Is What You Believe About Food Sustainability Wrong? Robert Paarlberg Thinks So

Robert Paarlberg: [00:00:00] The, the modern movement is not comfortable with innovation. And I think that that, uh, is eventually going to, uh, contain their influence more than anything else, because, because innovation is, is what moves things, uh, forward in the world and it always has. And I think it always will

Paul Shapiro: welcome to the business for good podcast to show where we spotlight companies, making money by making the world a better place.

I'm your host, Paul Shapiro. And if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the world's most pressing problems, then this is the show for you. Hello, friends and welcome to the fourth season of the business for good podcast. Here we are at episode number 80 before we get onto this episode.

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And I am really grateful to have had the opportunity to do it for these past few years and look forward to continuing to do it. So if you get something out of this show, you can let me know. Of course you can always go to business for good podcast.com and send an email that way, but also don't keep it to yourself.

Go weave your a review and help other people find this podcast too. In fact, here's the latest review you can listen to from apple podcast. Here you go. It's from somebody whose name is, uh, P H a T P I don't know how to pronounce it, so I won't try to butcher it and get it wrong, but I'll say best overall business podcast business for good podcast is not only the best food business oriented podcast.

It's all around the best business podcast, especially if you're interested in businesses being a force for good in the world and not just a force for profits. So thank you so much to however you pronounce your name for doing that and leaving that review. I'm really glad that you get so much out of the show and I hope others will too.

So I want to now talk about this [00:02:00] episode. Here we are at the beginning of 2022, and climate change is a really big deal when it comes to climate change, the environmental movement will oftentimes point to the preponderance of scientific evidence is the basis of its beliefs on the topic. The science clearly shows that humans are warming.

The planet environmental leaders will say, and that such modification of our atmosphere is driving all types of negative outcomes for our planet and therefore for humanity as well. Well, fair enough. But that's what the environmental movement says. What about what's often called the new food movement.

Cause when it comes to food, we often hear that switching to organic and local and non GMO production methods are gonna be what's best for the planet. But what if the preponderance of scientific evidence doesn't support such claims and then actually both the planet and public health would be better off with the synthetic fertilizers banned by organic standards that buying local may not be better for the planet.

And that it's perfectly safe to eat genetically modified plants. This is indeed what the science says. Author and Harvard professor Rob Palmberg in his new [00:03:00] book, resetting the table straight. Talk about the food we grow and eat. Paul doesn't claim that so called industrial agriculture is good for the planet, but he does argue that such 21st century food production methods are far preferable for the planet than if we were to try to return to the more extensive pastoral systems of humanities.

So why is it that the food movement doesn't embrace the preponderance of the scientific evidence? It seems odd that we typically welcome technological innovation when it comes to transportation, communications medicine and more, but when it comes to technology in our food, all of a sudden, some people have a concern case in point the European union famously disallows, genetically modified foods, but they're quite happy to allow genetically modified medicines that we are going to ingest as well.

Why in this interview, Rob makes his case for more technological innovation in food, not less, including finding ways to reduce the number of animals. Humanity is raising for food. I found his book eye opening, and I hope you'll enjoy hearing his [00:04:00] perspective on food sustainability and this new interview too.

So welcome to the fourth season and enjoy this interview with author and professor Rob Paul Berg, Rob, welcome to the business for good podcast. Well, thanks, Paul. I look forward to talking with you. I have been looking forward to talking with you because I really enjoyed your. And I thought it was such an interesting perspective from somebody because admittedly, I don't wanna put words in your mouth, but admittedly you have a, a rather positive attitude toward what some people would Dively call big ag.

But most of the time when people are in favor of so-called big ag, they tend to have a political persuasion that might be different from yours. In fact, you talk in the book about how you've worked for a number of democratic presidential candidates, and you're have some pretty serious criticisms, not only for the agribusiness industry, but also for what you call big food.

So I'm really interested in getting to where you're coming from on this, but just tell me a little bit Rob, about that [00:05:00] seeming tension. Like how do you fit into the agricultural world holding these seemingly disparate and conflicting in some people's minds views? I do

Robert Paarlberg: insist on making distinctions that are not familiar to those who.

Only pay attention to popular narratives. I do draw a distinction between big food and big ag, and I put more responsibility for our poor dietary health in America on big food than on big ag, but within big ag, I also make a distinction between large scale specialized, highly capitalized crop farming, which I don't have problems with as opposed to our modern livestock industry factory livestock farming, which I do find fall with, particularly on animal welfare grounds.

But even there, I don't revert to the common suggestion that we should start sending the [00:06:00] animals back outside again, and return to a, a pasture and barnyard system. I prefer a solution that isn't so often mentioned in the United States, which is to follow what the Europeans have done. Keep the animals indoors.

For bio safety purposes and to reduce labor costs, but give them more space, give them more light, give them less noise, give them more enrichments in the Netherlands. Pigs have much more space and they have toys to avoid boredom. These are very intelligent animals. So I think we can find a way out of our animal welfare problems without turning the clock back a hundred years and going back to, to barnyard and pasture

Paul Shapiro: systems.

Sure. So you make it clear in the book, Rob, that you think we need to rely on 21st century agricultural techniques, as opposed to 19th century agricultural techniques. But part of your solution is not just improving animal welfare, which you say, and, and which you concede would [00:07:00] require higher prices on animal products and therefore less consumption of animal products.

And so you recommend. Not just improving animal welfare on these farms, but using innovation to create ways to satiate humanities, meat, tooth, so to speak without having to raise animals at all. Right?

Robert Paarlberg: Yes, absolutely. I'm excited about that. It's not a new idea. It was actually Winston Churchill back in the 1930s, who, uh, to my knowledge was the first to suggest that instead of raising entire chickens, we find laboratory methods for just growing a chicken wing.

He thought it would come along within 50 years and he was a little early on that end, but we're doing it now. We're doing something like that right now. And I'm sure we'll get much better for the moment. The plant based imitation meat products are those that are moving most quickly to replace animal based products.

We don't know how far or how fast that substitution [00:08:00] process will go. It's gone pretty far already. With plant based imitation dairy products. If you look at almond milk and rice milk and coconut milk, these non-dairy milk products now make up 13% of the fluid milk market. If we get to 13% of the processed meat market or the hamburger market in the next 10 or 15 years, that'll be a major change.

And it's a change that's likely to continue because the science just gets better all the time. We've learned how to simulate the taste of real animal meat at the molecular level, by studying the molecular structure of those meats, we've discovered the role that that's a molecule, the heme molecule plays in giving plant-based meats, the same slightly metallic taste that you get from real animal flesh.

So you take heme from soybean plant and. Grow it [00:09:00] out in yeast, multiply the molecules and use those molecules to replicate the he in real meat. And there you have something that tastes like real meat with no animals at all,

Paul Shapiro: right? In that, that process, what you're describing was pioneered by impossible foods, but another company just the week, we're recording this in December of 2021 and another company, uh, motif, uh, which is based in Massachusetts, uh, just got FDA approval for its hem, which is not a soy Lima, uh, hem.

It is actually they've taken the actual cow hem like the Bo TAUs hem and inserted into a yeast molecule to make actual cattle, he, as opposed to soy he, and they're now starting to market it as an ingredient to plant-based companies for them to use in their products. So, uh, presumably it will be more than just impossible foods who will be using that now, but there's lots of ways to do it, but we can talk more about Rob this.

Issue of how to [00:10:00] create meat type experiences without animals in, in a few minutes. But I just wanna talk about the, the general broad stroke of your book, because you are basically what I would call a techno optimist. Somebody who is really passionate about using modern science and technology to advance the sustainability of our food system.

And you make a good point. You say that people are generally very welcoming of new science when it comes to medicine and transportation and communications, however, it's strangely controversial in food production. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that we want science and technology in our cars and in our phones and in the drugs that we take, but not on the food that we eat, the

Robert Paarlberg: way that you're referring to is affluent consumers in post industrial societies who are well fed.

Indeed. They're, they're usually over fed. They're comfortable with cuisines that they're most familiar with. They don't want a lot of new agricultural [00:11:00] science or a lot of new food science. So they have reasons to be, um, suspicious if it's not familiar. And Mark Michael poll's mantra is don't eat anything that your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

There's a deep aversion to innovation in the food space among today's affluent comfortable populations. I, I can understand that completely. My problem is that that can get in the way of food production innovations that are absolutely essential to escaping poverty for poor small holder families in developing countries.

And the genetic modification of plants is. Example of that.

Paul Shapiro: Sure. I, I understand what you're saying, Rob, and, and I'm in concert with you on it, I will say. And I don't think that you don't intend to imply this, but there is an implication that, well, okay, so the rich affluent countries don't need these new innovations and [00:12:00] that there's all these downsides to them.

So we understand why they don't want them, but for the poor countries that are really facing feminine starvation, even though, you know, we can give 'em these subpar products, but your argument is that they're not subpar. That there's actually nothing dangerous about them at all. In fact, they may even be preferable to some of the older technologies.

Isn't that right? Yeah,

Robert Paarlberg: exactly. I mean, one technology I have in mind is insect resistant crop plants in the United States, we grow insect resistant cotton. We grow insect resistant corn. The cotton's an industrial product. The corn's mostly for animal feed. So food consumers don't worry much about that.

But in Africa, the corn that they grow, they call it maze. It's white maze, not yellow maze is being devastated by insects, by stock borders. And if they planted BT maze, they could control those insects and protect their harvest without spraying chemicals. And, and yet they're not allowed to do that [00:13:00] because these are genetically modified crops and it's not legal in nearly all of the countries of Africa.

So, or even in research on any genetically

Paul Shapiro: modified crops. So let's just get down to what the science shows, because you talk in the book about how many people who subscribe to the views that you're referring to of these affluent countries, they will say, well, I agree with the preponderance of evidence with a scientific consensus on climate change, but when it comes to the scientific consensus on genetic modification of crops, it's a different story.

So let's just be clear. What does the. Evidence. What does the preponderance of the scientific evidence suggest about genetically modifying crops? Well,

Robert Paarlberg: where would you go to look for scientific consensus on this issue? I would guess that the most authoritative source of scientific consensus wouldn't be corporate scientists, it would be publicly funded scientists, publicly funded scientists in the national science academies of the European countries, where consumers are most skeptical about GMOs.

And if you look at what [00:14:00] they've said in writing, you'll find that, uh, they've all said that they. Can't find any convincing evidence of any new risks to human health or to the environment from any of the genetically engineered crops that have been developed from the market so far, that's the official stance of the Royal society in London, the British medical association, French academy, mm-hmm of sizes and medicine, the German academy of sciences and humanities, and even the, even the research director to the European union has the same conclusion.

So they haven't found any evidence of adverse effects. Now there's a response to that. Critics will say, oh, well, absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence. And that usually stops people dead in their tracks for a while, until they stop and think about it. If you an absence of evidence, if you look for something hard for more than a decade and don't find [00:15:00] any evidence of risk, that's an absence of evidence.

But it's not proof of absence, but it is evidence of absence because you looked and couldn't

Paul Shapiro: find any, right. So let's just talk about the way that we breed crops today, then just for a second, Rob. So there's a, a common mythology surrounding this, that what we do today, or what we've done in the past is natural and genetic modification is somehow unnatural.

So how have we selectively bred crops? Let's say to create the high yielding crops that we have today, has it been through natural methods or how do they do it? Well through human

Robert Paarlberg: intervention originally it was seat selection done mostly by, by neolithic women, farmers, mostly in, in the middle east, they found the plants that were growing best and they picked the seeds from those plants and replanted them.

Then in the 19th century, we learned medallion genetics, and we learned to, to breed improved [00:16:00] traits into the offspring of plants. We learned to actually intervene in the sexual reproduction of the plants and breed, uh, the traits that we wanted into the plants. Then in the 20th century, we developed hybridization, which isn't genetic engineering, but it's something that would seldom happen in the one world, but we can make it happen if we carefully, uh, separate the, the parent lines of a plant.

And then beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, we learned a recombinant DNA, uh, genetic engineering. We also had another technique that we used over the years, which is mutation breeding. We subject seeds to radiation or to chemicals and induce mutations. It's a completely uncontrolled process. And most of the results have to be discarded immediately, but, uh, sometimes you get something that works and we've kept that in our food system.

A lot of the wheat that we eat today are the [00:17:00] result of

Paul Shapiro: mutation. Right? And so in, in this type of pathogenesis, I mean, we're just basically I radiating seeds and seeing what happens, unlike genetic engineering, where it's actually a very precise change that we're making. Yes,

Robert Paarlberg: that's right. And now since 2015, we have an even more precise genetic engineering technique called genome editing, where you don't have to bring, uh, DNA from a unrelated organism into the DNA of a plant where they're trying that you're trying to improve.

You simply make, uh, precise, uh, snips in the DNA and. And take out, or you can even amplify traits that are already in the organism that you're trying to mm-hmm, , that's even more precise, even fewer risks, but it's modern genetic engineering and it has, it already has enemies. European union has already said that gene edited crops are gonna have to be heavily regulated, just like a transgenic GMO crop.

Okay.

Paul Shapiro: Well, let's, let's shelve the GM debate for [00:18:00] a few minutes later, cuz I do wanna come back to it, but I just wanna be clear because you make the point in the book that you actually think that in industrial agriculture is damaging to the environment. Um, but you say it's not really because of, of how the food is being produced.

You say it's because of how much food is being produced and that if we tried to produce anywhere near as much food as we do today, using pre-industrial methods that you think the damage to the environment would be even worse. So. You're making it clear that you're not saying that you think industrial agriculture is benign to the environment.

You just think it's basically gonna do less harm than if we abandon these 21st century technologies. Right?

Robert Paarlberg: Most people, when they, when they imagine sustainable agricultural systems, like to go way back in time to something that looked like it had a very light footprint on the land. Well, if you go back to, to 1940, before we had industrial agriculture, yeah.

It looked like less damage was being done, but [00:19:00] we're now producing three times as much as we were in 1940. If we'd tried to triple total production using the artisanal methods that were in use in the middle years, the 20th century we'd have to bring far more land under production. We'd have to plow up fragile land sloping lands.

We'd have to cut trees. We'd have to destroy wildlife habitats. It'd been environmental

Paul Shapiro: calamity. Right. So you, you refer to it as a, uh, a new kind of silent spring, referring back to, uh, racial Carson's book, silent spring, which was very concerned about the use of insecticides, but you point out and there's something that I didn't know, which is that Carson was not really an advocate for what we would today call organic agriculture that she actually was in favor of using things like synthetic pesticides, excuse me.

Oh, synthetic fertilizer. Um, in order to reduce the number of acres needed to farm, and you point out in the book, I mean, you say that replacing conventional production of crops [00:20:00] with only organically ground crops. So if we went to all organic agriculture, that it would require cultivating an additional 109 million acres of land, which is an area equal to all Parklands and wild line and wild lands combined in the lower 48 states, it would be from an environmental perspective or from a wildlife protection perspective, pretty OUS.

So. For people who say, ah, well, I, I eat organic to protect the environment because they're concerned about, let's say insecticides or other, um, sprays that go onto the land. What would you say to them, Rob?

Robert Paarlberg: Well, I would say that that they should take a closer look at the organic standard. It's not a prohibition on all insecticides.

You can still use natural insecticides, but it is a prohibition on all synthetic chemicals, including not just insecticides, but also fertilizers and synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are the most important contributor to modern agricultural productivity, a a geographer in, [00:21:00] in Canada. Occular Schmid has calculated that if we hadn't started using synthetic nitrogen fertilizer in the early years of the 20th century today, we wouldn't be able to feed about 40% of the Earth's population, uh, using today's dietary.

Requirements to say that we can do without not just nitrogen pesticides, not just synthetic pesticides, but also without synthetic fertilizer just goes against, goes against science. Most supporters of organic don't realize there's a prohibition against fertilizers. They're only aware of possible pesticide risks.

And so they embrace organic to avoid pesticides. They don't realize they're forcing farmers not to use any nitrogen fertilizers either, which is why. So few farmers have converted to organic. 1% harvested acreage in the United States today is certified for organic production because farmers know that if they can't use [00:22:00] synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, their production costs will, will go up and premium.

They get for selling in the organic market, probably won't be enough to cover the higher cost.

Paul Shapiro: So what let's talk about that higher cost issue, cuz you, you made a point that was actually, I had never considered, but I thought was pretty compelling, which is. If everything went organic, you argue that the public health might actually decline because the price of fruits and vegetables would be substantially higher.

And therefore people would eat fewer of them. We all know that eating more fruits and vegetables and whole grains would be really what our country needs in order to try it again, do a better public health direction than what we've been on. Yet. If prices go up for them, of course, people will eat less of it.

So what do you say for that? If people are concerned about public health, let's say they're talking about pesticide residues, or they argue that there's more pesticides used on GM crops or whatever the argument may be like. What's your rebuttal to that, Rob?

Robert Paarlberg: Oh, [00:23:00] well, our number one dietary health problem in the United States is not hunger.

It's poor nutrition caused by inadequate consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Only one in 10 Americans eats the quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables. That should be a part of. A recommended diet. Now, if we were to switch to all organic fruits and vegetables, the average price of organic produce, the retail price organic produce on average is 54% higher than the retail price for conventional produce.

So our consumption of these healthy fruits and vegetables would go down. If we switched to organic, it it's a related point to be made. A lot of people say, well, we should also eat local, eat local. But once again, that would reduce our consumption of fruits and vegetables. Currently in the United States, 50% of our fresh fruit consumption and a third of our fresh vegetable consumption [00:24:00] is imported.

Many of these imports come from central America, tropical countries, or from the Southern hemisphere in the winter months. If we couldn't get access to fresh fruits and vegetables from the tropics or in the winter months, Once again, our dietary health would worsen. So on grounds of, of dietary health, I think we'd be making a mistake, trying to switch to an all organic or an all local system.

Paul Shapiro: Let's talk about the local issue since you raise it here, Rob people generally will make an argument saying, well, it's better for the environment not to transport these crops all around the globe for us. It's you could have lighten your footprint on the planet. If you eat locally, you say actually not so much.

Why

Robert Paarlberg: carbon footprint of, of food and doesn't depend upon how far it travels. It depends. First of all, on how it was grown. That's the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector [00:25:00] on the farm, but transport aspect, which is only about 10% of the greenhouse gas emissions from food production and distribution.

The transport aspect depends not on how far the food travels. But on the mode of travel and on the load size, if food, uh, travels by rail or by ocean freight, or even in an 18 Wheeler, it can travel a large distance. And if the load size is large enough, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with that transport are very small if travels a short distance, but if it travels in a small load size and in a, a family automobile, or a pickup truck, then the greenhouse gas emissions per tomato are gonna be extremely large.

If you get in your car and then drive five miles to the farmer's market and buy eight tomatoes and put them in a paper bag and get in your [00:26:00] car and drive back home, those tomatoes remember probably were hauled in a pickup truck from a farm, another five miles away in a small load, the carbon emissions from your car and from that pickup truck.

Per tomato are unacceptably large. It's just not a good way to, to protect the

Paul Shapiro: environment. One of the things that I was most struck by when I was reading more about how widdle local matters from an environmental perspective, and if it does matter, it's in the inverse of what most people think it could actually be oftentimes worse for the reasons that you're stating here because of the economies of scale and therefore reduction in energy needed to ship on a per unit basis.

But, uh, one of the things I learned about was that actually the cooking method. So you're talking about the growing method, but it turns out that even the cooking method has more of an eco impact than the number of so-called food miles, the food travel to you. In other words, using an oven requires so much more energy than using a microwave [00:27:00] that just using the oven alone is a bigger eco impact than the transport of that food to you.

And then of course it matters what the food is. That, uh, buying fruit from, um, let's say a tropical region. If you're living, let's say in new England, like you do, Rob is, uh, far lower impact on the planet than buying a beef that was raised from a cow who was within driving distance of you. Uh, so it's particularly astounding to me that this has remained somehow a type of like holy grail for environmentalists who say that's only by local or let's try to buy local when in fact it, it seems like almost one of the least relevant things you can imagine from an environmental perspective.

Yeah.

Robert Paarlberg: It's interesting where the focus on local food came from. One reason that people began to focus on local food was the discovery that most organic food in the United States, isn't grown on small diverse farms. It's grown on very large, highly specialized, highly [00:28:00] capitalized farms in California.

Primarily these earthbound farms as. 50,000 acres. I think, I mean, these are not small organic farms, and yet they control the, the leafy green organic market in the United States. So organic purists who, who wanted small diverse farms, weren't getting it from the organic certification system. So they said, well, okay, we'll switch to local organic farms, which will be small.

And a lot of the local organic farms are small, but they just don't produce very much food. If you look at, you mentioned I'm in new England. If you look at all of the farms in new England, organic and conventional, small and large, these are all of the farms in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine put together their total farm sales amount to only 1% of total national farm sales.

So this is a, a [00:29:00] style of farming that is socially agreeable. The people on these farms. Are making a strong contribution to the social health of the new England countryside. They're doing something that they value it's, I'm not opposed to it, but we can't realistically expect this kind of farming to provision our modern food requirements.

Paul Shapiro: And I guess the question then also, Rob, is whether it's even preferable. So, uh, you write about food safety in farmer's markets compared to going to supermarkets. And I think you, you cite some studies that would suggest a conclusion that's quite different than what I think would be a, a popular perception about this.

So let me ask you, Rob, if I'm concerned about getting E coli or salmon Manoa, wouldn't I be better going to a local organic farmer's market than going to Walmart? Well, it would

Robert Paarlberg: probably be relatively safe in both places, but it would be extremely safe at Walmart and slightly [00:30:00] less safe at most farmer's markets.

Most, most vendors at farmer's markets. Do not have professional training in wiping down surfaces and maintaining, uh, a sanitary environment. The produce on sale probably wasn't refrigerated immediately after picking. It might not have been in a secure cold chain all the way to the farm state. And it's been sitting out under the sun for a while.

It's been exposed to it. Hasn't been in a bio secure environment. There are a lot of ways that the nutritional value, the, the microbial contamination problems are more problematic in a artisanal farmer's market environment and in a, in a modern, fully refrigerated, super.

Paul Shapiro: We're at a new site studies in the book, looking at basically the produce that is purchased at farmer's markets and indeed, while you're right, your chances of getting sick from produce that you're buying at either one [00:31:00] are very low, but it does appear to be less low, uh, when you're going to the farmer's market.

So, uh, it's an interesting thing to, to think about how, what the popular perception is may actually be the opposite of what is so and speaking.

Robert Paarlberg: I'm not a huge fan of, of supermarkets because I spend quite a bit of time in my book complaining about the relatively unhealthy packaged foods. The ultra processed packaged foods sold in supermarkets.

But one thing that they do well is food safety.

Paul Shapiro: All right, well, speaking of things that seem to have popular perceptions around them, one of the things that I regularly hear, Rob, is people talking about. The fact that subsidies are the big villain that this industrial food would be much more expensive.

If we could just get rid of subsidies. And you argue in the book that actually that is not really true. And, uh, you suggest that the subsidies are actually making some of these products more expensive, [00:32:00] not less. So tell me why is the popular perception there so wrong?

Robert Paarlberg: Well, people hear about farm subsidies and they assume that the subsidies reduce the price of the commodities being produced by the farmers.

But that's exactly wrong. Purpose of farm subsidies is to increase the income of the farmers. These are powerful political groups that lobby Congress for commodity programs every five years in the farm bill and what they want is higher income. And the easiest way to give a farmer higher income is to increase not to reduce the price of the commodities that those farmers grow.

And that's what we do. We do it several different ways. In the case of sugar, we keep inexpensive sugar from the world market out of the domestic market. And that raises the price of sugar inside the domestic market, about 60% or more above the international price. That's good for sugar growers in, in Florida and sugar bee growers in South Dakota.

But it, it drives up the price [00:33:00] of unhealthy foods like cookies and ice cream inside the United States. If we took this away, we'd be consuming more sugar and our dietary health would worsen. So when it comes to wheat, we pay farmers to take their Wheatland out of production for 10 years under something called a conservation reserve program.

When it comes to, to corn, we have a, a mandate to take about a third of our corn crop every year and take it out of the food supply completely and use it to. Ethanol for auto fuel. And that drives up the price of the feed corn that stays in the food supply that makes it more expensive to feed corn to animals.

And that drives up the price of meat. So at every turn we're using income support to farmers in a way that makes obesity, inducing foods like wheat flour and corn starch and corn and ice cream, more expensive, not less expensive.

Paul Shapiro: So when people talk about meat, one of [00:34:00] the things they'll say is, well, meat is so cheap because of these subsidies, because you basically have corn and soy subsidies, which are the primary animal feeds in the country.

And that keeping corn and soy at these lower prices due to subsidies enables the meat to be cheaper than it would be. If it weren't subsidized. What do you say,

Robert Paarlberg: Rob? Well, I would say go talk to a Hawk producer somewhere in, in the Midwest. They will tell you that they've had terrible problems. In recent years because feed prices are so high due to the, the renewable fuel standard, the, the ethanol program, that's making it more expensive for them to feed their animals.

Of course, there are other reasons why feed prices occasionally, uh, spike upward, but that's the durable problem they've had to deal with going back more than

Paul Shapiro: a decade. So there are some people Rob, who will say, ah, you know, what we really need is not just local or not just organic. They'll say we need regenerative agriculture.

And they point to somebody who you refer to in the book. Joel, Salla tune has been, [00:35:00] uh, widely, uh, lionized and popularized by people like Michael pollen as the holy grail of basically idealized agriculture. And you talk about in the book about Joel Salatin's farm and what certain studies about it have said.

So tell me, what, what do you think about Salatin's style of what some people are referring to as regenerative livestock agriculture here?

Robert Paarlberg: Well, a study was done at Michigan state university that looked at the sell system for beef production, and they found that, uh, compared to conventional beef production where the animals are raised on, on grass, and then spend the last months of their life in a feed lot compared to this system, the skeleton system requires about 43% more agricultural land.

So if we switched to the Salin system, where would that land come from? It would, once again, you would be, there'd be deforestation. You'd be clearing sloping lands, there'd be habitat loss. It would not be sustainable. It would be, [00:36:00] uh, start to look like what we're doing with beef production in the Amazon clearing trees to, to graze cattle.

That's not as good a system as the one that we're using conventionally right now. The solid system also, of course, hasn't scaled up anywhere because the labor costs are, are so hot. Sure.

Paul Shapiro: So. It sounds Rob, like what you're suggesting, and please tell me if I'm characterizing your position incorrectly here is that when it comes to crop agriculture, basically we need to do more of what we've been doing.

More science, more technology, more modern techniques. When it comes to animal agriculture, you're suggesting that we need to, deintensify it not to the point of going to pastoral systems, but to deintensify it and basically eat fewer animals, whether that is by innovation to create plant-based meat or cultivated meat or meat through microbial, fermentation and so on.

Um, but is that your position that basically treat the animals somewhat better [00:37:00] and eat less meat? Is that what you're suggesting? Yes, that's it.

Robert Paarlberg: And I would put very heavy emphasis on both sides of that solution. I think that the, the mistreatment of animals in our livestock systems today it's unnecessary.

We simply didn't pay enough attention. To the welfare needs of those animals. And we, we treated them like crops. We grew them as cheap as possible. And in the end, we actually reduced the quality of the meat. When you have broiler chickens, that gain weight as quickly as the overbred broiler chickens in our system today, the meat isn't as good.

We're learning to pull back from that, but eating less meat is also an important part of the problem. And we have a new, a new study came out in 2019 from a distinguished international panel. The it's called the eat Lancet report in 2019, which drew an alarming conclusion. They said that in order to stay within [00:38:00] what they call planetary health boundaries, that means to protect human health and to protect the environment, including climate, we would have to reduce meat consumption worldwide.

By about 50%, we would have to reduce red meat consumption by 90%. And how are we going to do that? We don't have a proven way to persuade people who are gaining income. This is especially in Asia who are gaining income and have been eating very little meat until now. They finally want to have a diet similar to those that they see, uh, enjoyed by people in affluent countries.

How can we get them to stop increasing their meat consumption and how, how can we get people in the United States? This is a part of the eat Lancet recommendation to repeat, to reduce our red meat consumption by 84%. That's what they said. Well, I think finding substitutes for meat is the most obvious way to do it.

If you look at the fashion industry, they found artificial fur to substitute for [00:39:00] fur from real animals. The shoe industry found ways to make artificial leathers that substitute for the hides of real animals. And with modern science today, we're able to understand. The taste, the texture and the cooking properties of real animal flesh at the molecular level and reconstruct that without any requirement to feed and to raise and to slaughter real live animals.

Paul Shapiro: So let's talk about that. Rob, you are an expert in agricultural policy, obviously. So what are the policies that if you had your pen in your hand to write the next farm bill, or let's say you were talking to secretary of agriculture Vilsack and you wanted to create the right incentives to incentivize innovation, to create animal free meat experiences and to get people to eat fewer animals, what would you do?

Uh, because you're talking by presume you do not support that ethanol mandate, even though it does presumably keep prices higher for meat than they would otherwise be. [00:40:00] If you didn't have that ethanol mandate. So I presume you don't support let's. Increasing the ethanol mandate, but what are the things that you would do to actually help create policies in the right direction of what you're prescribing, which is to eat fewer animals and more fruits and vegetables and more animal free meat experiences too?

Well, well,

Robert Paarlberg: one thing I would put in the farm bill is measures to also discourage excessive consumption, um, and sugar sweetened beverages. I think that's, uh, also been a major source of dietary health, uh, problems in the United States. Maybe not as much a contributor to greenhouse gas and global warming, but, uh, I wouldn't concentrate on just reducing per capita consumption of meat, but for the purpose of reducing per capita consumption of me, I'm a political scientist.

And I know realistically, uh, we're not gonna start taxing meat in the United States. I once did an inventory of taxes, so-called sin taxes, uh, things that are people, people are willing [00:41:00] to have taxed because they're disfavor. And there are 25 or 30 things on, on the list and meat is not one of them. Eating meat is not considered a sin in the United States.

And there's a very powerful livestock industry out there to block, uh, any effort to describe it as a sin or as something that the government should be responsible for.

Paul Shapiro: Discouraging, sorry to interrupt. But I mean, there was a very powerful tobacco industry. Yet we have tobacco taxes, there was a powerful alcohol industry.

We have alcohol taxes, we have luxury vehicle taxes. It may be true that today in 20, at the very end of 2021, that there's not the political will to do that. But do you think that that might change in the future? I, I think

Robert Paarlberg: the, the adverse health consequences of made consumption are not as salient as the adverse health consumptions of either tobacco or alcohol consumption.

I don't think the public health argument, which prevailed in the case of, of tobacco and alcohol is as strong. In the case of meat, we know [00:42:00] that modest consumption of meat can be an important contributor to a very healthy diet. I think it's gonna be very hard to persuade, uh, politicians, especially from livestock producing states, uh, otherwise, but there is a cultural change and is driven in part by animal welfare concerns.

It's driven increasingly by environmental concerns and climate protection concerns. I think people and by personal health concerns, we know that excessive meat consumption is excessive. Meat consumption is a health risk cardiovascular disease in particular. And so consumers are looking for ways to reduce their meat consumption without reducing their meat, eating pleasure, eating meat is a longstanding and a convenient and a pleasant way.

Of getting nutrition for [00:43:00] large numbers of Americans. It's culturally predominant throughout the Western hemisphere. We have a cowboy culture here in north America and a Gaucho culture in all of south America. So I think the obvious way out is to, is to use modern science, to find substitutes for meat from animals that are comparably delicious, comparably convenient, no less nutritious and much safer for the environment and substitutes that don't put the welfare of living animals at risk, and that don't tempt us into excessive use of antibiotics in the livestock sector, which can compromise the value of antibiotics in human medicine.

Paul Shapiro: So, Rob, it sounds. What you're suggesting is basically this is a private sector, innovation that's gonna weed this. Um, you mentioned that in the farm bill, you think we should incentivize ways to consume less sugar. Are there any [00:44:00] public policies that you think could be implemented in order to accelerate that type of change that you're seeking?

So E even if that is, let's say just R and D credits for the companies that are making plant based or cell cultured meat and so on, or other things that you think would be helpful that the federal government or other governments could actually do to achieve this, or is it all up to the private sector?

It's never

Robert Paarlberg: all up to the private sector. I would like to see R and D moving in this direction. I'd like to see the national Institute, food and agriculture, uh, investing more public money in the science of alternative proteins. I'm not certain that would ever happen. The livestock industry would notice that immediately.

Well,

Paul Shapiro: it, it is happening, uh, to some extent where I live, um, out in Sacramento, California. UC Davis just got a national science foundation grant of a few million to study cultivated meat. So Turing real animal cells. Tufts just got a 10 million grant to study alternative proteins as [00:45:00] well. So of course, uh, three plus 10 million is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the federal support that's given to animal agriculture, but it is a, a starting point.

And it seems like there might be some increasing political will. In fact, um, Rosa, Deloro a powerful Congresswoman recently give a, a speech in the Congress on why she thinks more U S D a funding should be going to this type of research to figure out ways that we can divorce meat experiences from animals.

So who knows? That's

Robert Paarlberg: excellent. I, I didn't know that she had done that. I know that she has been a powerful champion for reducing the consumption of sugar, sugar sweetened beverages. And I'm glad that she's paying attention to alternative protein and telling U S D a to start funding things the way, uh, the way, uh, NSF apparently is, is doing it already.

Paul Shapiro: Yes. And admittedly, it's a rounding error in the total number of dollars that are going out from the federal government for agricultural related expenditures, but it is a start and it looks like maybe it'll be the [00:46:00] beginning of something bigger and broader in the same way that we have tried to subsidize, for example, uh, renewable energy research and solar and wind and geothermal and more maybe just in the way that we're trying to find new ways to produce energy without fossil fuels, the government will take an interest in funding, new ways to produce meat without animals.

Robert Paarlberg: Yes. I agree. One thing that has discouraged me, so, or disappointed me so far has been the response of the new food movement leaders to plant-based imitation meats and to sell cultured meats. You would think that these very prominent critics of. Conventional livestock production in the United States would celebrate a way to substitute plant-based products for real animal flesh, reducing the need for concentrated animal feeding operations, but somewhat to my surprise.

No, they don't want it. Uh, look at mark Bitman and Michael poll and [00:47:00] bandana Sheva. They've all been highly critical of plant-based imitation meats. And, and when you ask them why it, it seems to come down to several different concerns that they have first, their ultra processed, or at least processed. And the, um, the mantra of the food movement has been unprocessed whole foods, and they seem to be putting that as their number one priority.

A second concern seems to be well they're corporate products that are patented, and there's a strong anti corporate dimension to the modern food movement. And I think the third, the third concern is, and this goes back to Michael poll's. Mantra about don't eat anything. Your grand great grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

They're they're not traditional. They're not artisanal. They're new innovation. They're not comfortable. The, the modern food moon is not comfortable with innovation. And I think that that, uh, is eventually going to, uh, contain their [00:48:00] influence more than anything else, because, because innovation is, is what moves things, uh, forward in the world and it always has.

And I think it always

Paul Shapiro: will. Right. So I, I agree with you there, Rob, and I think also the influence, maybe large in terms of the real estate, it takes up in the mainstream media at the same time, the actual shift in agricultural production techniques has not been substantive in response to this movement, as you point out organic and so-called local production is still basically a rounding error in the total agricultural food market.

And even with meat. The number of animals raised for food continues to rise, not fall. And those animals are not on small regenerative pastures. They're in what people would generally refer to as factory farms. So, and it's projected to continue rising, not just in places like you mentioned like China and India, where there are expanding middle classes, but even in the United States per capita meat consumption has never been higher and it's projected to continue rising so much.

So that [00:49:00] Tyson and other major meat producers are building new slaughter plants to try to keep up with demand. It's more often

Robert Paarlberg: poultry today, less often red meat actually for capita beef consumption in the United States peaked back in 1976. So we've moved in a, in a healthy direction, environmental as well as personal health from excessive red meat consumption.

We still consume far too much, but at least that's been a trend in the right direction.

Paul Shapiro: Well, it's a right direction, perhaps in the way that you're describing it. But from an animal welfare perspective, it's a pretty horrible direction because these chickens are treated far worse than Caar. There are many more of them.

You have to use many more chickens to get the same amount of meat as you get from one cow. So as we've shifted from beef to chicken, the number of animals raised, and I would say the amount of suffering per animal has also gone up pretty dramatically. So there does seem to be some tension there between the greenhouse gas component and public health component and the animal welfare component, which is why I think that it [00:50:00] may be best just to look for animal free methods of meat production than trying to switch from beef to chicken.

I agree,

Robert Paarlberg: but there's a, another way to get on that path and that's not to replace animals completely with plant-based or Celin substitutes it's to blend those substitutes with real animal flesh in, in a ratio that allows you to sharply reduce the number of animals that have to be raised and killed without sacrificing the real animal tastes.

That consumers want. I once talked to a, an executive at the culinary Institute of America and I said, what's it, what's it gonna take to get American consumers to get away from their unhealthy diet and go to plant based products, meat, substitutes, these things taste pretty good already. Isn't why aren't more people switching.

And he said, good taste [00:51:00] is not the target. He said, tasting good. Isn't good enough. It has to be delicious. It has to rival the meals that you'll get at a restaurant that sells cheesy, meaty fried comfort foods.

Paul Shapiro: That may be so, I mean, I, of course thing, I think taste is king when it comes to food choices and what motivates dietary patterns at the same time, we, you can't ignore the elephant in the room.

I think, which is that non animal meats are typically much more expensive than animal-based meats. So, if you look at the per pound cost of, let's say beyond meat or impossible burgers compared to the per pound cost of commodity beef, you're not talking about like 20 or 30%. Oftentimes you're talking about like two or 300% cost increases, which I think also is a big barrier for some people.

Robert Paarlberg: That's why it starts in restaurants where, where the, the ingredients in the foods [00:52:00] are not what you're mostly paying for those costs can come down. And I think the companies themselves know that they have to come down. I noted that, uh, last year when sales of impossible burgers were increasing rapidly and when they were opening up new plants to try to stay ahead of the demand instead of, um, raising their prices, which they could have done, they cut their prices twice.

They don't wanna be just in each product. They want to be substitute. And now of course, uh, they're not the only players in the market. Now we have a plant based imitation meets being developed by big companies with huge R and D capacities and license or Cargill or ConAgra or Nestle. These, these are the big players and eventually they're gonna tip over, uh, from impossible.

And I think bring these, uh, technologies

Paul Shapiro: to scale. I think that you're right. I, I think that you're [00:53:00] gonna see more and more of the big meat players getting into the animal free meat market and the same way you saw the big, like companies like cannon get involved in digital film. So they are still selling us ways to capture our memories, but it's not through gelatin, film and negatives anymore.

Now it's through digital technology. So I think the same will be, so we'll still get meat experiences, but they will instead come from animal free methods of, of production here. That's what I would predict, but I think it's gonna take some time and it's gonna be quite a shift. And there may be differences of opinion between, let's say the meat producers, um, and the actual people who are raising animals for food and their interests may end up diverging here.

Whereas in the past they have always been aligned. It may not be the case here. I think they're diverging

Robert Paarlberg: already. I think I can, I can see that already.

Paul Shapiro: So Rob, to bring this home, uh, you've written this book. It really, I thought was a great scientific look at ways to actually improve food. Sustainability that go against the [00:54:00] conventional wisdom of the so-called, what you call the food movement.

In addition to your book, after reading it, are there any other resources that you think, uh, would be helpful for people to check out whether they be books or anything else that you think are useful for people who wanna better understand this space? The

Robert Paarlberg: one book that comes to my mind is a book published in 2020 by the Cato Institute, titled 10 global trends.

Every smart person should know the, the authors are Ron Bailey and Marion, and it it's a book that, uh, shows often with dramatic graphs. It shows that along most metrics of the, the wellbeing of, of people today is vastly. I mean, vastly than it was at 50 or 100 years ago, you would never, you, you would never realize that if you only listened to the nightly news, it's amazing how many things have improved.

Even human intelligence [00:55:00] has improved average global IQ scores today have increased 30% compared to the last century. And this book shows you how one thing after another has been changing rapidly and for the better, uh, it it's candid about unsolved problems. It points out that climate change and species extinctions and nuclear weapons in the hands of rogue states that have Intercontinental missiles.

These are the unsolved problems of tomorrow, but it will help it help with the visionaries to distinguish these real problems for tomorrow, from all the problems of yesterday, like hunger and poverty and short lifespans that are now, uh, largely on the way to being overcome. So it's called 10 global trends.

Every smart person should know. All

Paul Shapiro: right, well, we will link to that book in the [00:56:00] episode, uh, notes on this shows episode page at business for good podcast.com. I'd love to check it out too. Sounds like a very Stephen Pinker que argument being made there that basically the good old days. Weren't so good.

That today is a little bit better heard the book. So

Robert Paarlberg: you're thinking on the right page here.

Paul Shapiro: very good. Very good. So finally, Rob, let me ask you, um, you have made many prescriptions here for things that you think ought to be done both by public and by the private sector. But speaking of the private sector, if you are talking to somebody who's listening and they're thinking, Hey, I'd like to improve food or agricultural sustainability.

I wanna start my own venture here. Do you have any thoughts for companies that you might suggest that somebody start to make a positive impact? This is not my

Robert Paarlberg: field. I thought about that as well, because you said you would be asking this question. So I said, okay. What's something that I would pay money for in the food space.

And I've always been frustrated. I have cantaloupe for breakfast, buying cantaloupe at the store. [00:57:00] Uh, most of them are still several days away from, from ripeness. When I. Cut into them. Sometimes I misjudge and they're not quite yet, uh, ripe or I wait too long and they're over ripe. So I wanted a, a system for telling me before I cut into the candle of whether it was ripe or not.

And I, I looked this up a bit online and there is a system it's called an L V D system laser Doppler barometry that detects the rightness of melons and avocados. Their successful tests have been done to this approach. It's a little bit like a, like a microwave. It excites the atoms and molecules inside the catalog.

And you get a readout from that. You can tell whether it's rip met, it's been developed and tested for industrial use for sorting out fruits, so that for timely shipment, but, uh, the real payoff would come from a handheld device that, uh, that individual consumers could use either shopping at the market or [00:58:00] preparing for food, preparing food at home.

So I don't know if you. Miniaturize this down to a handheld device that's affordable, but it's something I'd pay a lot

Paul Shapiro: of money for

Robert Paarlberg: suggestion. Right? I'm sure we're gonna have it before we have imitation canals.

Paul Shapiro: uh, very good. Well maybe, uh, somebody will take that up and try to come up with anion cantaloupe instead, but, uh, it could also reduce food waste to have a device like what you're talking about, but I can tell you, I, you mentioned, uh,

Robert Paarlberg: mentioned something to make the food system more sustainable.

This would be a major reduction in food waste, particularly at the industrial scale.

Paul Shapiro: I, I don't know. I, I see people shaking the cantaloupe, tapping it. I don't know what the heck to do with it either. I have no idea. I cut it open

Robert Paarlberg: what's for experts. If you're an expert, you can, thrump a cantaloupe and know exactly how ripe it is.

Wow. But it's like a wine taster. You have to develop that skill right. Over a

Paul Shapiro: long period of time. Well, I need to go shopping with a cantaloupe. So Maier then, because I [00:59:00] don't think that I'm gonna ever develop that expertise, but. Rob, I'm really grateful for what you're doing. I'm grateful to you for, uh, writing this book.

It's, um, it's quite counterintuitive to many people who might be thinking along the conventional lines. Uh, you are making the argument in favor of using synthetic fertilizers and genetically modified crops and not necessarily caring so much, whether food is local or not, and using more science and more technology in our food in order to create a more harmoneous relationship between humanity and the rest of the planet.

So I really appreciate you writing, uh, what I would consider kind of a contrarian look at the food space and the sustainable food movement. And I'm grateful to you for that. And I'll look forward to, uh, continuing to follow your evangelical nature here on creating a better food system for the whole world.

Okay.

Robert Paarlberg: And I'd like to do something that my publicist at, uh, Alfred can told me I should always do. And that is mention the name of the book. Once [01:00:00] again. Uh, the name of the book is resetting the table straight. Talk about the food we grow and eat.

Paul Shapiro: Very good. Well, thanks so much, Rob. Thanks for listening. We hope you found use in this episode.

If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. And as always, we hope you will be in the business of doing good.