Thread by @AGStover

Wow. It looks like @ImpossibleFoods are going after regenerative ag practices like grass fed beef. You want to know what "environmentally friendly" soy burgers look like? I'll show you.

medium.com/savory-institu…

We've had a massive amount of rain here in the Midwest. Within just a couple of days, this is what the standing water in the field looks like.

It blooms algae almost immediately due to the ammonia nitrates farmers dump into their soils to give them enough nitrogen to grow acres of mono culture crops. This runs of into water ways and chokes animals in water sources w/algae blooms. scientificamerican.com/article/deadly…

A lot of farmers do tillage, which means they plow the soil up before they plant it. Gives plants nutrients but also unloads an assload of stored carbon into atmosphere. climatecentral.org/library/climop…

But some farmers are doing no-till. Even then you still have giant acres of bare soils being irradiated by the sun, destroying soil health. To create the impossible burger we have to treat dirt like a machine and pump it full of shit. politico.com/agenda/story/2…

These people act like they're revolutionizing our food system, but guess what. Much of the grain, esp corn, we already produce goes towards feeding cattle. Largely they're just shifting this around. Maybe they can take down industrial meat, but source of nutrients doesn't change.

Some farmers are doing cover cropping which is a big step towards improving soil health, but it's very challenging and goes against grain of entire monopolistic ag industry. Look at what happens to uncovered v. covered soil when it rains.

And let's look at "petri dish meat" that Silicon Valley VCs say are going to revolutionize our food. Where does it come from now. Well right now it's grown from fetal cells harvested from pregnant cows. Very animal friendly!

They're working on a replacement, though! What are they going to use? Yeast! Wow, ok. What does yeast eat? Sugar. Hmm, where might we find vast quantities of sugar to feed yeast? My guess? We're right back to where almost all our sugar comes from now.

Grass fed beef is a sustainable, natural, carbon sequestering way of producing food that's kind to the animals and doesn't subsidize environmentally harmful industrial monoculture farming practices.

So, just the TLDR for talking to others about Impossible Burger, it's the current-day monocropping, herbi/pesti/fungi-cide dropping, industrial food system repackaged and sold to you as a revolution in food for the environmentally conscious.

Oh, another angle on this too is that these kinds of food systems require huge capital inputs, and naturally over time agglomerate towards monopsony where a few large producers control most everything. The family farm becomes factory.

And to the degree that this thread gets any attention, shift that attention over to the Land Institute (@NatureAsMeasure) which is working on perrenializing our food systems, meaning food from permanent cover crop. landinstitute.org