Unsurprising! So I guess meat and dairy products are going to become astronomically expensive?
The one thing that I can’t find is a palatable alternative to cheese. Are there any yet?
Unsurprising! So I guess meat and dairy products are going to become astronomically expensive?
The one thing that I can’t find is a palatable alternative to cheese. Are there any yet?
I think you need to make it cheaper than cow milk and taste pretty much the same, with a similar nutrient profile. There will still be holdouts but I think the cost thing will be the tipping point. Up until it’s the cheapest option, it’s still a premium product for a niche market. Once that tipping point is reached, I’d hate to be a dairy farmer.
Agreed, but once it is perfected, dairy industry has at most 5 years before basically their entire industry is vapor.
A lot of the tech from wine making will carry over; pumps, filters massive stainless steel vats and a lot of pipe…
If you could buy bio-equivalent milk for 1/4 the cost, would you keep buying the “natural” version?
The next question is what will happen when massive Chinese lab-milk factories replace NZ milk. They won’t need our exported milk, and this will be a huge issue for the economy given our reliance on exported dairy.
Who knows, but maybe we move to different types of farms. Maybe replant some natives, or grow crops.
It will not be pretty, farmers will not do well out of it.
If there was a breakthrough tomorrow, in some lab somewhere. There would be a couple of years at pilot plant stage; kinda micro brewery size, to see if it can scale, then a couple more years at “small” industrial scale to ensure that all of the kinks are worked out. At that point you are at full commercialisation, 2 - 3 years to get a big plant running.
When a huge industry basically disappears overnight, the flow on impacts will be much wider than just to dairy farmers. Every motorbike and tractor salesman and mechanic, every agriculture specialist from banking to insurance to pasture to large animal vets and livestock agents. Virtually every small town held together by the business of the local farmers will turn into a block of the unemployed, eventually the towns will start to disappear.
Maybe these businesses will survive for a while as dairy blocks convert to sheep and beef, as many of the specialised industries that go along with dairy farms are similar. But this will cause an influx of meat in an industry that already has enough. And people are eating less meat.
If the government wants to cut the number of cattle we have, maybe the answer is to contribute to the lab-milk research to allow it to come about sooner.
Not sure why in NZ it seems that the government is always responsible, this should be driven by the industry e.g. Frontera. After all, it is their lively hood and they are the ones who have created the situation. Admittedly with some push from govt. at times.
it’s happening one way or another, but fonterra is owned by farmers. They have no incentive to make it happen quicker. Therefore a nudge may be in order.
Yes they do? Farmers are share holders and Frontera need to make a profit to pay back to farmers. If the industry tanks so do they?
Interestingly, the area where I live was once heavily invested in forestry, mostly native harvesting. The govt. put a stop to that, rightly due to disappearing native forestry. The town nose dived and the population halved. It’s a shell of what it once was.
Forestry is beginning to reappear, so the town is unlikely to disappear as many try to report. It will just change. Hopefully some of the dairy will convert to crops (oats) which will see a future, possibly better than now.
My reading of the history of the area where I am, indicates that dairy has NOT contributed much to the prosperity of the area, but there are some wealthy dairy farmers who will sell up with plenty to retire on. And move away taking a lot with them.
I’m honestly not sure how the fonterra this would work. Farmers own shares based out their milk output. They are required to own a certain number of shares based on this. If lab grown milk starts getting processed through fonterra, wouldn’t the owners of the lab buy the fonterra shares? If fonterra owns the lab, do current dairy farmers just transition to being owners that aren’t contributing milk?
And in regards to the towns, it’s worth considering the world is a different place than it was 100 or even 50 years ago. Forestry workers can drive from a bigger city, do a days work, and head home. They don’t need the small towns like they used to.
I think anything is just speculation, you can’t normally predict the effects of huge change ahead of time. But it will be an interesting next few decades.
“LA LA LA LA LA LA I CANT HEAR YOU”.
– Dairy farmers probably.