Good stuff.
I see Rutger Bregman (author Utopia for Realists and How Can We Get There, same guy who started about taxes at Davos and caused Tucker Carlson to melt down on his own show) has been writing and posting quite a bit about it (cellulair agriculture include precision fermentation).
Nearly a third of all EU subsidies go to agricultural. Over 99% of that goes to meat and dairy. NL get’s a billion annually, France, Italy, and Germany a whole lot more. It’s partly a historic artifact, negotiating agricultural subsidies allowed countries like NL, Germany and France to slighlty offset their net contribution to the EU. Most goes to the north west of eu, i.e. the members who receive most also pay most. So it’s a tool by itself, one some countries (especially France and Italy) would hate to see go because just a tiny piece of NL will produce enough.
As one of the main dairy exporters in the world, NL used to have China by the balls, well at least a two-finger pinch on one ball. China set out to massively increase and promote milk consumption a few years ago, as well as production. Still not self-sufficient but getting their faster than expected. If not, it’s going to affect the trade balance with China in a negative way too.
Cows got to be impregnated to produce milk. Who knew… well, turns out that comes as a surprise to many. It leads to a calf. NL slaughters 750k of those by product calves per year. From 1.5mil milk cows (not sure how that works but ah well…). And we’ve gotten so efficient at it, others export the same amount to us for us to exterminate them. The only upside of it being done in NL is that we generally do adhere to the regulations and use most of the calf, including for leather of course. Without that leather and byproducts, other countries with less strict rules would produce part of that it in even less animal and environment friendly ways.
1.5mil calves, annually, as a by product of milk produced in this corner of eu. We got a 100million chickens. Almost 6 per capita. Half the country’s land is used for agriculture (producing only 1.5%gdp, but half of that is from plants not animals). So yeah, bring it.
This is from the most powerful dairy company in NL. The main middleman between dutch farmers and stores and other countries.
FrieslandCampina Ingredients, the global innovator in healthy and functional ingredients, today announces it has entered a strategic partnership with specialist biotechnology company Triplebar Bio Inc. to develop and scale up the production of cell-based proteins using precision fermentation...
www.frieslandcampinaingredients.com
Lots of ammo for the new industry that will obviously replace them in a decade or so, the fossil fuel industry is fucked too. If they need that amount of government propping up to stay in business now, just imagine what the next decade will bring if the forecasts are true. If America just ended support for ethanal fuel it would lower world food prices and of course the fossil fuel industry subsidies will be under heat too.