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Comment by jiofih | Hacker News Reader

Taken to the extreme, is replacing insects and animals with a microbial production pipeline any better?

It feels like steps to completely lose any healthy relationships with our environment and simply industrialize everything. That is a scary vision.

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At the scale we do it, farming is not a healthy relationship to the environment. It does immense damage.

Right now, livestock are 60% of the biomass of all mammals on the planet. Humans are 36%, leaving only 4% wild mammals. Our poultry has three times the biomass of wild birds.[1] Food production takes up 40% of the Earth's land mass.[2]

Scientists have defined nine "planetary boundaries" we need to avoid crossing to avoid environmental catastrophe. For the ones related to farming, we've already crossed the boundaries for land use, biodiversity, and the nitrogen cycle, we're close for the phosphorus cycle, and over halfway there for freshwater use.[3]

According to the book Clean Meat, a 2011 study found that cultured beef would use 99% less land and 96% water. We feed nine calories to chicken to get one calorie of meat.

If we were to convert to cultured meat and milk, we could stop most deforestation and let most of that 40% of land mass revert to native forest and prairie. We'd pull back from those planetary boundaries and absorb gigatons of carbon. Do the same with fish and maybe ocean populations could recover.

That would be a healthy relationship with our environment.

[1] https://www.ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.h...

[2] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/agricultu...

[3] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/08/05/have-we-crossed-the...

Thanks for this, wholeheartedly agree.

If we are ever to restore earth to the Eden garden we'd all like it to be, then these type of advances are the only way this'll ever happen.

I don't want Eden. I want medicine, engines, cheap energy and internet.

We can have all of it. For medicines in particular, preserving biodiversity actually helps, we're still discovering new medicines in wild plants. Doing away with animal farming wouldn't hurt the rest of your list either.

There's no reason why you can't have both.

> We feed nine calories to chicken to get one calorie of meat.

This is not a byproduct of the current farming landscape, but an artifact of the food chain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_level#Biomass_transfer... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_efficiency.

In general, from one level of the food chain to the next, only 10% of the energy is able to be converted.

My chickens eat bugs around the house.

Edit: I'm not joking. Old-school local farm chickens really do eat bugs. They feed themselves a good part of the year. Bugs and vegetable scraps. I'm not sure what new-school corporate farm chickens eat. And foxes will eat the chickens (if they get a chance). The food chain.

A few years ago I got to know a commercial chicken farmer. He showed us his "chicken houses," which were large dirt-floor buildings packed so full of chickens you could barely see the ground. They ate whatever grain he threw in there. By contract he had to buy grain from Tyson and sell them the chickens.

> By contract he had to buy grain from Tyson and sell them the chickens.

I’m assuming a contract he signed

Edit: similarly you could say by contract Tyson had to sell him the grain and buy chickens from him

I wasn't making a moral judgement, just emphasizing that the chickens eat grain and will continue eating grain.

I could also get into a discussion of market inequities and whatnot but it'd be a bit off-topic in this discussion of environmental impacts.

Confirming this. Chickens are fierce predators when given the chance. One of the walls on our stables is usually covered with flies chilling in the warmth of the sun. The chickens (and the local magpie population) go there to prey on them whenever they get the chance. Chickens will also hunt mice, lizards and other critters small enough for them to catch and devour.

However, the fact that our chicken use one of the walls of our stable as a hunting ground kinda puts things in perspective; for most people, a stable, or obtaining meat from farm chickens is simply not possible. Industrial farming is the big issue, and replacing industrial farming will require new methods. I'm not sure more over-processed products is the answer though.

"Chickens will also hunt mice, lizards and other critters small enough for them to catch and devour."

Your comment reminded me that chickens (and indeed, birds) have descended from dinosaurs (many of who were carnivores).

The idea of a group of T-Rexes hunting and fighting over prey like a flock of chickens is outright scary. :D

> If we were to convert to cultured meat and milk, we could stop most deforestation and let most of that 40% of land mass revert to native forest and prairie

Or, due to human/life nature, human population will grow even larger and take up that space too :(

Urbanization has been the trend for decades. With most farming obsolete, it would probably accelerate.

Not only do we take less space that way, but urban populations tend to have lower birth rates.

Urbanization isn't all fine and dandy. In fact, I really don't like living in high density housing at all. I start getting itchy way before we reach high density. Why is it so important to use less space?

I like using more space per person but having less people. Does away almost magically with many issues we see in high density urban areas. I'm not saying we should all live on a farm. Just don't cram thousands of people into a high rise and then build one high rise next to the other for miles.

"Oh, great; now we can support an additional 5 billion people!"

This is 100% true as long as human motivations are not factored into play.

The equally plausible reverse scenario is that as soon as artificial honey is preferred, bees will be killed off for being useless in the capitalist sense, and the planet will die.

Nothing is ever black and white.

Agriculture itself has been industrialized for a century in the developed world. It's increasingly industrialized all over the world. Only a small part of the world's cultivated land is worked with techniques recognizable to the farmer of 1850.

If agricultural productivity declined to pre-industrial rates, many people would starve to death. The good news is that population growth is slowing and will probably reverse in the present century. It's still going to be a while yet before widespread de-intensification can be embraced without widespread starvation.

In the mean time, microbial production looks like a good option to provide food for growing populations while limiting environmental damage. It can produce food with lower demands on land, water, and artificially fixed nitrogen than ordinary agriculture. It's resilient against extreme weather events and pest outbreaks.

I didn’t claim otherwise. What I do think, is that

1) these views are heavily colored by industrialization in the USA / low animal welfare / high-intensity farming, which is not matched anywhere else

2) we can lower demands on land and water by moderating our consumption of meat (the US average is something like 1 burger pp/day?) while still growing most of our food in natural ways

Turning to more industrialization seems like a cop-out instead of real (hard) solutions: change of consumption habits, organic farming, strong environmental laws and so on.

I don’t particularly look forward to having most of my food being some form of goo coming out of a massive factory, completely inscrutable, which is where this is leading.

The United States could feed its own population with significantly reduced industrial inputs, particularly if Americans were content to eat only as much meat per capita as e.g. Japanese people [1]. But the United States has over twice as much arable land per capita as the world average:

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.ARBL.HA.PC

The US is currently one of the world's top exporters of corn, wheat, and soy beans. If the US exported less food then other countries would intensify production further. I don't think that any dietary changes could prevent mass starvation if the world abruptly stopped using artificial nitrogen fertilizers altogether.

Microbial protein production is one of the ways that the world could gradually cut back on artificial nitrogen fertilizers, though. Some chemoautotrophs are capable of assimilating atmospheric nitrogen.

"Autotrophic nitrogen assimilation and carbon capture for microbial protein production by a novel enrichment of hydrogen-oxidizing bacteria"

https://www.powertoprotein.eu/wp-content/uploads/pagination_...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_meat_cons...

In that list the USA is the top consumer of meat per capita, along with other highly developed countries. You just proved my point.

> If the US exported less food then other countries would intensify production further

> abruptly stopped

> mass starvation

Heh. That’s one of the most creative cop-outs I’ve seen recently.

Vegetarians have been trying to get people to eat less meat for decades but worldwide, per capita meat consumption has grown steadily since 1961.[1] The percentage of Americans identifying as vegetarian or vegan has held steady for twenty years.[2] Maybe it's time to look for other solutions.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/food/wp/2018/08/03/you-m...

Some people eating more meat doesn't change what the problem is or how it can be addressed.

Also, I think you claim that vegetarianism/veganism hasn't grown is pretty dubious.

My source for the second claim was the Washington Post. Can you provide a contrary one? It does say that people have moderated their consumption a bit, but it's not visible in the global trend.

The rise in meat consumption over the past sixty years mostly comes from poor countries getting richer. It's been inexorable. Meatless Mondays in rich countries aren't going to make a dent in it.

Lab-grown meat cheaper than farmed would be another matter. We didn't stop whaling with public relations campaigns. It stopped when kerosene made it mostly obsolete. Thirty years after kerosene came on the market, 95% of whaling had stopped.

> but it's not visible in the global trend. The rise in meat consumption over the past sixty years mostly comes from poor countries getting richer

Gonna need a source for that too, the numbers available say otherwise.

Um...the source is my first link above. Rich countries eat the most meat, but their consumption has been steady over the past 50 years. Meanwhile:

> Growth in per capita meat consumption has been most marked in countries who have underwent a strong economic transition – per capita consumption in China has grown approximately 15-fold since 1961; rates in Brazil have nearly quadrupled. The major exception to this pattern has been India

If you disagree, what is your source?

Trying to get Americans to sacrifice their lifestyles for anything is like trying to squeeze blood out of a diamond.

“ Turning to more industrialization seems like a cop-out instead of real (hard) solutions: change of consumption habits, organic farming, strong environmental laws and so on.”

This. I used to carry the view that going to a full industrial processes would eliminate the inefficiencies. It just ignores the core problem, we are no longer in coexistence.

moving away from sprawl, and back to high tax revenue older school forums of urbanization(which we are seeing as new age urban spaces), agroforestry, more cyclical product “end of life” supply chains

Pray tell what "healthy relationship" we have with nature with the current status quo?

Using science and technology for good by reimagining the antiquated methods of creating stuff like milk, cheese, beef , honey, leather, etc is a good thing.

I'm vegan, btw.

Some vegans do oppose lab-grown meat (perhaps also dairy), on the grounds that humankind will never treat our animal brothers and sisters justly until we have lost the very appetite for their flesh.

Every religion has extremists.

Replacing these "antiquated" methods with extensive supply chains (even more) dependent on non-renewable resource extraction doesn't seem like using technology "for good"

Supply chains and process can be streamlined. A herd of cows is a herd of cows.

A barrel of oil is a barrel of oil.

> Renewable energy has entered the chat

Right, because all of the plastics used in these labs are made from renewable sources?

Yes, it’s possible but you can’t say the same about live feed. Cows will be cows, pigs will be pigs.

Out of curiosity: would you categorize milk-producing cows as a part of our natural environment?

I'm not an expert, but I don't believe they existed as we know them today until man took an active hand in selectively breeding them into the very useful animal they are today.

In other words, we're now just doing - albeit with sharper tools - to bacteria what we've been doing for millenia to all kinds of animals and plants in our "environment".

> I'm not an expert, but I don't believe they existed as we know them today until man took an active hand in selectively breeding them into the very useful animal they are today.

I don't know either, but that feels counter-intuitive. Would ancient humans figure "hey, see that animal over there? I bet with a selective breeding program we could make it produce milk when it calves and we'd be able to drink that and get nutrients".

I do remember reading a research article a long time ago saying that is precisely what happened with wheat (did not exist in the wild as we know it today, was bred over millenia into the flour-yielding plant we know today).

It's not a long shot to imagine that animals like cows and goats (or dog, for that matter, although not with food as a goal) were given the same treatment.

Not a long shot at all - nearly every animal you encounter today is the result of domestication or human interaction, unless you go for a safari. Even pidgeons.

Chickens have changed a lot in the last 50 years as well. This 2014 paper [0] compares the growth of chicken breeds from 1957, 1978, and 2005. The pictures of chickens at 56 days are pretty striking.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003257911...

They don't. In fact they can't actually currently exist on their own. If a calf tried to feed off it's mother it would drown because the mothers produce far too much milk. They actually have to bottle feed the calves now.

> If a calf tried to feed off it's mother it would drown because the mothers produce far too much milk.

Yep, Isn't wonderful pseudoscience? It has all the answers and all are wrong and satisfactory.

Animals -know- when they are satiated.

If that were actually true, there wouldn't be a obesity epidemic.

Well, humans are a little special. This is true. But we were talking about milk, not candy-filled people. So far as I know, neither science nor empiric observations of farmers all around the world had supported the idea that if let alone a calf will suck milk until exploding. Vet handbooks don't describe this hypothetical condition and such obesity epidemic of calf is not happening anywhere.

Not much different than claiming that people left on a lakeshore will drink water until getting sick or dying, because there is to much water. Nope; this is not what we observe in the real life.

Therefore the original claim is just new-age ideology without any scientific base.

I think you're gonna need to back up that extraordinary claim with evidence.

Ask a dairy cattle farmer. That's where I heard it.

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