[jmyeet]

I'm not convinced lab grown meat will ever be economical because real meat is subsidized, but not in the way you think (ie government subsidies).

If you think about the Earth, it receives a large amount of solar energy. While it makes the world habitable it does a lot of other things. A big one is that the Earth stores this energy in various ways. Plants are an example of this. Photosynthesizing plants, in particular, convert solar energy into sugars.

Animals come along and eat those plants and convert the plant's stored energy into protein. You can think of the plant and animal kingdom as just a massive funnel that converts solar energy into the smallest organisms that successively collects into the largest animals and plants.

Traditionally, we would eat wild animals that were essentially "free". So if you have to create that much proetein and energy from scratch in a lab, you're suddenly paying for all the steps leading up to that that being a grown animal. Obviously we have farm-raised cows that do require inputs but they're still largely eating grown feed.

It's oddly similar to creating people to work. If you had to pay for and build a person it would be incredibly expensive and time-consuming. Like imagine if Amazon had to "farm" people to work in their warehouses. They'd be spending millions of dollars for one person and it would take 18+ years. It just wouldn't be economical or make any sense.

Butinstead we create new humans all by ourselves, pay for their eduction (either directly or indirectly), pay for their food and shelter and so on. So by the time that person becomes an adult, Amazon can pay them $15/hour to work in their warehouse.

So while we create new humans for reasons of our own, from the perspective of a company who really only views you as a labor unit to create value for them, we're "subsidizing' the creation of those new labor units.

That means it's really difficult for an AI/ML system or a robot to compete with a human because that human is "subsidized". Obviously automation happens but, so far at least, it's only really for the most menial of tasks.

You can buy a calf for like $100-500 IIRC. Put it in on some land with somne grass and fresh water and in a small number of years, it'll be a cow that will produce hundres of pounds of meat. It's taken a lot of energy to get there but most of that energy is free.

Lab-grown meat will have to pay that energy cost. That's why I think it'll have a difficult time competing.

[Retric]

There’s not enough land for cows eating grass to make enough meat to satisfy humanity. Net result you get feedlots where cows consume the majority of the calories in their lifetime from optimized crops. That involves a great deal of labor and 80% of global agricultural land, but results in more meat from the same land.

The ~10 billion people in 2060 who will on average be better off than we are today are going to want a great deal more meat than we can produce using current methods because land is ultimately finite. Lab grown meat is simply the next stage of industrial agriculture where you need less feedstock and thus less land to produce the same amount of meat.

Cost is currently a major issue, but supply and demand means it’s not going to compete with current meat prices but where prices end up when scarcity becomes an issue.

[jmyeet]

The land requirement for cows you refer to is probably the US-centric one. That's not universal. For example, Australian cattle pretty much roams arid land not suitable for crop production. The food is supplemented but still the carbon footprint of Australian cattle is very different to US cattle.

My main point is that if we ignore the tragedy of the commons of land use (which we do), the energy cost of growing a cow is largely free.

Lab grown meat requires probably a sterile environment and you'll be paying for that energy. Where is that energy coming from? What is the footprint of that? Now maybe that density of lab meat production is really high but I'd be surprised. Large herbivores can gain hundresd of pounds a year just grazing.

I do believe in the future of industrial farming. I just don't think it'll be meat. It's more likely automated greenhouses of likely hydroponics. It's entirely feasible that this way can easily support a trillion people on EArth [1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzVxdmC8c-g

[pjc50]

> Put it in on some land with somne grass and fresh water and in a small number of years, it'll be a cow that will produce hundres of pounds of meat. It's taken a lot of energy to get there but most of that energy is free.

The land and water are very much not free, and under serious pressure in lots of parts of the world. The energy cost of lab-grown is real, but if it can be fed by other foodstock waste or some kind of cheap renewable source, it starts to look more competitive.

[ben_w]

That's certainly why it used to be important, but it's no indication of future importance.

After all, a similar argument can be made about transitioning from hunting to livestock: we have to take on the responsibility for an extra part of their life cycle, and we do so willingly for the economic benefits.