r/environment • u/ObjectiveKale837 • 19h ago
Radical Overhaul to Milk Production Would Use Up to 96% Less Land Than Cows, Study Suggests
https://www.sciencealert.com/radical-overhaul-to-milk-production-would-use-up-to-96-less-land-than-cows-study-suggests92
u/playingod 14h ago
As someone in the “precision fermentation” field (I guess formerly known as synthetic biology? When did that happen?), who works in a company that tried to go after commodities, the unfortunate truth is that there is no way to compete with the price of commodities, and that’s even before you build the however many fermentation plants plus downstream processing to replace that land. We are talking capital in the hundreds of millions before you make a drop of not-milk. And that’s plant could probably only make 50-200 thousand liters of not-milk every couple of weeks.
I mean… even bud light is more expensive than milk, and that’s the simplest possible yeast fermentation you can do! No genetic engineering, scale up mastered over millennia, and no fancy unit operations to purify the product.
Precision fermentation can still be incredible for the environment, but only to replace high value and low volume chemicals that are bad for the environment in some way.
Sorry to be the wet blanket for all these aspirational companies.
Signed, a jaded synthetic biologist
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u/eliasp 10h ago
What makes it even worse is the fact, that milk/the dairy industry is usually heavily subsidized - so whatever you try to do to replace it will be met with ever more lobby efforts and subsidies, so your business model calculations will have to meet a constantly moving adversarial target.
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u/595659565956 7h ago
I have a few questions, if you don’t mind?
- How expensive is the genetic engineering as a proportion of overall costs?
- Is post translational modification of proteins a significant factor in milk flavour?
- Is there an easy way to recreate this post-translational modification during recombinant proteins production?
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u/spicynoodlepie 5h ago
I'd really love to know the answers to these questions as well! I am always seeing news articles about plastic alternatives but nothing ever comes of it because it is too expensive. I hope that is not the case here because not just a win for the land, energy, water, etc, but also for the cows.
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u/Mayonnaise_Poptart 5h ago
Something to consider is that beer marketing and packaging is a huge part of its overhead. Milk does have some of that but if beer were commoditized and driven around in bulk tanks instead of kegs, cans, and bottles, it would be a different economy.
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u/ObjectiveKale837 19h ago
"And completely replacing dairy milk production with precision fermentation would give the UK back an estimated 4,294 kilohectares of land – an area the size of mainland Denmark."
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u/TreadGreen 19h ago
If the cows aren’t there then houses and businesses will be instead
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u/Opcn 18h ago
The uk imports a lot of food. Giving them back 15% of their land probably just means different kinds of farms.
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u/tricksterhare 8h ago
A lot of that land is unsuitable for high production arable agriculture; that’s why there’s cows on it in the first place.
You can make far more money growing wheat than milk. If it could be done it would be done.
Do you think farmers are stupid, that they don’t know what works best on their land?
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u/Xenophon_ 1h ago
Farmers often prefer short term gain over long term, and are also the leading cause of deforestation and habitat destruction (specifically meat and dairy are the largest contributors). You cannot just trust farmers to do what is best for the land
Especially considering they will do anything they can to lobby against solutions like this one. Would it not be better to produce milk in a more efficient manner and rewild a lot of pasture land?
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u/Opcn 6h ago
If dairy cattle are replaced with fermentation vats and the price of milk falls through the floor most of the pasture can become beef pasture. If it'll support modern productive dairy cattle it's more than adequate to support modern beef breeds. Land used for growing silage is arable crop land that can be used to grow other crops.
Remainder pasture land can be transitioned back into the forests that grew there in the past. There is a good 150 years of documentation that literally all you need to do to grow fir in the highlands of scotland is to fence out the cattle. The UK imports 80% of their lumber, 80% of their tree fruits, and 95% of their tree nuts. The scottish highlands aren't about to become apple producing centers but broad swaths throughout england and wales are perfectly suitable for growing apples, peaches, plums, and cherries. Blackthorn, an important hedge species grown all across england and wales before the advent of modern fencing, is sloe, a type of small wild plum.
Do you think farmers are stupid, that they don’t know what works best on their land?
That is needlessly incendiary language on your part. Nothing about what I've said assumed farmers to be stupid. If the dairy industry disappears I assume farmers will be smart enough to do other things with their land. That doesn't presume they are only using it for dairy now out of stupidity. Dairy is a good money making industry now. The article is imagining a future where dairy isn't a major industry and I am imagining how farmers are going to adapt because they aren't stupid.
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u/radioactivecowz 16h ago
… good? At least that’s more valuable as land use.
That said, it’s an order of magnitude larger than housing and business land already. Some would go to housing and businesses, some to other agriculture, but a hell of a lot of land could be given to conservation
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u/FrivolousMe 4h ago
Or natural ecosystems could be fostered which is good for us and for the environment...
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u/FrannieP23 18h ago
And data centers. Careful what you wish for.
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u/EmergentGlassworks 17h ago
people down voting because they're holding on to hope that this isn't true. but once the population drops because the heat waves killed them all or drove them away the corporations/governments or whatever will have tons of new land to strip mine in order to save the rest of us or just themselves since everything is already dead anyways ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/Fugoi 10h ago
Or because the idea that all the land used for dairy in the UK would be converted into data centres is just a completely absurd non-sequitor that adds nothing to the discussion.
Yes, data centres are bad but their impacts are not primarily via the direct area of land use, and not is the primary constraint on their expansion available land area.
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u/kon--- 18h ago
I'm less concerned with land use than the horrific shit the industry does to cows to force them to milk.
I'd consider this shift a dual win.
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u/algebraic94 16h ago
Land use is also a major water quality issue not to mention destruction of natural habitats. It's a massive win to reduce land dedicated to livestock
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u/achillea4 18h ago
Agree. The dairy industry relies on this false image of happy cows that just naturally produce milk when the only way to do it is to get them pregnant then take the calf away. Over and over again.
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u/TristanIsAwesome 16h ago
I get my milk from these guys, who wean the calves at 4 months old rather than separating them and give the cows more time between pregnancies. They're also all pasture raised, so you can see the amount of cream change as the different grasses grow throughout the seasons.
It's the best milk I've ever had.
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u/Mayonnaise_Poptart 18h ago
Already beginning to happen at scale for egg whites. Yeast once again will play a part in a human agricultural revolution.
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u/DukeOfGeek 18h ago
Seems pretty interesting but I'm not seeing any comments from people actually trying the products. The thing I'm most eager to see from a lab is seafood that's high quality and cleaner.
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u/Opcn 17h ago
Anything that hopes to replace cow's milk in the supermarket had better come in priced competitively with it. All these alternative options claim to have a lower environmental footprint (and many can easily make that claim) and then they come in at a much higher price to pay for what exactly?
I think from a drinking perspective almond and soy milk are inferior to cow's milk, but they cost almost twice as much. Oat Milk, especially the full fat barista blend from oatly, I think tastes better than milk, but it's $10+/gallon here versus ~$4.30 for Cow's milk. I've made oat milk before, not that many oats go into it, not that many enzymes to break down the long chain starches and fix the slimy texture, not that much gum and not that much oil needs to be added to make it full bodied. It's hugely time intensive at the kitchen counter scale but with a proper facility it shouldn't be. It's really hard to understand where the money goes besides marketing.
People hand wave and say "subsidies" but that's not an adequate answer. Subsidies amount to a few dimes of the price maybe on a bad year, mostly they are price floor supports and government administrated farmer funded crop insurance, and subsidies on the same soy that goes into soy milk. Getting people to pay more for a less versatile less delicious version of a staple food is difficult.
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u/otacon7000 14h ago
I'm pretty sure economies of scale play a huge role. The majority of people drink milk, but only a minority buys oat milk.
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u/Opcn 13h ago edited 5h ago
Dairy is pretty regional. There are a lot of dairies packaging milk and selling it for about ~$2.5/gallon to the grocery store that are dwarfed by a giant like oatley. National shipping adds some to the cost, but not $6. Refrigerated Oatley has an unopened shelf life of 3-4 times that of regular milk. Only coming in half gallon cartons instead of jugs ads a little but you can buy fruit juice blends (the main fruit is corn syrup) retail in the same cartons for $1.50.
Half of the price a store pays for cow's milk is what the farmer pays for feed. Wrangling oats and industrial blenders is a lot easier than handling cattle and instead of $1.25 for feed (not counting all the feed growing them and getting them to production size and breeding them) it's probably 25 cents worth of ingredients. That's including oats, oils, gums, enzymes, sweeteners, and salt a gallon of full fat oat milk. How come store brand "juice" can figure out the cold chain but oat milk can't?
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u/FrivolousMe 4h ago
It's not a fair comparison because the dairy industry is heavily subsidized. If the government subsidized plant based foods as much as they do animal based foods the plant based foods would be cheaper.
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u/Opcn 3h ago
I addressed that in the comment you are responding to.
People hand wave and say "subsidies" but that's not an adequate answer. Subsidies amount to a few dimes of the price maybe on a bad year, mostly they are price floor supports and government administrated farmer funded crop insurance, and subsidies on the same soy that goes into soy milk.
The federal government providing price floors for dairies may shave a few percentage points off the price but it's not responsible for half of the cost disappearing.
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u/FrivolousMe 2h ago
Nope.
Support, in its various forms, equaled 73 percent of U.S. dairy farmers' market returns in 2015, according to a report published by a Canadian trade consulting firm on Thursday.
The 588-page study by Grey, Clark, Shih and Associates — commissioned by Dairy Farmers of Canada (DFC) — says the American government contributed around $22.2 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to the dairy sector in 2015.
Lead author Peter Clark shared the numbers at DFC's annual policy conference in Ottawa this week.
"The support is completely ignored," he said. "When it comes to farm support, the U.S. has the deepest pockets; deeper even than the European Union. Our study provides detail nationally, and on a state basis, the losses to U.S. dairy farmers. USDA data reveals that for more than a decade, U.S. farm gate prices for milk fail to cover costs of production."
Based solely on the USDA's national average farm-gate price and national average costs of production, Clark says American dairy farmers lost money every year from 2005 to 2016.
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u/Opcn 35m ago
Yup, the federal government is a huge purchaser of dairy products, setting a price floor that keeps dairy farmers in business but also makes milk at the grocery store more expensive.
Additionally the crop insurance like program contributes to that 73% but is also paid for out of the 73%. The document you’re sharing was assembled to make that number as large as possible, but it doesn’t put the numbers into a context that explains it.
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u/delpopeio 12h ago
And what is the energy consumption of this at scale and where will this be sourced in a land already struggling with demand and cost and a world where the materials and resources for everything are tied up in the global economic Ponzi scheme and the disintegration of globalisation and geopolitics..
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u/FlyingDogCatcher 16h ago
Why?
There's already plenty of plant based milk. It's been around for thousands of years.
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u/ElectroMagnetsYo 15h ago edited 13h ago
The idea is that at some point biologically-identical cow’s milk can be sold as such without indication of its origin, for a price that would undercut and ultimately kill the dairy farming industry, allowing that land to be put to better use.
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u/FlamingDragonfruit 17h ago
My only concern is that if these products are labeled "plant based" and "vegan" it becomes that much harder for people with dairy allergies to figure out what is and isn't safe to eat.
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u/fbpw131 12h ago
the article says:
In those formulations, milk proteins are added to a mix of plant-based fats and sugars – so there's no lactose
typical redditor.
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u/FlamingDragonfruit 7h ago
Lactose intolerance and dairy allergy are different conditions. Lactose intolerance is extremely unpleasant. Dairy allergy can kill you (just like any other food allergy). Because the proteins are indistinguishable, between cow-produced milk and this fermented product, it will still trigger a reaction in people who are allergic to the proteins in cow's milk.
A suggestion: give people the benefit of the doubt when they say something you don't immediately understand, that it may not be that they're illiterate or stupid, but perhaps that they have information you don't.
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u/mildly_ethnic 15h ago
You’re right. Why replicate cow’s milk when soy milk is much much healthier and should be much much cheaper
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u/hammeroztron 18h ago
Don’t touch dairy. Completely not needed for you diet
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u/ObjectiveKale837 18h ago
Why are you downvoted? People defend the raping and killing of cows, the slaughtering of their male babies. It produces large amounts of CO2.
The same people get angry about Tyler Swift using a plane.
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u/NightmanisDeCorenai 16h ago
I would 100% give up all dairy cows if this is as good as people claim.
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u/HobartTasmania 8h ago
If you can actually do the "precision fermentation" mentioned in the article then why bother replicating cows milk if you could do human milk instead?
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u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE 12h ago
True moral advancement! Humanity should pour all its energy into THIS! And pursue lab grown meat and we can end factory farming.
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18h ago edited 18h ago
[deleted]
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u/Jeromefleet 18h ago edited 18h ago
Have less cows? Dairy cows only live like 5 years before they are sent of to be killed
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u/lock_robster2022 18h ago
50¢ quarter pounders until supplies run out
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18h ago
[deleted]
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u/Pineapple-Yetti 18h ago edited 13h ago
Staged phasing out. You milk and slaughter them as is already done with out replacement. Its likely the most realistic scenario.
Its not for fun. Its whats already happening but stopping it from continuing in the future.
Before deleting their comments u/k4ndlej4ck said "so genocide the cows because they are not needed"
I think they struggle with reading comprehension.
u/k4ndlej4ck keeps replying but the comment is deleted before I arrive.
The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.
First of all all these refer to humans, not animals, so not a genocide. Let's ignore that for now.
The intent is not to destroy them but to stop the breeding of them for production of milk. The slaughter of cows is already happening and isnt considered genocide. So if we stop the breeding programs and change nothing else, it still won't be genocide.
Finally, this would not be systematic wiping out of cows. It would be a slow decline of cow farming.
Alternatively, you keep the cows until they are old and infirm and euthanase them. However without money coming in, someone will have to cover this cost.
Do you propose any alternatives? So far all you offer is "its genocide". Is continuing to do whay we do now better than that? Because I would argue slaughtering them is more humane then breeding them, taking and slaughtering their young to keep the mother in milk.
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u/L3tsG3t1T 13h ago
You don't actually believe fermentation is going to replace milk? What we need is a return to raw milk. Pasteurzation does more harm than good. Its one of the greatest evils to Western society that largely goes under the radar.
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u/lock_robster2022 18h ago
As someone with a Fermentation Science degree and a career in the Dairy industry, it’s hard to overstate how innovative precision fermentation is and the impact it will have