Thread by @Rosewood_Farm

A little note about the #LessAndBetter meat message - I'm quite well known for calling this out as unhelpful and actually harmful to developing more sustainable farming systems, but it's not *just* because I sell meat, although that has given me an insight into the effect of such

a destructive message. The problem stems mainly from the vague nature of the message - less than what? better than what? what is better? what is 'meat'?- it's not at all clear, if you take greenhouse gas emissions, for example, cows emit methane so they must be bad, right, so

let's eat chicken instead? But hang on, chicken is the most intensively reared meat available, so how can that be 'better'? Well, maybe we first need to work out what we mean by 'meat' and how things have changed. According to FAO Stat, in the half century to the UK has changed

it's meat eating habits, each of us are eating, on average;
24% LESS Beef
6% MORE Pork
394% MORE Chicken (& other poultry)
4% LESS Seafood
53% LESS 'Other' (Mainly goat, lamb & game)

But hang on, there's also more people, right? Sure so our TOTAL consumption must be more, but not across the board, with population increase we're eating;
11% LESS Beef
25% MORE Pork
478% MORE Chicken (& other poultry)
13% MORE Seafood
44% LESS 'Other' (Mainly goat, lamb & game)

Now, I've been producing what most (though certainly not all!) people would describe as 'better' meat; #organic, #grassfed, #WildlifeFriendly #ConservationGrazing beef, and I did once subscribe to the idea that we needed to eat less and better to make farming more sustainable but

with a bit of experience I learned it was doing us, certainly 'better' meat producers, no good, and not encouraging 'worse' meat producers to change - the very thing it was supposed to do. 🤔

It's a well meaning theory - we reduce our consumption, the farmer has less work but gets the same money - what's not to love? 💕Well, in a word, #economics - basic supply & demand theory says that if demand rises and supply stays the same then the price goes up, but if

demand drops and supply stays the same then the price drops. And who benefits when demand drops? I'll give you a clue, it's not those with higher costs and lower outputs - they are the low hanging economic fruit. And selling less does mean your costs are higher simply because

1) you can't make use of the economies of scale that larger processors and retailers can & 2) your per unit cost of production goes up because you're using more human labour and you're spending more on the costs of selling - finding customers, serving them, packaging their

smaller quantities of food. Also, if you're eating your 'less' meat are you going to buy a meat box direct from a farmer (uptake of 'better' meat by the retail and food service industry has been painfully slow) or get a nicely portioned piece of chicken from the supermarket?

Most people go for the latter, as they can also get 'more' of the rest of their shop in the same place.

Finally, the theory of #LessandBetter requires everyone to buy their fair share of 'better' meat, but life isn't like that, some people will go #vegan or #vegetarian (which is

their choice, for which they are perfectly entitled to do so!) so they won't be (financially) supporting better, and then people eating more (but better) meat will be needed to make up the difference (the #carnivore diet being a prime example) but then the vast majority

may either a) cut down but continue to eat from the supermarket (the "I only eat a little bit of chicken" diet) or b) not change at all. #LessandBetter is all (economic) gravy if everyone follows the theory and switches to 'better' meat overnight, but then the production would

hold us back, as we need a more gradual and sustained transition to #MoreandBetter meat to allow producers to invest the effort and their hard earned cash in new ways of producing the food and getting it to the customer. To speed this up they need cash and as we've spent that

half century slashing the amount of our incomes we spend on food to less than 10% today (about one third of 1950's spend) simply giving the farmers the same amount of money for less product isn't going to work, especially if it's going straight out of their pockets in

increased costs.

So sure, if you can't afford to eat more and better meat, don't bankrupt yourself but equally if you can afford a bit more on good food, all that artificially reducing your demand will achieve is a slower progress. If you can afford to eat more or less the same

amount of meat but switch to better sources - do it!

Some people will worry that we producers won't be able to produce enough if you keep demanding it at the rate you are but so what? If we can't produce it you're going to have to eat less, and the demand will drive the

price up, so everyone is happy! So just eat better, support those producing better and we'll let you know when we're in any way struggling to keep up with demand. We're a long way from that point as it stands -

We need MORE farmers to be encouraged to produce the Rosewood.Farm way and for that we need more demand. If we don't get it how can we grow? We won't, we'll just go & do something easier, like literally anything.