Ag news you can use

Let’s start dinner off right, with a bolus of cricket protein! After all, who doesn’t love Jiminy Cricket?

Insect Protein Market is Anticipated to Grow $3.3 billion by 2027

Global Newswire May 10, 2023

According to Markets and Markets™, the global Insect Protein Market size is projected to reach USD 3.3 billion by 2027, at a CAGR of 33.4% during the forecast period, 2022-2027. The demand for animal protein is expanding quickly in emerging economies. The rising regulatory approvals from the developed regions for use of insect protein is propelling the growth of insect protein market.

It appears that investors are being encouraged to invest more in cricket protein, with fast tracked regulator approvals from “developed” nations and then an off load of the product onto “emerging economies.”

Could it be that that the WEF and the UN are meeting up with a bit of consumer resistance in “developed regions” for eating Jiminy Cricket?

The bait and switch of regulatory approval processes seems too contrived and too planned. Malfeasance seems a given.

The New Scientist dares to write what lots of us have figured out years ago…

Lab-grown meat could be 25 times worse for the climate than beef

New Scientist, May 9, 2023

Analysis finds the carbon footprint of cultivated meat is likely to be higher than beef if current production methods are scaled up because they are still highly energy-intensive…

Lab-grown or “cultivated” meat is made by growing animal stem cells around a scaffold in a nutrient-rich broth. It has been proposed as a kinder and greener alternative to traditional meat because it uses less land, feed, water and antibiotics than animal farming and removes the need to farm and slaughter livestock, …

Have you looked at the NIH’s research budget lately? Laboratories are expensive! I mean honestly, why would anyone expect anything different than this result. Using disposables as part of the process to keep a laboratory sterile to produce “vat-meat,” has to be extremely costly. And extremely plastic intensive. Green? Not so much. You do understand that these plastics come from petroleum, right? Highly trained staff - yep, also expensive. Lots of energy for that incubator space is also needed. Another unsustainable endeavor to milk the global climate “crisis”. Funny how those WEFers keep getting richer off of these investment scams which they formulate, create a crisis to justify, and then sell to the world via their feckless captured corporate media “outlets” for their marketing propaganda.

But just think how much money Bill Gates has made from milking his investors? From a 2020 article on just one of Bill Gates’ lab-meat ventures:

Memphis Meats, a Berkeley, Calif.-based startup, says it's one step closer to bringing cell-based meat to consumers' mouths.

The company plans to build a pilot production facility with funds raised from high-profile investors including Bill Gates, Richard Branson and Kimbal Musk, as well as two giant players in the animal protein and feed space, Cargill and Tyson Foods. The company says its latest funding round has brought in $161 million in new investment.

A 2022 article explains how rapidly this company has grown:

Among Upside Foods’ (formally Memphis Meats) investors have been Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Softbank, Tyson Foods, Norwest Venture Partners, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and Virgin Atlantic founder Richard Branson. The company has raised at least $520 million, the latest of which was a Series C round in April 2022. Its last known valuation was $1.3 billion and has not publicly communicated an intention to IPO.

Who wins?

Yeh… just wait for the IPO and watch “The Good Times Roll.”

Why push for lab meat?

The thing about cattle farming is that it is all about the small farmer at the producer end. The only way big Ag. can control beef farming is by control of the slaughter houses. My friend, Dr. Brooke Miller, who is president of the US Cattlemen’s association believes that this is precisely what is happening. The transnational corporations control the flow of livestock entering the plant. Hence by manipulating the cattle allowed to be slaughtered, they can increase oversupply of beef and reduce the carcass pricing nationwide. As much of our beef is frozen and then shipped overseas, the processors can manipulate the pricing by controlling the flow of animals allowed to be slaughtered at any one time. This is how transnational corporations can control the cattle market, as there is not a fully vertically integrated market (yet) - unlike most plant based agriculture and even poultry/pork factory farming.

About 35 million cattle are slaughtered in the U.S. annually by 60 major beef-packing operations processing around 26 billion pounds of beef. Four firms control over 80 percent of all the beef slaughtered.

The following quote is from an article written in 2011 (and all indications are things have gotten worse), documents just how bad things have gotten for US cattlemen:

Today, though, the ranchers are focused on a different villain, and one after another, they pull me aside to tell different versions of the same tale. They talk about the meatpackers' power -- how it's become nearly impossible to make a living as a small operator, because the meatpackers no longer buy much from small operators. It's harder and harder to get a fair price for cattle, they say, and the meatpackers that slaughter and process the beef conspire to make it so.

Bill Bullard, president of the Montana-based Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF), mounts the podium like a preacher and rallies the crowd. "Our cattle industry is shrinking," Bullard booms. "Folks, these are signs of an unhealthy industry. An industry in severe crisis." He's one of many who raise the specter of the nation's chicken and hog industries, in which once-independent farmers are now treated more like meatpackers' employees.

These large corporations hate small cattle farming. It has nothing to do with cow farts and everything to do with land ownership, small family farms and control of production. If they can’t control it, they don’t have power over that market. With plant-based products, there is complete vertical integration.

What is vertical integration?

In microeconomics, management and international political economy, vertical integration is a term that describes the arrangement in which the supply chain of a company is integrated and owned by that company. Usually each member of the supply chain produces a different product or (market-specific) service, and the products combine to satisfy a common need. It contrasts with horizontal integration, wherein a company produces several items that are related to one another. Vertical integration has also described management styles that bring large portions of the supply chain not only under a common ownership but also into one corporation. (Wiki)

How is big Ag working to secure the supply chain?

Today there are 70 percent fewer hog farmers than in the mid-1990s, while just four companies control two-thirds of hog slaughter. Nearly 17,000 cattle ranchers have gone out of business each year since 1980; 85 percent of the beef market is now controlled by the top four meatpackers. Trends are similar across agriculture: the top four companies in each industry control 85 percent of the corn seed market, 90 percent of grain trading, and 63 percent of food retail. Twenty percent of farms control nearly 70 percent of US farmland.

Consolidation has reduced competition in farm markets and lowered prices paid to farmers, ranchers, and fishers. Farmers used to have multiple buyers to market their goods, allowing them to negotiate the best possible price. In many regions today, farmers have only one or two buyers, making it impossible to negotiate and forcing them to accept whatever the buyer offers.

Making matters worse, seed, chemical, machinery, and other farm input companies have also consolidated. Farmers used to be able to shop around for the best price for the supplies they need to farm, but now there is often just one seller, which might be an hour’s drive away.

Squeezed on both sides by the dictates of massive corporations, farmers today have increasingly little control over their own businesses. And these companies take such a cut that farmers get on average 15 cents on the consumer dollar. (NFFC, 2021)

From the sale of the GMO grains through the synthetic fertilizers to the integrated processing of grains into the internationally recognized brands of processed foods that we all know, transnational corporations wish to own and control almost all of the elements of production, distribution and marketing.

If you want to stop this nonsense, buy your meat from local suppliers, using local slaughter houses (or processing their own). Yes, it takes more time and even more resources - but it is worth it. Buy your grains, veg and fruit from organic sources. Try for local. Read country of origin labelling!

Another point in buying locally sourced meat - from an animal that you may have seen in the field. That meat means more to the consumer. It is a valuable resource. So, less is wasted. When there is a quarter cow in the freezer, one uses just what we need. No more.

Then we have many new initiatives to force dairy farmers into buying carbon credits to offset their carbon footprint.

How Can Dairy Producers Utilize Carbon Credits to Benefit Climate and Their Bottom Lines?

Dairy Herd Management, May 9, 2023

Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, an America’s Conservation Ag Movement partner, unveiled some big moves in the private sector that may make it easier for dairy producers to capitalize on carbon credits to benefit both climate and their bottom lines. 

In their latest Member Discovery Series webinar, Newtrient COO Chris Kopman discussed a partnership made public in February that aligns Newtrient and its mission to reduce the environmental footprint of dairy with Athian and its carbon credit marketplace designed to fund livestock sustainability.  

Evidently, the “way” to make dairy “carbon neutral,” is for dairymen to buy carbon offsets. That way they can raise their ESG scores and qualify for both commercial and government loans.

Of course, this is absolutely stupid. No other words describe.

What is needed if for dairymen to go back to what they have always done, up until this last century.

It is called regenerative farming. Manure is key to revitalizing soil - a fact that all those urban climate changers want to deny. It is a critical component to world health.

The only way to create living soil and that means top soil is by pasture rotation and fertilizing with real-live animals, who make real-live manure.

The midwest/great plains lost its top soil during the dust bowl and those vasts expanses of land never recovered. Now, all that wheat, corn, soy, legumes are fertilized with natural gas (yep - natural gas (LP)! Enquiring minds want to know? What is the carbon footprint of using chemical (LP based) fertilizers? What does the WEF, the UN or the EU not have an issue with this process or the downstream pollution of waterways and oceans? Why all the political table-talk about cow farts, but crickets about the drawbacks of using fertilizers made from natural gas?

Using natural gas and mined rocks to make fertilizer is not sustainable in the longterm. Furthermore, the run-off is killing our waterways and oceans.

One gallon of liquid natural gas emits 12.52 pounds (5,680 grams) of CO2 when combusted. How much is used to fertilize the great plains, whose crops failed this year?

But what about phosphorus? Is there an unlimited supply? The short answer is - no.

Global phosphorus shortage will be aggravated by soil erosion

Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 4546 (2020) Cite this article

Abstract: Soil phosphorus (P) loss from agricultural systems will limit food and feed production in the future. Here, we combine spatially distributed global soil erosion estimates (only considering sheet and rill erosion by water) with spatially distributed global P content for cropland soils to assess global soil P loss. The world’s soils are currently being depleted in P in spite of high chemical fertilizer input. Africa (not being able to afford the high costs of chemical fertilizer) as well as South America (due to non-efficient organic P management) and Eastern Europe (for a combination of the two previous reasons) have the highest P depletion rates. In a future world, with an assumed absolute shortage of mineral P fertilizer, agricultural soils worldwide will be depleted by between 4–19 kg ha−1 yr−1, with average losses of P due to erosion by water contributing over 50% of total P losses.

Furthermore, the cycle of current big-Ag based farming practices also requires vast amounts of pesticides and herbicides, for insect, weed control and for use as a desiccant (crop drying prior to harvest).

Thus, the “agricultural run-off” from the fertilizers and chemicals are considered one of the driving factors in the increase in oceanic dead-zones.

All of this IS UNSUSTAINABLE. But the solution is not lab-grown meat or cricket protein. Nor is it more synthetic fertilizers, chemicals and vertical integration. Instead, it is going back to go forward. It will be a process of combining traditional methods of farming and new, innovative ways of producing, harvesting and processing both meat and plant-based crops.

There are 8.5 billion mouths to feed in this world. Each country must work to find their own, unique solutions to solve the many people who need to eat. Yes, that means more traditional, small farms. But the USA can lead in this new effort - we can lead the way to a more sustainable way of life. We just have to have the will to do it. One farm at a time. We can lead by example.

It means the USDA must revamp their policies - which all go right back to the Nixon Administration.

True leadership will require going back to the family farm, not away from it.