jude 37:33
And I try to tell people, let's just, you know, put it into context! If we think about it as a normal curve, there are the people who are very against animal farming. There are the people who are very pro animal farming. And there's a huge bit in the middle, where everyone's just going about their normal life and choosing the foods they eat and not really thinking about it.
Matthew 37:53
Jude recognizes that the tensions run high on both sides.
Jude 37:57
So I think those of us in the beef industry do sometimes sort of get a bit too sensitive as it were, because we feel like the world is against us. So our - if I can speak for the beef industry, which of course I can't, but… my perception and many of us in the industry, I think is that everyone blames cattle! Cattle are the villains, cattle are emitting greenhouse gasses every single day.. If we just gave up milk and meat, you know, the perception is that we wouldn't have any global warming, we can still drive huge cars every day, you know, we'll all be fine… and that cattle farms are to blame is the simple message we perceive gets out there. And with all these things, it's so complicated and we all want a nice easy message and a nice easy headliner; “Just do this and don’t do that”. But the reality is, it’s such a complex nuanced argument.
Matthew 38:50
The future of cattle farming is complicated. Let’s start with some basic positives of beef production, which like other meat, is a high quality protein with a full set of easily digestible amino acids; it makes use of much of the land that it’s difficult to grow crops on for direct human consumption;
Jude 39:10
And from a global sustainability point of view, I think it's really important to understand that there are billions of smallholder farmers that utterly rely on a grazing livestock for their future and their children's future. And that we in the more developed countries can't ignore their needs as well.
Matthew 39:28
Jude will happily talk to you about the benefits of pasture-based livestock. And she'll also tell you what she sees as the advantages of feedlot finished cattle too.
Jude 39:37
Because we know from a scientific point of view that if we improve efficiency in any system, whether it's housed, outdoor grazed pastures, whatever it might be, that will cut the carbon footprint that'll improve the efficiency of resource use. And we know that to finish cattle inside, for example, or in a feedlot, on a high energy, high protein diet will have a lower carbon footprint. It can have some benefits, depending on your market and what that market is used to, in terms of the taste or the texture of beef as well.
Matthew 40:11
So raising animals on grass and finishing them on feedlots fattens the animals faster than if they are kept out on pastures. Put bluntly, the faster they get to slaughter weight, the less days alive, the fewer the greenhouse gas emissions. And fattening these animals quicker also helps create this fat-marbled beef that many eaters enjoy.
Jude 40:33
We published a work in the Journal of Animal Science a few years back now, looking at the environmental impact of the US beef industry in 1977 compared to 2007. And in that 30 year period, there were changes. Things became slightly more intensive, more productive, but it wasn't like every animal in 1977 was out on pasture and every animal in 2007 was in a feedlot, you know, things just got better over time. So better management, better health, a better understanding of how to feed cattle in a healthy way, ultimately. And based on that research, for example, we saw a 16% decrease in the carbon footprint per kilo of beef over those 30 years. And concomitant decreases in water use, land use, fuel use, etc. So you know, overall positives, and I haven't seen equivalent work for the UK, although I have seen it for various other regions, including Canada. And we've seen the same trends across all of the middle or higher income countries, in terms of beef production.
Matthew 41:44
Jude Capper knows that beef has a high carbon footprint and says the industry is working to cut it back.
Jude 41:53
Beef does have a higher carbon footprint than almost any other food. And there is no way to get around that, and if we try to deny it. We are just being disingenuous, frankly. So while we are doing everything we can to cut it and we're improving feeds and we're looking at technologies that can cut enteric methane and we're using byproduct feeds and better genetics and breeding for more efficient cattle, and so on and so on. The fact remains that the carbon footprint is still high, compared to let's say peas or tofu or even chicken, for example.
Matthew 42:29
Some of these technologies include giving cattle different types of feed – like seaweed - to reduce the emissions associated with their methane burps. Seaweed has been a part of some ruminants diets for centuries. In recent studies, adding seaweed to their diet has shown to reduce methane emissions ranging from 50-98%. But we still don’t know what impact it will have on beef and dairy yield and there have been no long term studies yet to prove or disprove its efficacy.
Jude Capper thinks a lot about livestock farmers and wants them to continue for generations to come, but she is concerned.
Jude 43:07
Because ultimately, without that social acceptability, we may not have a market in five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years.
Matthew 43:17
So what does Jude suggest, to improve the public image and reputation of livestock farmers?
Jude 43:23
Ultimately, we have to share our values! The most productive conversation that we can have is to say: as a farmer, as a vet, as an animal health industry professional, whoever it is - this is what I care about! This is why I do what I do. This is why I think it's important that we all have dietary choices, protect the environment, look after the rural community, etc. So we have to share our values. And I think in the beef industry, we have a real positive story to talk about.
Matthew 43:54
That was Jude Capper, sustainable livestock consultant and professor of beef and sheep production at Harper Adams University in England; believing that through sharing the story of farmers, and continuing to pour research into improving the efficiency of these animals, we can better mitigate the climate impacts of beef.
Part 6: Wizards and prophets
Matthew 44:22
If you’ve been listening to this episode and just can’t find any agreement with what the guests have been saying, you might just be a prophet.
Jayson 44:29
There are very different ideologies, philosophies about the world and - I think two competing views of the world that maybe are best articulated in Charles Mann’s book, The Wizard and Prophet.
Matthew 44:43
So not that kind of prophet, and not that kind of wizard. Jayson Lusk again from Purdue University is talking about a book by Charles Mann: The Wizard and Prophet. who writes about two brilliant 20th scientists who hold diametrically opposing views about the environment and how humans should live in the future.
According to Charles Mann, the prophet looks to the future and foresees disaster--there are only so many resources to go around, and more and more mouths to feed. The risks seem huge.
Jayson 45:14
On one hand a view of the world where we've got natural planetary limits that we can't surpass. And as a result, I think proponents of that view really… in their view, the solution is to reduce consumption, try to reduce population growth, because we’re going to run up against these planetary limits.
Matthew 45:34
Planetary boundaries is a pretty well accepted concept. And you’ll hear a lot more about it in the ‘less meat’ episode. Although not everyone agrees with the framing that the economy should stop growing so everyone in the present and the future has the ability to prosper.
Jayson 45:48
The other view, in which frankly, I probably subscribe to myself - is the wizard view. Yes, there may be limits at any point in time. But if we can continue to be innovative, we can find ways to get more with resources and maybe even resources we aren't even thinking about now. And so growth can continue on out into the future; that we don't have to reduce our consumption here in the United States, say that to help improve consumption across the world. It's not a zero sum game.
Matthew 46:18
This is a more politically popular view, that ecomodernists believe in - it’s an environmentalist philosophy that suggests if we can convert our energy sources to renewable energies - if we electrify and decarbonize the grid that powers us - then we can continue to consume the way we do since are no longer dependent on fossil fuels. And we can do this globally, in a just way.
Jayson 46:42
And I think, you know, different people are going to approach those problems in ways that - you're bringing your life of experience and your own ideologies to bear. You know, as I said, I tend to find myself more on the wizard view of things. And so as a result, I think one thing I've realized is, it's at least helpful knowing that there are people that really view the world in a different way than I do, because sometimes it feels like we're talking past each other. But at least I can understand sometimes why somebody may be more opposed to my more technologically utopian view of the world, let's say. Is that they're bringing a more constrained view, more planetary limit view to the world.
Matthew 47:22
So; are you a wizard or a prophet?
Do you find it inevitable that the demand for meat will continue to grow, and the only way to reduce its negative impacts on the environment is to produce it as sustainably as possible? Or that we should cut out meat some or entirely from our diets?
We put out a call for listeners to share their thoughts on the podcast, and you came through. One of our listeners bumped on a phrase we used in our first episode - the quote “growing global demand for meat.” She called in to challenge the assumption that there is no way around the rising demand for meat.
Eleanor Boyle 48:16
My name is Eleanor Boyle and I’m a food policy researcher in Vancouver Canada. My point is that we need to deeply question what is often called the growing global demand for meat, as if that were inevitable. I think the phrase implies that global citizens are clamoring for more and more meat and that producers are simply responding. And it’s true that in our market economies, demand can drive supply, but supply can also drive demand. In mature industrial economies one common phenomenon is overproduction or over supply. And meat multi-nationals now turn out so much beef, chicken and pork that they are motivated to amplify natural demand, encouraging consumers to believe that they need more and more. I’m not suggesting that demand is entirely constructed. Human beings have long wanted to eat meat, but today’s tendency to eat meat at virtually every meal in some regions is unprecedented.
Matthew 49:05
Many thanks to Eleanor Boyle for her comment. And before wrapping up I wanted to share some personal reflections after making this episode.
First, the premise of an efficient meat future is pretty compelling and pretty pragmatic - let’s produce food in a way that keeps greenhouse gas emissions low and costs low so not just the rich, but everyone will be able to afford meat for their family.
So that’s the promise of efficiency - but is efficiency everything?
Earlier we talked about the Jevons paradox, which shows how increased efficiency of production also increases demand. Meaning that at the end of the day, we aren’t necessarily using less resources to produce meat, but more.
Another important issue that comes up when striving for greater efficiency is the increased risks to public health. Due to the crowded and confined conditions in which livestock are raised, these environments can become breeding grounds for bacteria and viruses. This increases the chances that diseases can spread from animal to animal and even jump from animal to human. This is one concern that has been raised around the 26-story pig skyscraper.
Which leads to my last open question - what does increased efficiency mean for the living conditions and welfare of farmed animals?
So I just posed some questions - but at the same time, I do find myself wondering whether these trade-offs surrounding animal welfare, public health, and the environment are truly inevitable? Or are there technologies, policy proposals or other solutions out there that can address these concerns?
Maybe you have some experience yourself about efficient solutions that you’d like to share. Or some other questions or dilemmas that you’re grappling with. We’d love to hear from you. You can share your ideas, questions, and comments to this series by recording your voice in a quiet room and sending it to podcast@tabledates.org.
Next week - we speak with people who don’t want to replace peoples' love of beef with beans and chicken with chickpeas, but with other meat-like alternatives.
Isha Datar 51:26
To hear that we could grow meat from cells made me feel like “Oh my gosh, this is such an obvious next step for humanity, and a real win-win-win,” when you think about not just reducing environmental impact, but also, animals need not suffer any more for food.
Steve Jurvetson 51:44
Once you’ve had a bite of the future, how can you deny it’s inevitability
Matthew 51:57
Thanks to you all for listening. You can rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen. A big thanks to all the guests in this episode. You can see more links to their work, their research and their farms on our website. tabledebates.org/meat
Meat: the four futures is funded by FORMAS in Sweden, initiated by the Future Food platform, and produced by TABLE - a collaboration between the University of Oxford, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wageningen University.
This episode was edited and mixed by Matthew Kessler and Ylva Carlqvist Warnborg and a huge team of support. Music by blue dot sessions and Epidemic sound. Talk to you next week in the “alternative meat” future!
