Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon BY CAREN COWAN

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

by Caren Cowan

We’ve seen bad times before… we have survived the droughts over the centuries. We have survived cyclical markets for pretty much the same time. The price of feed, energy, transportation and everything we need has never stopped climbing.

So what makes today seem so unsettling as we move forward, maybe at a different pace, to do what we have always done? There are a few things that come easily to mind… Daddy, Uncle Bill and Granddaddy aren’t here to shoulder the burdens or at least tell us how stay hitched. Many of our families and their ranches have splintered because there wasn’t enough room or money for the entire next generation to come home. So, there aren’t as many of us for the battle.

The learned people I have counted to keep me straight on for the last 35 years are gone. And they didn’t train very many to take their places. Their offspring were off making their own living at the time they could have been learning. This wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was a sign of the times then.

Many of today’s leaders didn’t benefit from historical wisdom or even that from their own mistakes. They are high on the flash and dash of power and short on the work ethic that it takes to keep the “plow in the ground.”

But it is high time that the tough cowboy up, get the flash and dash out of the way. Not only is the beef industry struggling within because leadership is weak, without vision, and tied to the almighty dollar, but we have detractors that our forefathers could have never dreamed up.

According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the last census there are about 700,000 cattle raisers across the nation, including feed yards. As near as I can figure, there are way less than 40,000 of those ranchers (and farmers) who are actually paying dues to a national organization to speak for them or represent their interests. Some of those members also do the bidding of the national groups, but the vast majority let their dues speak for them with little real If you have never heard of a guy named knowledge of what is happening. Patrick O. Brown, you need to become aware

There are, of course, countless county, of him. He is the nearly 66-year-old founder state and regional groups who have the best and CEO of Impossible Foods. interests of the cattlemen and their families According to a 2019 story on CNBC.com, at their heart, but their reach is limited and when Pat Brown was working in his research sometimes stymied by the all-knowing nationlab in 2009, he had “zero” intention of startal groups. Additionally, how many dues can ing a business — much less one that would any rancher pay especially when the feed win United Nations backing and investment bills are high and calves, stockers or feeders from the likes of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. aren’t bringing what they cost to produce? No, his goal then was “simple.” How much time and money does he or she “I basically decided I was going to look for have to travel to seats of government to speak the most important problem that I could have with their own voices… even if they live in a the opportunity of solving,” he told CNBC state that hasn’t been in lockdown for nearMake It. ly six months? But when the former New Mexicans have been under a shelter in place “ We all need to cowboy up and figure out what organization(s) pediatrician-turned-Stanford professor discovered what that problem order since late March. we expect to carry our voices to was — namely the “catastrophic use of animals

It has long the federal government ... but in our food system” — been my belief that the largest of we better be looking at the wolf he realized he had to go “all in.” the national orgaat the door who is spending big The California-based nizations is a vertically integrated association for bucks and planning to do away with beef entirely.” food company began attempting to revolutionize the way we think an industry that about animal agriculture is not and won’t soon be vertically integrated, with its plant-based meat substitute, comalthough there are groups like Walmart that monly known as the “Impossible Burger,” are working as fast as they can to do their wrote Karen Gilchrist, CNBC.com reporter. own in-house vertical integration. He started the business in 2011 after his

I got an interesting response to my theory academic research led him to discover the that one organization cannot represent every detrimental impact of meat production on segment of the beef industry not too long ago. the planet. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association According to Brown and CNBC.com, with (NMCB) isn’t designed for every segment of no attribution to science, meat production is the beef industry, I was told. They are there considered by far one of the world’s greatest for beef. While every step of the chain is part contributors to climate change, not only of beef production, there is only one place for the level of greenhouse gas it produces, that beef comes out the door and thus that’s but also the water and land consumption it where the focus needs to be. requires. However, despite growing aware

However, my point today is not necessarily ness around the issue, Brown noted that only that we all need to cowboy up and figure education had done little to curb consumers’ out what organization(s) we expect to carry insatiable appetites for meat. our voices to the federal government. That is So, bailing on his academic career — and a given, but we better be looking at the wolf colleagues — the then 56 year-old set about at the door who is spending big bucks and creating an alternative product that could planning to do away with beef entirely. give the same experience as meat. HERE’S YOUR TIGER… “The only way to solve the problem is to give consumers what they know they want,

These folks have learned that the vegan and make it our job to find a better way to and vegetarian movement didn’t get them produce it and find a better technology than very far. Meatless Mondays weren’t a big hit cows and other animals,” said Brown. so now these anti-cow and anti-meat people A few years later, the Impossible team are trying to cater to Americans who love believed they’d discovered the solution in a beef. molecule called heme. Found in abundance

But make no mistake this isn’t about a in both animals and plants, the molecule diet — its about control of the land and cliis responsible for carrying oxygen in living mate change. organisms and giving blood its red color. By

augmenting the molecule in plants, researchers found they could create a product that looks and tastes like meat.

And so, in 2016, the Impossible Burger was born.

By using plants rather than traditional meat, Impossible Food’s website claims production of one of its burgers saves the equivalent of 75 square feet of land, one half tub of bathwater and 18 miles of emissions in a car compared to a regular beef patty.

Having developed that technology, Brown said his company had to be the one to get it out to burger lovers — in spite of his own lack of business experience.

“I didn’t want to trust that just some regular business would do it right,” said Brown.

Fortunately for Brown, however, investors saw something in his proposition. Over the years, the business has racked up $396 million from backers including Bill Gates, Google Ventures and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures.

And the funding hasn’t stopped. According to meatingplace.com in mid-August, Impossible Foods Inc. has brought in $200 million in fresh funds from investors, according to a statement from the company.

Led by Couture Management LLC, the funding will go towards Impossible’s growing retail business, and will help it expand manufacturing, research and development, and more.

This marks the second large-scale funding Impossible has received this year. In March, the company announced $500 million in funding from Mirae Asset Global Investments and others. To date, Impossible has raised nearly $1.5 billion from investors.

According to Bloomberg News, a March funding round valued Impossible at $4 billion.

Of course, Impossible Food is not the only business that’s created a plant-based meat alternative, CNBC points out

Beyond Meat is one major player which has amassed a loyal following from its plantbased “bleeding” burger. Started in 2009 by Ethan Brown, the company is a joint winner, alongside Impossible Foods, of the United Nations’ Champions of the Earth Award, in the Science and Innovation category. Both companies share a number of high-profile investors.

However, despite their shared ideologies, Brown said their products differ vastly and he currently sees little value in collaboration.

Instead, he said the business is focused on research and development to improve not only its burger, but also to develop new products including plant-based steaks and fish.

“There’s so many things that you have to get right — and the dominant thing is deliciousness. The second most important thing, I think, probably is versatility, and then, of course, nutritional value,” said Brown.

In late August Lightlife Foods launched a marketing broadside against Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, calling them out in full-page newspaper ads for being overly processed and including too many synthetically produced ingredients.

In what the company is calling the “Clean Break” campaign, Lightlife President Dan Curtin said in an open letter that his company is making a “clean break” from other “food tech” companies in the meat analogue space, saying Lightlife is “a real food company” that uses “simple ingredients and methods to make ... delicious plant-based food.”

Among the distinctions Curtin draws is between Lightlife’s burger with 11 ingredients, and the 18 to 20 ingredients that Beyond and Impossible include. “People deserve plant-based protein that is developed in a kitchen, not a lab,” the letter says.

As of 2019, the biggest single retail brand in meat analogues was stalwart Morningstar Farms. However, all brands in the space have been racing for retail market share, especially since the spread of COVID-19 has pushed retail food sales into the stratosphere.

The COVID-19 Pandemic put its own spin on the fake meat market. Until March 2020, there was big investment in the various pseudo meat companies, but their market share remained low.

That all changed when meat became scarce this past spring and the fake meat market share skyrocketed by double and even triple digits. Not because of desire for the product, but because of the fear of having no meat at all.

Only time will tell if things will level back out, but based on the level of investment, fake meat supporters seem ramping up while the beef industry fiddles.

In an article in the New Yorker Magazine in September 2019, author Tad Friend captured just how serious Brown and Impossible Foods are about eliminating cattle, and meat producing animals as well as fish from the planet.

Opening his story Friend wrote: “Americans eat three hamburgers a week, so serving beef at your cookout is as patriotic as buying a gun. When progressive Democrats proposed a Green New Deal, earlier this year, leading Republicans labeled it a plot to ‘take away your hamburgers.’ The former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka characterized this plunder as ‘what Stalin dreamt about,’ and Trump himself accused the Green New Deal of proposing to ‘permanently eliminate’ cows. Who would want to take away your hamburgers and eliminate cows?”

Well, Pat Brown does, and pronto. The emeritus professor of biochemistry at Stanford University, Brown is developing plant-based beef, chicken, pork, lamb, dairy, and fish. He intends to wipe out all animal agriculture and deep-sea fishing by 2035. His first product, the Impossible Burger, made chiefly of soy and potato proteins and coconut and sunflower oils, is now (September 2019) in 17,000 restaurants.

Friend goes on to regurgitate all the supposed evils of animal agriculture on the planet before explaining that although Brown’s Stanford lab was publishing on topics ranging from ovarian-cancer detection to how babies acquire their gut microbiome he decided that cows and climate change were more important and noble causes.

What was Brown’s plan?

“Legal economic sabotage!” Brown said. He understood that the facts didn’t compel people as strongly as their craving for meat, and that shame was counterproductive. So he’d use the power of the free market to disseminate a better, cheaper replacement. And, because 60 percent of America’s beef gets ground up, he’d start with burgers.

DRAGON ALERT

Now if you really want to start shaking in your boots, just google https://www. rethinkx.com/ . This is a self-appointed, but well-funded group that includes folks like Patrick O. Brown that is rethinking humanity and correcting it by disruption. They started with “Transportation” in 2017 and moved on to “Food & Agriculture” in 2019 which was written by Catherin Tubb and Tony Seba, along with a team of contributors. Their Ag plan is for 2020 to 2030.

You can click the Reports tab on the left side of the site and pull up the reports as well as the SEBA Framework of the projects.

The subtitle of the Food & Ag report is: The Second Domestication of Plants and Animals, the Disruption of the Cow, and the Collapse of Industrial Livestock Farming

Here is how the report describes itself in the Preface:

This study is built on the Seba Technology Disruption Framework. This analysis focuses on the new technologies driving the transformation of the food and agriculture sectors and the inevitable implications for the cattle industry in the U.S.

The cost curves we have produced are based on limited data given the early stage