A tripling of humans on earth in the last 80 years has intensified demands on the planet’s resources. Finding efficient ways to produce food that supports human health as well as biodiversity, forests, clean air and water supplies, are among the most pressing needs of our time.
North Americans love their hamburgers; Americans alone eat more than 50 billion a year–an average of about 3 burgers per week, per person! Producing all those burgers from beef is very costly. PBS offered a few stats in The Hidden Cost of Hamburgers:
- It takes 1,800 gallons of water to produce one pound of grain-fed beef.
- We use eight times more land to feed animals in the U.S. than we use to feed humans.
- The 500 million tons of manure created each year by American cows releases nitrus oxide, a gas that has 300 times the global warming effect of carbon dioxide.
- The 17 billion pounds of fertilizer used to grow feed for cows flows into rivers and oceans, creating huge algae blooms where nothing can survive.
- In total, 6.5 pounds of greenhouse gases are released to produce just one quarter-pounder burger.
Non-GMO, engineered plant proteins that deliver meaty texture and taste with less adverse health and environmental impacts are a no-brainer for meat lovers.
Early plant-based leader, Impossible Burger has a history of selling out quickly in offering restaurants. Last month the company partnered with Burger King in rolling out a beefy but beefless Impossible Whopper. The chain’s North American president confessed at the launch, “virtually nobody can tell the difference.”
However, there is a dark side here: To ramp up scale and compatibility with Burger King’s fast food grill, Impossible Burger degraded its product and founding values by announcing a switch from non-GMO to GMO soy in their patties. See 6 Reasons Why Impossible Burger’s CEO is wrong about GMO Soy.
In a rush to capitalize on exploding demand, product-makers should not overlook why consumers want these products in the first place. It’s not just about great ‘meaty’ taste; we can get that eating beef burgers. The attraction here is its about great meaty taste and better health and less environmental harm.
Last summer A&W rolled out its own vegan offering using the pea-based Beyond Burger in nearly 1,000 of its Canadian locations. The burgers have continued to sell out quickly and A&W had to cap the number permitted per customer order. The company recently launched breakfast sandwiches with plant-based sausage too. “It became even more popular than we had expected,” the A&W CEO explained, “Plant-based protein has gained in popularity and is really something people are very interested in.”
Ten years after its founding, Beyond Burger now sells to 30,000 grocery stores, restaurants and schools in the U.S., Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom and Israel. Its initial public offering this month saw shares leap 163% in the first week from an issue price of $25 to $86–and a highly speculative 59 x 2018 sales! For pre-IPO investors like Bill Gates, the pay-off is huge, for those buying shares at euphoric public prices however, investment merits will remain to be seen. See: Beyond Meat Wipeout called.
So far, CEO Ethan Brown seems to understand that the attraction of their brand includes health and integrity in its non-GMO ingredients. Brown articulated their business model and mission statement well on Bloomberg this week in the clip below.
Here is a direct video link.
Brown also makes the very important point that the transition to more plant-based foods and farming offers a huge opportunity for more efficient land and water use as well as higher productivity and profits for farmers, jobs and growth for the economy. For example, it takes 93% less acreage to create the same amount of burgers from plants as from cattle. This is a huge productivity gain. And since reforesting land is a critical part of increasing carbon absorption from the atmosphere, farmers can be paid to grow both plant-based proteins and trees. See: Planting 1.2 trillion trees could help cancel out a decade of CO2 emissions, scientists find.
The opportunity is especially big for places like Canada. See: The Mighty Pea is everyone’s new favourite plant-based protein:
Peas thrive in northern climates, and Canada is expected to become the global production leader and account for 30% of output in 2020, Hoogenkamp says. New processing facilities are being built there, as well as in France, Belgium and Germany. Agriculture giant Cargill has an agreement with Puris, a producer of plant-based food ingredients, to significantly expand its pea protein operations. Some mothballed soy protein factories in China will probably be converted to pea protein facilities…”
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