00:00:12 Speaker 1: I guess I grew up on an row. Hey, everybuddy, Welcome, Episode one, twenty seven of The Hunting Collective. I am Ben O'Brien, and I'm joined by Phil t engineer. Say hey, Phil, Hey, Ben, how are you? We're recording this one a memorial day, so I'm really good. We're gonna make this short and sweet so we can get back to our families. But I was just explaining to you that Joe Jamie Ferinado just shot a giant black bear, and so we're down in my garage. I had to wash my hands to come up here and record. We're down in my garage, Uh, skinning out his black bear because it died near the road so we could drag it into my garage. So I have small children running around on bikes, a lot of Americana, and then uh, in the middle of it is the blood and guts and go or of processing a black bear film. Yeah. Have you invited any of the neighborhood children to come see all of them? Yes? Let's see how many complaints here your h o A gets. Yeah. I try to like stake the claim within suburbia that it's gonna happen like there's gonna be some some gore around my place. You're just gonna have to deal deal with it. Um, you know, and giving given our last podcast, I feel like, you know, I'm more prepared now than ever to deal with life, Life's challenge. UM, so we're kind of we're kind of flying high. Phil, after last week, UM, I know you were just kind of a bystander to the story, but UM, we're all. I I spent the last seven days dealing with kind of the aftermath of our podcast last week with Brett Bond talking about his father Glenn and their story. As amazing as it is, there is so many details that a story that we left out. We got a few people complaining that we talked too long before the Baritech story actually got going, but I will admit to saying we probably left out another hour's worth of conversation about the details surrounding that attack. So I've got a pile of emails about asking questions, um, praising Brett Bond as a hero, saying Glenn Glenn Bond is the toughest son of a bitch alive, which I agree. Do you agree with that? Phil? I think so? I mean, I just I the fact that his his body was just even functioning after that is miraculous. Yeah, I got a text from Lorraine Phillips, his wife, saying that he he listened to the podcast and thought it was okay, which I felt, which I felt. I felt very vindicated, like I really did. I really very much wanted his approval and we got it in some strange way. So, well, what we're gonna return to to that story on the Mediator dot com in the coming days. If you check the website, i'd say tomorrow, which is Wednesday. We're still working out a lot of details. There'll be a big story on on that. So if you're still wondering anything about Glenn Bond, Brett Bond, the Rain Phillips and they're wild and crazy story from bear attack to medical um incarceration, I guess we'll call it. There's some arguing about what what to call what happened to Brett Bond, but there's a lot of a lot of drama, a lot to uncover. So we got a big piece coming around the Mediator dot com, So you can check that out in the next couple of days. So I'll be looking for that, Phil I gotta tell you, I got two good emails. But before we get to that, I kind of want to explain a little bit of what we're doing today. You do you know you're aware of what we're doing today, Phil, right, not at all? Why don't you, uh you tell me about attention? Uh? I thought I thought you'd have a lot of insight on what I'm trying to pull off here, whether it'll be success or not. Um So here's what we're trying to do. And I say I'm trying because I've I've I find this particular conversation a little difficult only because I'm out of my depth and many parts of it. But let's just say this. We we talked to a gentleman named Nick Holla from Impossible Meats about Okay, Ben, I'm sorry, I thought I thought you. I thought you had some special surprise plan for this opening segment. We're talking about the subject matter of the episode. Oh yeah, I know about that. About that, I thought I thought you'd just given up on me, and I wanted to move past it because it did hurt me a little bit that you had given up. I'm not that detached. I I know who the guests are today, Ben, I do okay, well, how about you tell everybody who the guests. Let's test your allegiance, Philip, tell us who the guests are today. There's two of them. Yeah, the guests are Nick Holla from Impossible Meats and is it Robbie Sam Sansom yea from Force of Nature ironically, so they both have meat in the title. One of them doesn't use animal flesh, the other does. Um. But what we're what Robbie and Nick are here to do today is provide a little bit of perspective on something we've chatted about and had a little fun with, got real serious about in the past, and that is essentially our food system, what it is today, it's impact on our world, our environment, and how we can do it better. Um. And I know we're a hunting podcast and that's not necessarily right in line with going out in the woods, finding an animal, killing it, bring it home like Joe Joe, Jamie Ferrnado is down in my garage doing right now. But I'll tell you that we have to address this stuff. In my opinion, No, it's it's way more prevalent now in the times of COVID. But how our food system works in the future affects a lot of things that affects land use, It affects how healthy we are, it affect it affects trust me, if meat goes away, public opinion for hunting, I'm sure will Wayne. So there's a ton of things that are happening here that we need to keep an eye on. And so what we're doing today is is talking to Nick and talking then to Robbie and trying to suss out what their solutions are for continuing our food systems. Now we've talked about plant based meat, lab based meat, fac similes for meat. What Nick and Impossible was going to describe is their quest to take animal flesh, animal products out of our food system. So that's their stated goal. Their CEO, Pat Brown has stated that publicly says that on their website. So that's a very radical in my view way to look at it. And then Robbie Sampson will then take He's going to take us down a path looking at as he has in the past on this podcast, regenitive agriculture, getting back to the land and using animals to help regenerate our soil and regenerate to earth and bring us back to the biodiversity that we we all know that we need so again, Phil, I will admit to being out of my depth here, can you tell only a little bit? But I mean the thing is is that I think it's one thing that both of these these men and pretty much everyone who knows anything about it can agree on, is that the way meat is generally harvested and you know, sold and produced in this country is not sustainable. Um. And like there's people have different ways of trying to, you know, fix that. And so I think this is a great episode because it's got two different two different perspectives and the pros and cons of of each. Yeah. And if you're you know, we're we call ourselves conservationus here meat eater um. I I strive to be that, I really do. I don't know if I always live up to the likes of Auto Leopold or not. But you know, he was a man of the natural world, a man of knowledge about the natural world. And something that Robbie suggested to me the other day, and it's a great one if you noteworthy, if you would go and find his piece titled Odyssey, It was written Ino, and I think it pretty well demonstrates how long, um, we've known these issues of the ecosystem versus agriculture, and that's kind of what this Some of this boils down to UM and this is suggested by Rob. You and I really agree that it's a good assignment for everybody to read that, and if you google it, you can find it um and it may help anyone out there's interested and hopefully you're interested in this topic to better understand how nature works and how a system that functions that harm me with nature can be a better solution. And as we talk about in the show, are my supply chain is the natural world. We have agent federal and state agencies to help manage that give me access to my food supply and the land and ecosystem that's required to keep those populations healthy is very important to me. So all that ties in. So we won't we won't go up much further into that. We're gonna discuss it. But the way I wanted to set this up fill where we had Nick on and Robbie on. They have uh, I wouldn't say, I would say opposing viewpoints. In lots of ways, they both kind of have a similar mission, they have different ways of getting there. So it's really an interesting dichotomy. So you're gonna hear from Nick first, and then I'm gonna hear from Robbie second, and then we'll close it out and kind of wrap up a little bit of how we think about it. I didn't want to really get him on the same same call because it would have just turned into a debate point by point. I think I wanted to hear each one of them out, take from um, each one of them the perspective we could, and then compare contrast. And you guys can all make up your minds whether you want to eat plant based meat or you want to have a nice bison burger. Um you you, you guys can probably understand where I fall. Um, Phil, you're gonna You're gonna side with with bison or the plant facsimile? Yeah, yeah, I might. I might just dip my toes in a little bit of each. Does that sound You're You're millennial? But not really, because so far the plant based stuff that I've tried is not not great. But maybe maybe that'll change in the future. There's a deal, man, there's a deal in this where like a lot of of the most compelling part of the story that we're gonna work. Our way through today is about this plant based meat. It kind of sits at the altar of technology. It's like progress and technology and pushing forward and doing new things and finding new solutions, and so it's an interest. It's just a really an interesting mindset. Um. So I'm glad we got to got to go through today. But before we get to that, Phil got a couple of emails. This is one of the more one of my one of my favorite emails we've ever gotten, Buddy, and the premise let me just read I'm just read you the first sentence and let you react. It's from Daniel Beer Beer Inc. I'm sure I said that wrong. Thank Sorry Dan uh His first the first sentence is I've got a crazy theory. I think Shane Mahoney is God in disguise. You want you want to hear more of Phil? No? No, I mean I'm I'm on board. So far on board. I'm on board. Go go with me on this for amenute. He says, the white hair, the beard, the voice. His immense knowledge and ability to articulate that knowledge is otherworldly. I bet he was sitting up in heaven watching us idiots destroy the natural world, and he thought to himself, I'm going down there and show these dummies why I made nature of the way I made it before it's gone for good. Of course, Daniel says, I'm mostly kidding. Ps. Phil is as soft as puppy ship. Later, Dan, I don't that's unnecessary. It's unnecessary, Dan, I mean, no matter how true it is, it's unnecessary. No, you don't need to take shots at Phil like that. I would listen. I've got that's a that's a great email. Uh. Some points are well stated, but I have one counterpoint, and that is, if Shane Mahoney were God, it would not have taken us an hour to troubleshoot his microphone to start the Internet's part of the ruse. That's part of the ruse. Man got it. That's part of how he tricks us into thinking that he's not God. I I from from just a visual standpoint, absolutely absolutely, it's the same for the audio audio perspective. He's got it. But yeah, I love Shane Mahoney, always love having him on UM. Him and I are talking more and more about doing some series of podcasts together for th HC. So hope you'll be seeing more. I hope of and hearing more more importantly, Shane Mahoney in the future, Phil, You've been talking about your first poop in the woods on other podcasts. Uh yeah, I mean I Yanni asked, and I answered, I'm not gonna say no. Did you reference the Hunting Collective? When you answered I did, I referenced you by name this podcast. He was like, you know, when I was on like my main job, which is The Hunting Collective superior podcast, The Hunting Collective hosted by Benjamin O'Brien. Yeah, those, I think that's what I said. Don't don't fact check, don't don't check. I'm sure I'm right, um perfect, Yeah, but the yes, the answer is yes. I I really I recounted my tale. Good Well. We got an email from Patch Gray and he said, all across the meteor plat and I haven't listened to whatever podcast it is that you're talking about where you're where. You are cheating on me by telling your first crap in the woods story elsewhere. I feel like we should have copyrighted that here for maybe because we're gonna make that toilet paper T shirt. That's right, yeah, coming up pretty soon anyway, Patrick Ray says, all all The talk across the Mediator platform about Phil crapping in the woods has left me weirdly curious for any stories about hunting situations that involved accepting, then embracing unavoidable, as he calls it, quote unquote disaster pants in order to either make a kill or keep from ruining someone else's killed. It's a little confusing. I mean, I think that's that. I think he's talking about ship in his pants, ship in your pants, That's what I think. Um So he's asking if anybody any of us have made the sacrifice too to ship our pants. Um I have? Actually, Oh, oh god, do you want to hear you want to hear it? Or maybe keep it for another keep it for another time. That's that's that's a let's do you want you want to put it in the pocket. Let's put it in the pocket. Let's put it in for next week. Let's put it. Let's put it in the pocket, which is a weird turn of phrase. We're gonna save it for next week, next week. I promise I will tell you the time that I I mean it was multiple times on one hunt that I ship myself. I mean multiple times, Come on, come on, it was it was it was. It became a regular occurrence in fact, but it was extenuated circumstances. Phil, So it I I feel like I'm totally in the right here. So we'll we'll wait till episode one to tell you about that, because we don't want to ruin you know, well we would generally have is kind of a high minded conversation coming up. It's gonna take a lot of it's gonna take a lot to convince me that this was anything but just no way, no way to convince you poor decision making. Um, nope, nope, no this there's nothing you could tell me that would justify you crapping your pants multiple times for hunting. Wait, wait till next week. This Wait, I've written the story multiple times, so if you go around metator dot com and search for poop stories, you'll find it. Um. But we're just giving you, guys what you want here because there's nothing more popular in I don't think, and we've given away to Hunts, New Zealand and all kind of We've had a lot of big time happenings on the show, nothing bigger than Phil's first crap in the woods. So we're going to continue down that storyline. For those of you that follow every week, the only thing that would be more popular is if I was crapping in the woods and then got attacked by a bear while I was crapping. That would be the most popular story while shaving your mustache. Yes's we could. We should probably make that happen. But so next week, next week, we gotta have Joe Fernado on to talk about this big bear he killed, because boy, he killed a big one, and uh, we need to tell the story. But we'll get to all of that next week. So for now, I want to get you straight to this is. This is a bit of a like I said, we were doing it differently. You're gonna hear Nick first, and then a little break and then Robbie and we'll come back and wrap it all up for you here and one enjoy Nick, Holla for my possible meats. Nick, how are you? I'm doing well? How are you today? Good? Good? I can't complain you are You are not in Kansas, that's for sure. You're over in Hong Kong right now, so we're reaching you. Yes, this is a long way is away from the farm, so yeah, I have moved over to Hong Kong about two and a half months ago. That's that's how I, like I said prior to hitting record, I I want to ask you all about that, but we got thirty minutes or so with you and hopefully we can stretch it a little bit further. So kind of just get to you know, what we want to talk about. And I think, UM, give us a quick rundown of your history with Impossible Meats, Um, how you first started about the company, how you came to be an employee, and what's it what it's been like. Yeah, So my background has been an agriculture and food the vast majority of my life. I grew up in a dairy farm um in southern Minnesota. I are my whole family, extended family all since we're in the agricultural world. My grandparents had the chickens, my uncle has had the beef, cows and pigs, and it was definitely a very big farming community. And so with that is like I've been connected to the landed environment ever since, ever since I was born, essentially, and I think that drove a big sustainability drive and me personally, because our job as farmers is to produce great food for people. Affordably while maintaining our land for the future generations. And the challenge is just the scale that we do agriculture at today and inefficiencies in it make it really hard and pretty much impossible to really maintain our land and pass it down to the future generations. And that's a lot of what we're doing. It impossible. And then you know, after the farm, as an engineer, worked at General mills Um designing new products and manufacturing systems, which is cool. Got to really go into consumers homes all the way down to the production floor to make things happen. But it's like, you know, making a biscuit cheaper or making a cool fruit roll up that I put your picture on. It's like, you know, I'm not going to really change the world that way. And so I went out to grad school and at that point I was actually done with agriculture and food because I didn't see any impact in it, and I was focusing fully on renewable energy, so solar, bio fuels, batteries, and that's where I saw great technology, great science, and global impact, which is what I wanted to do. You And then through that process got to know the venture capital community in San Francisco, UM and one of the partners of the solar company I was working at, had been talking to our founder Dr Brown and our our founders background. He had spent twenty five years in the medical school at Stanford researching cancer genomics. He had never done anything in food before, but he took a sabbatical looking at where he could have the biggest impact on the in the world as a biochemist. Realized by far this is what it was. Yeah, you did you find that? What's your official title over there by the way and get that out of the way. So I'm the senior vice president of International. UM have had many roles and impossible So we started the company nine years ago. I was technically the first employee before the company started, and the first five years ran kind of anything that was not science was my job to get done. So financing, finding space, building supply chains, m agricultural work, quite a bit of engineering, and really any anything that we needed to kind of support our team to help them do the research to understand what actually makes meat, fish, and dairy food so good and then starting to build products. And then I ran partnership strategy and new initiatives for a couple of years, and then the last couple of years i've been reading international and then last year in the retail business back in the US. That's right. I was gonna say that you probably have the nick nick at email you're hanging onto that. I bet I like it. Well, it seems like you're well, well healed. Answer a lot of questions I have you know about I've had the product we are founder Stephen or Nell, and I did a little taste test. One of your competitors were involved. But I've also had like the the impossible OPPORTUO just to give it a shot. UM, So in me I think you have I don't think. I know you have kind of like an intrigued consumer who eats a lot of meat but also sees like this could be an alternative. And then I run into a lot of a lot of questions and issues along the way. So I want to talk to you and kind of go through some of those. Have you have you take um, give your take on at the company's take on it? Um, it seems like you've been doing this and devote your life to it. So I'm happy to have you in in here to talk. UM. Yeah, that sounds great. Do you find do you find that a lot of folks at UM at your company are doing it you know for more um ideological I guess is maybe not the best way to put us one way ideological reasons they have a larger goal in mind. Yes, UM, that is definitely something that we hire a lot for. Is the passion behind what we're doing and impossible is is a passion mission based company. Like we've been asked so many times like are you a technology company? Are you a food company? And the best answer I heard Pat give is, you know, we are technology company. We are creating a new technology to create a much more efficient sustainable food system. Where a food company we are to bring good food to people. But at the end of the day, we're a planet company. That is literally the only reason we exist. Our mission is to produce the most delicious meat, fish, and fairy foods world has ever had, all directly from plants and to doing that, we can restore the bio diversity of the Earth back to what it's been in the past versus what's going on now where we're continued really to destroy the bio diversity of the Earth. I mean, you look at some of the numbers, and right now we use about of the arable land service for animal agriculture um three percent, all the fresh water each year, more greenhouse gases and transportation, and you look at the biodiversity and the wildlife on earth has been cut in cut by more than half in the last forty years. That's really driven by our hunger for meat, fish, and dairy foods. And it's the challenges of just extremely inefficient like an animal as a food production technology. You look at like a beef cow in the US, which is certainly one of the most efficient beef production systems. The more concentrated you are, the more efficient, and it's a three percent offish and technology of taking plant based nutrients and proteins and converting them into meat. So if we go directly to the plant based source, you know, we can use thirty times less resources in a lot of ways. And that's really what the mission of the company is is to do that. And then for then you know, roughly six people would have at the company, you know, the vast majority to see that. It's like it's a it's something they're doing for our future generations more than just you know, making a quick buck. Gotcha gotcha. Do you feel like, Um, I think it's it's a lot of times when people are debating these types of things. I see this a lot, and things like gun control. I feel like people are talking past each other when there's a debate about something, not that we're going to debate it, but you know, talking past like I want to defend my family and I wanna, you know, save lives of children Like these are not things that kind of line up in terms of let's have a discussion. So here is it that you know? I think a lot of the people listen to this podcast might ask, is it the eating of meat you're against? Because I've had vegans on when we've talked in depth about tents and suffering and necessary suffering and unnecessary suffering and those time of things. Is that is that baked into to the core belief there? Or is it more the food system? How would you articulate kind of that nuanced piece of it? The way the way to articulate that is we want everybody to have the meat, fish, and dairy foods they love. We just don't produce them the right way today. Um, we use animals, which is a very arcane inefficient production system. Um. Our job is to give people to meat, fish, and dairy foods they love made directly from plants, and it's gonna be so much more environmentally friendly and better as we scale, and the United Nations predicts that, you know, meat consumption itself will increase. You know, looking at the statistics I started, it's like it doesn't work. So our job as a producer meat, fish and dairy foods the world's loves at a much lower environmental clip and our current products we use percent less land eighty nine so much greenhouse gas emissions and seven percent less water, and so we can do that now, you know the fundamental aspect, anybody in the food system who is working to make the food system more sustainable is a friend. Um. There's opportunity to cross the board across everything we do to make things more sustainable are taken the long term as we have to be in somewhat revolutionary to change the system. UM, but every little incremental piece in the short term also will help. Gotcha. Now, that's that's good to hear. I think that's something you know, coming in this conversation, I was wondering a lot about is there you know, I've seen your your CEO says a lot. He says a lot of things that made me go whoa. Um. One of them was the goal is to eliminate animals in the food system by and I think you know from my from my money, my the animals that I eat are in my freezer. I go out in the mountain and get them, and and that's how I work it. But for for a lot of people that's not as sustainable as it is for me, because I had to learn a lot of skills and a lot of things. So when I see something like that, I'm immediately taken aback. The first question, of course, is how would you do that? And that's which I think you probably have a particularly long answer for. Then the second question is um, I would return again to like, are we removing meat from everyone's diet? Um? Or are we are we removing the unsustainable system on which that meat gets to our table? Yeah. I'll start actually in a bit different different place because obviously this is a hunting podcast, and you know we've looked at this is and across the macro scale. Our job and what we want to do is by being much more efficient in the system, we can actually use a lot less land and a lot of the marginal lands were using today for animal agriculture. We can put back in the native vegetation and let the wildlife in it and the ecosystems recover, which I think is good for certainly everybody. We can pull greenhouse gases out of the out of the air, and there's a lot of stuff we can do now. If you look at the there's a couple of statistics on wild animals that we've looked at. One is, you know, there's ten times more bio mass of livestock and today if been all wild mammals left on earth, and if we were to say switch and go from eating you know, the meat that we get from everything like farming today and go to all wild animals and hunting, we would be completely All vertebrates would be harvested within two months and we'd be completely barrened. And it's like it just doesn't scale. We're trying to feed seven billion, going on ten billion people. We have to have a better system one way or the other. And then we talked about that. We talked about that here a lot. You know that hunting is not something while the value systems maybe scalable in practice, it's just it's not scalable and it can't UM. It can't be so definitely an understood part there, But go ahead, yeah, and then your your question, you know, how do we do it? UM? I think one of the key reasons I joined PAD as we started this company was the only way to change the system is the proosd products that are better. We can't be out there preaching to eat vegetarian or the in is that you can do that and some people will come, or animal welfare or whatever whatever you're essentially motivations are the only way to change the system is that create a system that's better than what it already exists. And the opportunity is really around the efficiency and the inefficiencies and the animal agricultural system. And so there's a huge opportunity there to create something that's much more efficient. And then if you look at the plant based world, the nutrients are much more diverse. Like an animal is not made to make food for humans. We use it as and g as a way to produce you know, high nutrient rich food UM that you can either hunt or farm and consume UM. But you know, there's every reason to believe we can create products that are better than an animal ever could because we're not limited by what an animal's body does for food. And you know what we've done in the first five years is we're really creating before we launch a product, created a platform that could understand, you know, why do you enjoy the experience and meet so much um and dairy and fish. And we would break that down into the fundamental drivers, and we learned a lot of stuff. We learned things like in meat and especially in like the richer, darker meats, um, you'll have a protein called myoglobin or a heme protein, and you can think about this as hemoglobin in your blood. And when we're breaking down the flavor system, we learned that the flavor and aroma of meat is extremely complex. Um. As you cook a steak or a burger and the grill, you're producing hundreds of molecules and aromas for flavor um that all happen in that cooking process. So if you cook a steak um medium versus rare versus well done, your flavor profile is actually very different because of that chemistry is at different stages and so it's extremely complex. And if we wanted to try to replicate that by picking out each piece one by one would be very complicated. And that was until we found out that mya globin or the heam protein really drives all that flavor chemistry. And so then we look in the plant based world, and all plants and animals have heam proteins, and so we use a protein called leg hemoglobin where the heam is the same, and so we can follow the same process of cooking just like you doing meat, so you get the exact same experience at home when you take it and put it on your grill. Yeah, that's a big part of what like part of the kind of disstonance for me is is calling it meat and beef and pork and all that. I want to I know you'll have a good answer to that. I want to certainly talk about that, but before we go down, definitely down that road. I know you guys had a product shortage in ten you know we're talking about scaling um. Soy is a big part of your product. Can you just walk people through who have these questions how much soy goes into it? How much land? You know, how how is a soy planted as it planted in a monoculture? Is it is it, how is it farmed? Take people through kind of that part of this so we can understand the difference in land use when we're saying we're using less land, how we use the land, you know, Take people through kind of the nuts and bolts of that. Yeah, it comes back down to the efficiency efficiency side at the start. So I'll kind of going the ingredients to the product. So the ingredients, the soy protein gives you the structure and the two as you bite into that, then we have a potato protein and celluloset that gives you that that transformation that goes from soft ware. We can make it into a meat ball, into a burger, into a dumpling, really whatever you want to. And then as you cook it, it firms up. And then coconut and sunflour oil give you that richness, and then the heam protein gives you really that flavor generation along with the micronutrients. Um. You know, from a supply chain side, uh, you know, an animal is just very inefficient at using the proteins and essentially ingredients and crops that we grow today. But the crops have been optimized for animal consumption because the vast majority of the land that we use as producing crops for animal consumption, and so soy is the most scalable one today. For every time we replace you know, meat from an animal with meat from impossible, we actually reduce the amount of land that's needed because we're just much more efficient. And so that's how you get to the nineties a less land use and eighty seven per less water use. It's really driven by the need for less crops overall. And I think over time, as we certainly over time, you know, the right production system in India versus Germany, verse of the US almost certainly as different as well. And I think we have an opportunity to rethink how we actually drive the global food system and how we can use plants and many different sources of plants um and not just you know, soy and soy and corn and you know a few of the main staples that are produced globally for animal production, and we can switch that into you know, a dozen, two dozen, three dozen crops and you're gonna get a lot more variety of plants. Early in our company's stage, we've been in market for about three and a half four years now, and so you can't solve everything at once. There's a lot of these supply chain transformations. You know, we focus on the long term, like what can we do and the short term, you know, using soy protein, which is a great protein for human nutrition. It's a good amal acid balance, it's scalable, it works well in the in the product is it is a good boxy long term, I think we're gonna have a lot of different protein sources. Got it? Um, what's that look like in five? You know for an average American that's let's say we get to five and we've eliminated animals from the food system. Am I picturing in my mind that fields and fields of soybeans planning throughout the United States? As you said, you know, you guys do want to innovate and find more ways to get this done. What's in your mind? What's what does the United States look like? How do you paint that picture for people if that were to happen, you know there and and I would say, I'm sure you'll address this, but also, what are we gonna do with the hundreds of millions of animals that are out there? Um, all the jobs and the workers, and I know you guys have thought all this through UM, but that it's a there's the loads and loads of questions with a transformation like that. There these are great questions and ones we think a lot about. I think, you know, what do I see as the future of the global food supplies chain and the US food supply chain. I think there's gonna be a lot more diversity in the crops that we grow. Um, you're looking at this right now, so impossible. We've been around now for nine years, but we've been in market lesson for and we put a lot of research and developing this platform. In the last four years. It went from a handful of company is working on this two hundreds of probably thousands globally. And I think what that that makes it? You know, that encourages me a lot that you know, everybody's gonna be looking for different solutions and creating different products. They're gonna hit, you know, different parts of the needs for consumers. And I think that if you look at none you bring that back to the farm level. UM. Right now, there's not there's not very many plant scale plant based crops, and the scale plant based props were mostly done for animal consumption. That's going to change, and so I think if I go back to my farming life as a farmer, I always say that, you know, farmers are some of our probably the most entrepreneurial people in the world. Like you have to make a business that's extremely hard and do it with no money, so go and it's like, you know, you know, farmers are always looking for the right opportunities, are looking to produce food for people. And I think there's gonna be a ton of opportunities to transform our system and actually create a much more diverse, robust system that we have today that is reliant on you know, a few a handful of crops, gotch um. What's that? You know, you're you came from a farming family. What's what's the change in lifestyle? What's the change? And like I said, if I picture, I just you know, I picture a different landscape, a different way. I know, two thirds of our of our nation is not arable, Like we can't plan it, paint that, you know. I really want to folks to be able to see kind of what that life looks like. We'll probably all be virtual reality by then. Anyway, I think it's important really for people to understand the vision. Yeah, our our vision is a lot of that land that's not planted, um, we are still using somewhat in any way we possibly can for agriculture because there's that much pressure on the land. And I'm seeing places of like land that probably be used that you know, the farmers admit in ten twenty years the water has gone on the water and the land's done, it's gonna be barren. And it's like, that's what we cannot allow it to happen, and so we have to take that pressure off and a lot of that land should go back to native vegetation, which is going to pull greenhouse gases out of the air. It's gonna let natural wildlife come back. Um. And there's a lot of studies showing that once you pull like land, you know, out of like cultivation or use in agricultural systems and you let it grow grow back, the ecosystem does recover relatively quickly. And so I think that's why I see there, And then you know, in the and the agricultural sphere, I think it's going to be a much wider diverse set of crops and opportunities, and I think it can change really fastened because one of the challenges of the animals too, is they just the system moves very slow. You have to raise a beef cow for sixteen to twenty months typically. Um, you know every species is a bit different, but it's it's a very slow process in general. With plants, you can go directly to the crop that the animals eat. But now it can take that and you can create a lot of innovation from that and create a much more diverse set of food opportunities and foods for people. And like what you love and what I love is going to be different, and I think we're gonna have a lot more ability to cater the agricultural system and the products to what consumers really want. Yeah, this is you know this this brings to mind things like regenerative agriculture and no till drilling and really soil ecology. Do you guys think much about that and and think about like the implication of expanding conventional agriculture. I think the that is, I mean somewhat the impetus of you know, why we exist. We can't continue to expand the conventional agricultural system the way we have. We're already using a lot of marginal land that really shouldn't be used for that. So, I mean all the global like prime land areas are typically already in agriculture, and a lot of those probably even shouldn't be, and it would be ideally ideal to get those back into some sort of native vegetation. I think, you know, for us, things like regenerative agriculture, there might be some small benefits to compared to the inventional system, but it's still very fundamentally flawed. The use of animals to produce food and for humans at this scale is just a fundamentally flawed idea. UM. And then I grew up in that system, and I and I realized that, and even being in that system, I didn't I didn't realize how flawed it was at the time. But looking back at it, it's like, you know, it's pretty clear it can be a way of life for farmers, and that's what it was from my family, and I think that's why it's really on us to to continue to help the whole agricultural system evolved with us as we grow. UM. But as a production technology, it's just very inefficient, it's dirty, and it's you know, very unsafe too, compared to other stuff that we can do. Yeah, we could be on this forever, but only a few a few more minutes with you, So we'll keep keep moving through these questions for you. But I think when we talk about your products specifically, UM, because I think, yeah, a lot of what you said will resonate with people in terms of the issues with our food systems and and it's been laid bare with our COVID nineteen crisis as well. UM. But you know, like what is the intention and even maybe the justification for terms US in terms like meat and beef and pork and things that you guys do in your marketing and really the whole, the whole idea of the company is around this replacement therapy in a way for for folks that you meet currently. Yeah, I think the the you know, the terms beef and pork is a is an experience, and so you know what the experience you're kind of looking for as a consumer for US is. UM. I don't know if you've had that impossible in retail yet, UM, but it's like, you know, the fastest part drawing part of our business and you'll look and it's like it's impossible, burger made from plants and it's in very big bold text and I think it's really important for us the message that our products you know, are coming from plants, because it is a big part of the value proposition, and it also helps us continue to spread the message that hey, you really don't need to get that experience from an animal. We can give you that same experience without the environmental challenges with a much more nutritious profile. And I think that's a key message that you have now. From a messaging side, you know, people are looking as, okay, if if we're going to create something, we could ask this question all the time. I was like, why don't you create something like completely new to the world that no one's ever had before. And it's like, eventually, yes, you're totally right, we will do that because we can do that, but it's harder to train and like help consumers and chefs and distributors ever we understand what products are if they don't have some sort of proxy to equate it too, and so you kind of start with that proxy to equate it too. It's a it's a set market. You know. The ground beef market obviously in the US is massive, and globally ground meets are huge, and so you have a set market where you know, consumers are looking for an experience like that, and so it's a good starting point before you get to creating something completely new that I don't know, maybe what what do you want? Is there something like crazy out there that you'd love to have? Man? You know, like, well, we talked about this is one thing we talked about. I, like I said at the beginning, I talked about this a couple of like a dozen episodes ago with the founder of our company, companies called meat Eater. So I love I like where we are um with our founder Steve and Ronnella, and we both said, you know, kind of simultaneously thought listen, as a hunter, um, I prefer I prefer things that are good for ecosystems and natural habitats because I need that. I need that for the animals that are my source of protein. We have a different supply chain's hunters. The supply chain is healthy ecosystems, federal agencies to manage wildlife populations, and our ability to access wild places, so that that's our supply systems. So we do there is a connection there to healthy ecosystems and land and water, clean land and clean water for us to recreate but also to get our source of food. And so for us it's if we're if we're not getting we're so in. I've been doing this for decades and so as Steve. If we're not going to get our meat from that source, we would much rather shirk you know, the factory farming, shirk um proxy meat suppliers and either go you know what, I would go to a local butcher or go to a local co op, or get the meat out of the woods. That's this is what what I feel. And so with your product, my thing is I I want a good faith representation of what this is. I would rather eat a plant based meat that is healthier for me and has nutrits and is good for the environment then eat meat from a factory farm. But it just feels it feels disingenuous, to be quite honest, and it feels like you're maybe playing down to the consumer rather than playing up to the aspiration. Yeah, and we it's um, it's very important to play up to the aspiration. I think you have to be careful a bit to not be too preachy. And what and what you're doing is because us we're offering a solution. We're offering a great product for consumers to enjoy, and that's what's going to drive the transformation more than anything else. And so it has to be around great products first that consumers feel comfortable with. And you know what, a lot of what we do and why we do even podcasts like this, is to help people understand what we're doing, why we're doing, and how we do it. Like we have people come into our reporters, come into our production site and video like videotape the entire production line, and it's like we do that because one, we're really proud of it. We're very proud of what we do, and we want to you know, debunk some of the myths and the questions and everything else that everybody has because it is you know, it's it's different than the traditional meat production system, and so it is our job to help educate you and all consumers. Yeah, like I said, you have an interested consumer in me. I'm not against against the product at all. Um I just if you guys have any like FOS focus groups and you want to tell them what I said, just tell them like I'm looking for the future product that you're going to make that says like plants slab whatever, probably come up with a better name than that, I could, I trust you. Um, that really just connects with me on an intellectual level. You know, what you're what you're proposing, as you well know is is a gigantic shift in our and not only the way that we treat the world and feed ourselves, but in our humanity um as well. And I think it's nice to it is nice to hear that you guys necessarily aren't saying everybody stop eating me tomorrow, um and making that argument based on sentience and some of the ideas of of of veganism. But I mean, all that stuff gets gets kind of mixed together here, I think for most regular folks that are listening to what you're saying. So how do you how do you kind of walk people through that We're not you know, you're we're not gonna outlaw meat for everybody, so you eat our product, But we're trying to give you an alternatives, which is what I'm hearing from you, and I'm happy to hear that. And that's that's the only way we're not going to tell people to stop eating meat. I mean food and enjoyment and like nutrition, all that stuff goes together. You can't change culture that fast, and I think it's it's it wouldn't be the right way to just go out there and say everybody stop eating meat. Honestly, it's not going to accomplish what we're trying to do. And you know, some countries have try that. Some countries have actually said, as are we want everybody less meat than It hasn't changed, and the only way to change this is the produced products that are better, and better means more delicious, and we're getting better every day. We're essentially getting to the point we're almost caught up to the cow. So in blind taste tests it's head on head um, but we're going to pass the cow than more nutritious, which we can do because we have a lot more control, Like an animal is not made to make food and they can't really change the nutrition. You know, we can continue to make our products even more and more nutricious as we go, and then as we scale. We're still small compared to of course industrial agricultural system around meat, but we're so much more efficient. We have be more affordable and then once all those come into play, and then of course more sustainable. But that's kind of a no brainer at this point, and all those come in. It's a very easy choice for the consumer. And that's our job is to make it a very easy choice and give them, you know, more value and what you eat. Yeah, yeah, well I think that makes a ton of sense. The big the other thing for me is, um, you guys and you said this, A lot of you guys are in it for in it to change the world and to change how we approach things. That's a that's a big challenge. Does that ever come in your you know, long time with the companies that come up against the scalability of a product, come against the quality of the product, did you guys ever have to cut corners? I know there's been this is I've read a lot where people are accusing you of this. There was a writer I read. I wrote this down, this guy, Mark Bittman, who was a popular food writer. I was reading some of his stuff. He was a New York Times columnists for a while. He's been pushing Americans eat let's meat for some time. He said that he criticized meats like impossible meat. He said, the it's the new higher tech vegan meats. They don't address the resource use and hyper processing UM and processed food is a is a term that's thrown around quite a lot. How do you guys think about scalability save the world versus give people a healthy option here? Don't cut corners? Well, I think they're you're always optimizing for multiple actors. You can't just consume one and you can create the most healthy, nutritious like like almost like medicine and a Burger patty effectively solution and no one's gonna eat it because it tastes it is probably gonna taste horrible. It's like, that's not gonna get you anywhere. You can make something that's really bad for people that tastes amazing, and now that I also don't think that's gonna get you anywhere. And so we follow some very basic principles as a company that you know we adhere to is you know, the products that we we produce will be as nutrition or more nutritious and healthy than what replace Our team is. We have more than a scientists working on the development and the healthy nutrition and everything of the product every day. Um. Now, it doesn't mean it's going to be like a kale salad um. It's like if you want to have a kale salad, you know, more more power to you. But that's not really what consumers are necessarily looking for. And so I think we're always balancing all the sensory property you need between taste, texture, aroma, versatilities you cook, the nutritional properties and scalability. If we produce a product that you can't actually produce and feed more than five people, that also doesn't do do you any good. And so all those factors have to come into play and work together. And the truth, like the food system itself right now, it's going to change a lot, and it can't change a lot over over time. Is we have ideas and technologies of how to scale even more nutritious, better crops for farmers, but it takes years and years to build new supply chains. And if we're going to wait for that and then we're going to be missing out on a lot of the opportunity the impact that we have on people's lives. And it's like our job is to have that positive impact on people's lives as soon as we can. Yeah, do you do you guys, you know, think about um the future in that way? Do you think about if you had to hedge in one direction or the other. As you try to make these vast changes, you hedge towards the scalability. Would you say, like, I would much rather have more out there and figure out additional vitamins or additional nutrients or in a way to make this healthy, because it certainly seems that way. I don't think of Burger King is a place that's trying to make me healthy necessarily. I mean, they every once in a while they dip into that world, and so there's some cognitive dissonance for me in terms of being in Burger King and then trying to feed the world um in a different way. And I think that's something when I talked to a lot of my friends, a lot of my colleagues, and people that were just interested in talking to a guy like you. I think that's a big part of it is, is getting across the threshold of yes, going into burger King, I'm sure replaced a lot of of factory farm meats hitting the table or hitting the wrapper of an American consumer. But at the same time, you're partnering with a brand that ain't that that ain't the most high minded when it comes to feeding people. Well, I think it's for us are certain things in that that we can control and we can help and we'll push forward. So like of our products you know are probably directly um we have uh less fat less saturated fat um more are sent to the same amount of protein, the same amount of bile build by available protein human is iron, which is the most by available in the human diet. We put all the micronutrients of vitamins and minerals in you expect to get from meat. Then we don't have any cholesterol, hormones and antibiotics and you know many other things that you really don't want to get from meat that just happened to be there, you know, as a as a product team, and we're going to produce that. That's what we can control. Now. If you look at a place like Burger King, it's a great opportunity to reach consumers um that are already going to Burger King, and if we can give them something that is better than what is there before, that's a win. Um. You know is you know, you know major fast food, the proponent of healthy diets in the world. No, I mean that's that's typically not not the essentially the main emmal of course they are getting you'll see all of them getting more into the healthy lifestyles over time as consumers want it. But at the end of the day, I think it comes down to helping consumers drive the change, because you know, businesses are all gonna be looking to, like, you know, build their business, and if consumers want to change, drive the change to choose for that, choose the more healthy options. That helps the industry evolve with it. And that's part of our job is to create probably that are more more nutritious and then it'll help consumers then come along that path with us and then help the rest of the system change too. But you know, coming back to the agricultural system to you can't change everything at once. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like I said, it feels like the hedge, And I think that's what you're saying, like the hedges towards getting it out into end, letting the consumers make a choice. It's you know, I think that the we should talk a little bit about the shortage that you guys had, just because as we as I try to picture and people try to wrap their heads around this, I think those are important points. Um, how much how much are you guys really working to make this the healthiest thing possible. I don't know that I could eat I don't know. You may answer this, I don't those for sure that I could eat two impossible burgers a day from Burger King and still and be a healthy person. I don't know that. It doesn't seem like I could. I've not tried it. But like, how do you guys look at that part? Well, I think too to your per point, I like scalability. And you know the shortage that we had in two thousand nineteen. Um, you know, our sales took off much faster than we had predicted and we essentially ended up, you know, in somewhat breaking our system. And so we had our open facility running our opland facility of scaling up and it became very clear and we just, um, you don't think, get quite ahead of it as much as we needed to. And so now we have a couple of lines at our open site. We have a partnership with a group called O s I. And you know, coming back to like, you know, systems and systems change. You know, O s I is one of the largest meat manufacturers in the world. They have sixty five production sites and you know, our process was able to work with their process, you know, pretty interchangeably, and so we have dedicated lines there. Now you know, multiple factories, and that's that's how you scale and I and we in order to do this, I mean, we essentially need to double production in almost every year. Yeah, and so we're putting a lot of effort into building a really scalable supply chain, scalable production system to be able to do that. And as a young you know, a young growing company I've been part of you know, many young growing food companies, whether directly or indirectly, and production challenges hit pretty much every one of them because you're you're you're creating a physical good, right and you're not going to take shortcuts. And how you create a physical good, your safety measures your quality. You have to maintain that top match no matter what, because that's what you're giving that experience to consumers, and that's something you can't compromise on. And for us, it's like we, yes, it was painful to go through the store. Is definitely painful our for our customers and our consumers, but we're going to make the trade off to make sure we're proucing the top quality product all the time. Yeah. Cool, Well, I think we're close to being let you go here. But before, right before I let you go, I think I've had We had a vegan Um philosophy professor on recently. We were talking about kind of like what is the prescription for this this this large scale issue that you see and that he sees that I see. I mean, I think you would be blind not to see it. And what I what I told him is is what hunting has taught me is kind of a proximity mindset when it comes to my food. A backyard garden is better than the grocery store. Um, an elk in the mountain is better than is you know, proxy meat provider at a store. Um. That's that's my philosophy. And I think most hunters understand that. And hunting has driven me to garden and do all kinds of other things. And what I would what I would ask you is is how does the impossible burger kind of address that? Is the supply chain so long and there's so much processing and manufacturing going on with this product. Is the proximity to the final product as long, if not longer then factory farm meats? Is there? Have you guys thought about that, how how close to the products these people are eating that they should be. Yeah, I think, um, you know, all food pretty much well even even what you hunt eventually is processed um to a certain extent. And now you're part of that process, you're much more connected to it than you would if I were to go to a grocery store and buy something even for for me. As like I, you know, grew up in the farming community. We knew the names of everything that we ate and that was just kind of, you know, part of life, and that was what was used to And when I went to Minneapolis in the San Francisco and going grocery shop and I didn't have that, I actually felt this dissonance and not really knowing where my food came from. That made it actually that actually drove me to eat less, the less meat. And then once I found out more about the environmental side of it, is like, yeah, then it's like okay, I am my job as being an environmental steward of the world. That's how I want to live my life. And it's like I can't really justify personally eating meat. Um. Now I think the from the process on our side is we're extremely proud of the process that we've developed. Um, you know, there's many processes and food that proves products that are not good for you, and I think there's a bad rap and some of that for some very valid reasons. There's also like whether it's bread, yogurts. You know, really everything in the food system is processed to a certain extent. Is is whether you can back up your process, give the transparency into what that is and help consumers understand it. And you know, to your last point on the length is like you know, we were we essentially skipped the animal as part of that food system, and so instead of taking the crops that you grow feed into an animal, which takes months to years to grow, a new process that animal. Um, we essentially go directly to the plants and we go directly to human nutrition. And so the length of our supply chain is much shorter than in anything in an animal animal agricultural system you can do, which enables us to also adapt faster. Um, you know when things change. So why is that? Why is it shorter? Necessarily? Like what's the kind of you could you take people quickly through how it gets from you know, raw materials to store shelves. Is that too long? Yeah? Sure, So I guess if you take um, you can use a simple crop that's probably well, well, there's like a soybean, and so if you grow soybeans in the summer in Minnesota. UM, you'll grow them for a few months, you'll harvest them, and then you'll take them to a dryer or into a granary, and then they either go to a farm for animal feed. You'll like grind it and put it into meal and you know, put into animal feed, or you take that into you grind it and you put it into human nutrition. And so if you put into animal feed, then you have that step of using an animal and so UM, if you're taking cow for instance, or a pig, let's say a cow, UM, which is more what I'm familiar with, since that's the agricultural system I grew up with. And you're taking into like beef, it's like you're anywhere from sixteen months to a few years, depending on the system you're running from one that animal starts growing when they eat the feed to when you had actually harvested and the process it and go forward wherever the impossible. You don't have that stuff. UM you go directly to the human nutrition. So we can take the proteins, the fats and the the micronutrients and all the stuff directly from those crops and directly make products and deliver it to you within days instead of you know, many times months and years. Got it? Um? Well, let me let me hit you with a couple of a bunch of yes or no questions before we let you go. UM. Hopefully this will be easy. See do you is impossible? Meet the company and you can answer for the company, yourself or both. Um. Against eating meat holistically, I think we've already covered that. But it's already covered that we are caretting better meat, so we're not against that. Got it? Um? Are are you? You guys feel you're on track to meet your goal of eliminating animals from food production. We are very early, I would say so. I think the yes, yes and no. I think there we have a lot to do. I don't know if I can Yeah, I do you know, I will say I appreciate it as an aside. I appreciate kind of the way you're approaching this because I wondered, you know, I don't know you at all. And um, I wondered, kind and I've read a lot of bombastic things from your CEO, and I appreciate kind of your openness to say like, don't know, we're working on it, We're gonna get better, UM, while also addressing like the global issues I do. I just genuinely appreciate that. I wondered if I was gonna UM. I feel like I should have had more data, but I don't. I feel like you're you're working through it. I think that's part of the mission in our north Star is extremely clear and what we need to get to and that really dries everybody to the company. UM. In order to drive a change this big that can have as a positive impact on the world in people's lives as we were going to have, UM, we can't if we thought we knew everything, We're going to run ourselves into the ground. We have to be learning every single day. Do you find do you find the work environment to be to be that way? I mean, you guys have to scale, you gotta make money. There's you know, there's a lot of pressure. The mission itself begets lots of pressures. What's the environment, what's the culture like? Is everybody um so laser focused, or is there times to relax and and take a look at what you've already done or you know, what's it like there? Yeah, that's a that's a great question because, like you know, many of our core values, one of them is we're responsible, like as a company, each person and us as a company is responsible to make this happen, which is a lot of pressure. And I think that's a lot of reasons why people are there is they want to be part of this. They want to and somewhat have some ways have that pressure. But it also is really important for us to find ways to step back and celebrate and relax when you when you can do it. And I think, uh, me, you can ask my teams. But I grew up at a dairy farm where you work three or sixt or five days of the year. So for me, it's like this is almost like normal, And like you know, it's like we have to make sure we've created environments where no matter what your background, you know what drives you, Um, you have a way, you have a way to succeed. And I think over time we've gotten better and better at that. And so I think culturally, um, you know, I've talked to a lot of friends on this culture. When you're ten people versus the culture and your six D people has to be different. And there's sort of certain values for us as a company that we will always adhere to, but our culture is always evolving. People work really hard, people support each other because I think we are in such a shared mission behind that north star. Yeah, of course it's um, you know, we're working hard at this every day. Um, it is a lot of long hours at different times, but you're in it for like the better for the world, the better for yourselves, a better for your family, and I think that's really motivating everyone. Yeah, I always you know, like I said, I run in a culture of people that are working at a place called meat Eater, and I I have always tried to fight the idea to demonize something one that you don't understand or or in our case, feels I think, as I've taken a stroll pole around the office, feels unnatural. Is like the thing that most people have told me, like this, you're adding in, you're taking plants, you're adding invite him into nutrients, and you're kind of messing around with what you're looking at, and then you're you're putting something in to make sure it bleeds. That's the thing. You know. Again, if you've got focus groups over there, like guys and gals like me who really care about their consumption and really want to UM. I mean, I rely on healthy ecosystems to do what I do. UM. And so that's that's the one thing I think I would say, and that others that I've talked to says like, this isn't a part of the sets and lengths of our humanity that have driven us to this point. It is a radical idea, UM, and it just feels unnatural. So the more you guys can do to to address that question and to talk about it, UM really logically as you have here, I think would be a good thing. And I think you're connected more to the natural world than you know, the vast majority of global citizens here. I mean you in Montana, I think you have that ability something more than you know other system in general. UM. You know, there's a lot of parts and you know, definitely within the meat supply chain that just is very unnatural, very unnatural the way that we use animals the way we do today to bruce food. And you know, we have to change that Yeah, Well, you guys have a big job ahead of you. Like I said, I appreciate your candor, um, and I really, like I said, I wondered how our conversation would go, and I'm glad it went. I'm glad that you were as open as you were. Um, I felt like and honest as you were as well. So we're going to continue to explore this on the show. We're going to talk to other folks and regenderator culture and and and try to compare and contract your ideas with theirs and let people make up their own decisions. So, um, I'm glad you're able to kind of state your case and explain your position. And my final question, did you get a lot of ship from your family for living in Hong Kong and we're working at Impossible? Yeah, it's it's very different than the smell a town farm life, and I think it was funny. And we were starting the company, my first call is to my brother. My brother is like he's been an animal agriculture his whole life. His like legacy was to take over the farm. Um. And you know, he he's the one where I got that quotessentially about what farmers do too. Because he kind of came back at this and say that, you know, the family farm that we grew up with, that way of life, you know, it doesn't really exist anymore, and you really can't make a living that way. It's all big mass systems you're trying to compete with. I mean, our job as farmers with brut is to bruce you know, good food for people and continue to hand down our land, hand down our farms and future generations. And honestly, that's not happenings like that. That system just has broken. The way the world has evolved in the apeed seven billion, going on ten billion, people like those systems are breaking down or mostly have broken down. And so in a lot of ways, what we're doing it impossible as we're trying to create a better system versus the way the systems essentially evolved too over the last you know, a couple hundred years. And you know, I've been able to have him help and you know other you know people farmers all around the country and world help. Think about you, what are the future crops we can grow? What are the future ecosystems we can build? And I think that's where I get very encouraged by the farming community because they are extremely entrepreneurial looking for things like this and saying, Okay, I see the opportunity. I can see why this is good for me. And as a farmer, you still have to make money to make a living, which is one of the hardest things, and I can see like, this is a better way to do this, and I think, yeah, that gives me a lot of encouragement. Uh, that's good. That's a good answer. I think as we go forward, you're you're an interesting case study for for the ideas. UM. It seems to me, I don't want to mischaracterize, UM what you're saying, Like, I think we're going to talk to some folks within this conversation that want to take our current system and kind of build on and work on and refine it. Would you characterize your version? I think this. I just want to make sure we're clear as breaking down the system and rebuilding it completely. Yeah, I think, um, you know, everybody who's working to make something even incrementally better in the short term is doing good. We have to fund on really change the way we produce food. We have to. That's the only way that people can have the meat, fish and dairy experiences that they have today and they want at the global scale we're doing. We have to completely fund and fundamentally change the way we produce this food. Yeah, well, I I appreciate it, Nick. Um. I don't know what time is it in Hong Kong. Uhn Am all right? Well, I was gonna say, have a good night, but UM, have a good day. I really appreciate your time and your experience, and hopefully we can connect, as we know, explore this further. And UM, maybe I'll I'll be tasting more of your meat here coming up. Sounds great. Thank you. Take care, Robbie. How's it going, Hey Ben? How you doing good? Man? I'm doing just good. We are just just so you know, we're just coming off. Listeners will have just listened to her interview with Nick Holla from Impossible Meats. UM a good interview. You've listened to it. I sent to the audio and let you listen to kinda how Nick frames some of the things he was talking about. UM, And so I wanted to just dive right in with you. Um. We've had you on you. You were on this last fall we were up there at Rome Ranch. UM had a great time had a good hunt. I still uh the COVID knocked down my chance to come hunt turkeys with you guys over there this year, which I'm really bummed about. Yeah, major bummer. We were looking forward to that as well. So, but I want to have you on specifically to talk um about what I view is is maybe not a counterpoint, but another perspective and this idea of plant based meats and uh, plant agriculture and animal agriculture and where we go in the future. And so I know we've had a few whiskeys and talked about this before, and we've talked on other occasions. I really find your perspective um on the regenerative agriculture and what you guys do with force and nature meets very um, very profound and very well thought out. So I just wanted to present your other side as it were, and see where we go. Sound good? Yeah, man, thanks, uh, thanks again for having me on another on another occasion. It's always it's always fun to talk about this stuff. I think it's really important. I also think it's incredibly important that you're creating the opportunity to have a complete and honest conversation, right, I mean to too, many times the stuff gets down into confusing stats and data points that are spun and there isn't the ortenning to really talk about the complete picture. And I think that you do a really great job of UM creating a environment where that can happen. So I'm happy to be a part of it. Well, thanks man. Can you give give people a quick your job title and kind of what you do Force and Nature and refresh people's memory about Force and Nature meets itself? Yeah, so Force of Nature one of the co founders. I'm I'm also the CEO, and uh I also have some animals. I consider myself a land steward UM and then the Force of Nature again. We we talked about at length what we are doing on our previous episode, but ultimately, after spending the better part of the last decade or so focused on improving our food system, we realized that the best way to resolve many of the major global health and environmental crisis that we face today is through improving our our food system and particularly the way that we practice agriculture. And within Force of Nature, we're primarily focused on accelerating the creation of a global regenerative supply net work. UM and that ultimately will address a lot of things that we're going to talk about today, but also give consumers access to better food as well as an opportunity to vote for a better food system. UM. You know, simultaneously again force of nature. Uh, meat is under attack, I think as you as you are are well aware, and I think, in many instances unfairly under attack. Right. And so we say one of our objectives is to reclaim the legacy of meat. And that means both from the conventional incumbents UM who have continued to invest in a system with with known challenges and limitations, largely in the name of profits, as well as in these new kind of up and coming UM we'll call them alternative food companies, and in many ways that are you know, falsely prophesizing that their solutions for problems that they aren't offering solutions for. And I think we need to bring meat back to what it has been for the UM through the prior millennia UM, and not what it may be is has become over the last couple of generations. Sin's really the the Industrial Revolution and even World War two? Yeah, would you say as we think about as we think about this, we think about impossible meats and force the nature and companies like this that you're looking for better in your case, better meat, but better food altogether, better food systems. And then over top of all that is addressing environmental issues and climate change. Is that a good way to kind of put the umbrella over everything here? Yeah, I mean absolutely right. I think I think the focus for a lot of people right now is better food, as you said, and more sustainable food, whether that be from the impact on on the environment broadly, um, not just greenhouse gasses, UM, also on um food stability and food security, as well as on rural communities and and and and habitat and things like that. So UM, there's definitely a tremendous opportunity to improve all of those things, right, And that's what we've done in agriculture historically is evolve it. And you know, there's an opportunity you right now to take learnings and to take the advancements we have being um as experienced as we are, and evolved the system once more. Yeah, So it's evolved and change and I think that you know, we where we ended with Nick, and where I think we can start with you. I asked him this at the end. As as folks listening, I've already heard and you and I have talked about this, but I think what it seems from the impossible meat side of things, and we can talk about how much you kind of know about them and and you know your awareness level, but it seems to me that they want to tear the system down and rebuild it. That's that's what Nick said, That's what their CEO has said publicly. UM therein for wholesale change, and they've stated their reasons why they feel that's necessary. We'll talk about some of those as well. But but how do you, guys approach a better food system, a more sustainable food system. Is it to tear down the system or is this to build on what we already have? How do you articulate that as a company, as a and as a lance do it too? Yeah, it's a it's a great question, and you know, I don't. I don't think the answer is to tear anything down. UM. I think what we have right now is founded on UM four and a half billion years of evolution UM and that's a pretty strong starting point, right. I think we've made UM, you know, with with the best of intentions, gone down a path um that has generated some unforeseen consequences. And in the recent uh, you know, recent times, we've been able what we've begun to identify what some of those are, and there's been resistance to acknowledging or making the changes, um that are that are that are overdue. Right, And so I think, you know, there's always pros and cons in the food system. Um, but the advancements since like we talked about a second ago World War two, I've really kind of brought us into the chemical industrial agriculture age. Um. You know, for them, that the their point as again I'm not an expert on them, and they can they can make their own case, right, But what I hear from their CEO largely and in the press is that, you know, meat is the enemy and they want to put all resources into industrial road crop agriculture. And um, you know, our our our premissive point is that industrial agriculture of all kinds is challenged and it can be quickly and easily improved. The answer is not to tear it down. It's too course correct or evolve it like we talked about, right, Um, you know, I think some of the opportunities that we have to of all of those practices um or need need only be subtle changes to generate a powerful force um and and really ultimately address a myriad of major issues, right whether it be health of humans, environmental impact, welfare of animals again, impact on rural America, food stability, all the stuff that we talked about, and we're trying to improve the overall system and the well being of all that are involved, not just today, but to create you know, a sustainable future. Yeah. Yeah, there's an interesting diccon to me rite that. You know, Sustainability is a word. Efficiency is a word that Nick used a lot of sustainability as a word to hear a lot um and I think both impossible and and what in your company force the nature We're not We're not here to compare them as you if you told me they're They're definitely different companies UM at different phases of their growth and and but you know, philosophically, I think is what we can can touch on anyway, because I think, honestly, if I was being honest with you, I thought that the way that Nick was articulating some of his points reminded me of you, kind of kind of like the the passion and the clarity with which you articulate your point. So I felt that that was it's a nice um juxtaposition, but also that you know, there's passionate people trying to solve these things. So when I go when I look at uh force a Nature's website, when I look at Impossible's website, both have literature and verbiage talking about combating climate change. Both are openly driven to combat climate change and save the environment. So how would you approach you know, your version of that, and then as as much as you want to go into kind of analyzing their versions, you're welcome to. But but I think more just focusing on regetative agriculture and what you guys believe. Yeah, no, it's I think I think that's uh, you know, climate change or or carbon issues are definitely something that resonates with the general population and and certainly with news media, right, And so I think it's a it's a it's a more popular point in the in the conversation, and I'm I'm happy to dive into to go really deep into that, right, talk about specific carbon impacts of regenerative agriculture as well as you know, the conventional agriculture system that they are promoting and hoping to perpetuate. Right. I do you know, want to clarify though that it's it's it's more than just greenhouse gasses. UM. You know, I think part of it is you know, pointing to the absolute worst example of animal production and assigning that to the entire industry UM, and then and then using that as sort of a strongman right to to make an argument, and then um using some convenient statistical analysis techniques to make points based off of you know, antiquated data UM to support an opinion right or really even more more than that and an ideology. UM. I think we're really when you want to point out what our two cup where our two companies are similar and different. UM. Where we're different is they are The conversation that we're having is about conventional agriculture versus regenerative agriculture, right, and conventional agriculture um is is tied to both plant and animal based systems. Right. And so what they're promoting is the reliance on an industrial chemical agriculture system UM for plants and animals. UM. They're simply suggesting that at we shift anything that has to do with animals over to the plant side. Um, from one evil to another, so to speak. It's theoretical, it's counter to biology and science. Um. It will continue to degrade soil, it will continue to degrade land, it will create less healthy food, it will increase those greenhouse gas emissions that we talked about. Right. And our our suggestion is simply transition to a more regenerative approach that works alongside and in conjunction with nature to improve both our plant and animal based food systems. Right. So it's not the animal, it's the system. We're simply replacing conventional chemistry based agriculture with the biology and management based approach. This is validated historically and in present contexted in present contexts, right, I mean you have numerous um scientific uh professionals. The scientific community is supporting your generative agriculture. Major governments all over the world are supporting it. This is isn't something that I or my you know associates came up with on a sabbatical, Right. This is something that's been around for a long time, is widely supported, it's proven out, um, and it's truly scalable. Yeah. Do you see when when you think about regendative agriculture. I think we should probably for those who haven't, um listened to our last podcast, take a minute, go do that and we're back. And we're back. Now we're back, assuming everyone has listened to it. Now, But give people just just a couple of lines about regendaive agriculture. I don't want to go too much further without kind of tying tying that loose end off. I know, I'm asking you to explain it very detailed thing, but you know, philosophically, the you've already touched on the approach of of regenerative give give people an overview of how it's just different than plant based agriculture as we know it today, an animal based agriculture. Yeah. And again, so it's it's not plant based, it's not animal based. It's it's what I would consider to be planet based, right or ecosystem based agriculture where we're um, it's subtle, but we're replacing chemical and it's with management practices right um. And it's and it's agriculture guided and nature's image, working with nature as opposed to in a combative form with it, right. Um. And for those that were able to click away and listen to the last episode and come back. You know you'll you'll understand and we'll we'll talk more about it throughout this podcast, I'm sure. But you can have all the PhDs you want, and I'll take nature. And it doesn't matter what the issue is. I'm going to win the long game, right. The simple truth is we can work with nature or against it. And we've chosen to side with nature. And the most conventional form of agriculture, which impossible, absolutely relies on and is intent to perpetuate, is combative towards nature. And in our podcast we discussed some of the basic fundamentals and the foundational elements of that UM. It starts from the ground up, starts from the soil. There are principles of soil health, limiting disturb its, keeping the soil covered and and not bear maintaining living roots throughout the years. So you can have this plant, you know, atmosphere UM beneath the soil, relationship of energy and nutrition, promoting diversity, and absolutely incorporating animals in conjunction with diversity of plants together. Yeah, and I know, like I said, like I said earlier, we'll be transparent. I did send you the file of Nick's interview because I wanted you to kind of hear it and be able to digest it. Um. We're not going to go through a point by point, but when you listen to the way when I was talking to him about supply chain and proximity to our food, when you listened to the way he explained that, Um, how did it strike you and compared to you know, what you guys are doing with your meat and regenda of agriculture. You know, I think the challenge with trux simity UM. And you know, I'll be honest, you know there I didn't make an extensive list of notes on on the conversation you had with him, because I think it it seems to be pretty consistent with their their their their base talking points. UM. And I think the things that stood out to me, we're the discussion more about efficiency when when when you were talking proximity, UM, and what's what's more efficient? Right? Um? And you know that's a it's it's really hard to get my head around the position that they that they've taken right, that you can take um and and promote this conventional system that's relying on so many herbicide fungicide, pesticide inputs, heavy tillage, fossil fuels, tractors, back and forth, you know, harvesting a crop, drying it, further processing it, you know, creating an ultra processed food product, probably the most processed food product in the history of our species UM, and make an argument that that is in any way more efficient than having a cow or a rumined animal in a pasture, living in a thriving ecosystem, providing ecosystem services up cycling protein UM in a way that again we've evolved for millions of years UM to support. Now that happens without any effort every day all around the world, and the few functioning ecosystems we have left, I can't think of anything more efficient than that. And I can't think of any way of involving PhDs, intellectual property laboratories, more processing, more transportation that will cause that to be more efficient. Yeah, well, you know, shifting a little bit um, because this is an important part of this as we moved through it, but shifting a little bit to the idea of the term meat right because you because I heard I heard from Nick a couple of times that, uh, the way we treat animals right now is unnatural. And again my opinion aside, there may or may not be a straw man there, but that's his point was that the you know, what we do with with animal agriculture right now is unnatural in and of itself. UM. So inside of that, he's also talking about what we call these things. You know, you have a company that sells meat, and according to him, he has a company that sells quote unquote meat. So how do you look at that? How do you look at, um, the intention and justification of using a term like meat. They use the term beef and pork and other things. I know you've heard their CEO explain it and probably heard Nick explain it. Um, how do you walk through that logically? Because I struggle with it and I told Nick that, UM, I absolutely struggle with this part of it. Yeah, you know, I get it. I get why they're doing it, right. You know they're trying to you know that they would probably say convinced. I would say, to see if UM consumers that you know, they're creating a product that that that is familiar and natural and safe and honest. Um. But it doesn't take long to look up you know, the definition of meat to find out that that's not what they're creating. UM. It's a large industry that they want to take share from UM, and they're trying to do it in the most efficient way, UM, with the most savvy marketing. I mean, really, it's just sort of rinse and repeat the playbook of UM, any major multibillion dollar international corporation, right, a little bit of misdirection, a little bit of lack of transparency, and a lot of telling people what they want to hear. Yeah, what do you got? What do you tell people? You know, when people come to you and say why should I buy meat from force of nature? UM? That it's kind of that has baked within it this idea of regenerative agriculture and this idea of doing doing things a different way, a better way. What do you how do you explain the value proposition there? Yeah? Well, I mean there's there's a lot of different approaches and it's a it's a complicated conversation. It's really hard to have because there's there's so many things that are impacted and and and and and paths to take UM. You know, the I think that the starting point is if we want to be able to have healthy food in the future, we need to make some changes. We want to be able to have widely available food in the future in the form that we know it today, we need to make some changes. Um. If we want to have farmers and rural communities across the world growing our food who we trust and have our best interest at heart, we need to make some changes. Um. If we want to reverse the recent trend of the current generation of children having shorter life expectancies than the parents, we need to make some changes. Right. And so the reality is we've gone from talked about, you know, intensive agriculture, chemical agriculture again, there's myriads of challenges that creates in the ecosystem that mean there's a shelf life that is not something that we can continue to do indefinitely. We are degrading our lands, we are desertifying our lands. We're losing our top soils. We have to figure out a way to rebuild or regenerate those lands if we want to continue to produce food on them. We've also lost nutrition, right, We've lost the bioavailability of that nutrition and our food. And it turns out that healthy functioning ecosystems that created the fertility we've been mining for the last you know, two generations can be rebuilt to return that nutrition. Right. So you know, if if you have a vested interest in the human species continuing to populate this planet, I have the best solution for you. Yeah. And it sounds you know as I talked to Nick and and and we've talked as even this conversation here do you talk there? You know, you're I would say, and you can telling me if I'm ready wrong, that you're preaching kind of a return to a natural order. They, it seems, are preaching a new world order, especially you know, juxtaposed to what we have right now in terms of animal agriculture. So is that how you see it? Is that? Is that a good way to characterize these things? Uh? Actually, I'll say no, Um, I agree with your your your sentiment on on on the approach they're trying to take. UM, I mean new in the sense of eliminating um, one of the most fundamental food sources for all life on this planet through all time. UM. But but but not new in the sense of relying on one of the most devastating food systems that we've ever seen on this planet. Um. You know, for us. UM, it's not about turning the clock back necessarily, it's about looking back and taking lessons from the past. We have made tremendous advancements in science and biology and um you know, all of the sciences that study human evolution and and and our co our co evolvement and and and and the environment around us. We can apply those advancements to how we practice agriculture. So it's not simply we need to go back to how it was. It's more like we need to learn from nature and figure out a way to optimize all of the things that are necessary to promote stability UM and to avoid scarcity and and promote food security and create those outcomes that we talked about right, health and resiliency and and and sustainability. UM. So there's a new technology component to it, certainly, it's just not technology that's designed to combat nature. Right. The existing system. Literally, if you think about what a monoculture is, and this is what they promote, right, hundreds of thousands of square miles MHM, multiple percentage points. You know, ten percent of the land master of the United States alone is corn. Right. That is a single crop, a single organism spread over a vast area. It's absolutely a monoculture. It has destroyed native habitat. It is destroying soil of biology, it is the soying biology above the soil. It's causing erosion, It's causing run off, it's causing pollinator die off. It's promoting toxins in our water system, it's causing toxins in our food, is generating dead zones in the ocean. The e p A says soil is the number one pollutant in our water supply because of the consequences of the way that we practice agriculture. So I'm saying that's a problem. I'm saying we've got to acknowledge that problem. We've gotta look to the lessons of the world around us and say, hey, instead of fighting this thing, which is clearly a losing battle, how can we work with it and apply our incredible potential as a human species to adapt and evolve and take those lessons to create a better system. Yeah. I think the next the next thing to move to is is something that I don't think we got in the recording with Nick, but something him and I talked about after words in terms of regenerative agriculture, and I just said, you know, what do you think about regenerative and he and his paraphrasing his response that it was a it's a band aid, it's a small measure. It's not scalable. It's not it's not going to be impactful in the way that their version of change will be impactful on a global, international scale. What's what do you say to that? And how do you scale regenerative? Yeah, so the scale conversation is the is the one that you know, because regenerative is such a powerful tool and it and it counters um significantly. Every tactic that they use to attack me um. They try to say, don't look there, it's not scalable, right, you know, the reality is again subtle shifts UM can create a massive change and in order to finish all of the count as an example that we have in the United dates on grass um and further to even do it, intergenerative systems is absolutely within our grasp, right, numerous organizations have done research on this to validate it. And just as an example, right, you know, we have millions of acres of land um that are used to produce grains and other feed, specifically for cattle. We don't need to feed cattle. Those grains cattle can eat, you know, things that they can forbes and things that they can get off the land, as well as grasses and native ecosystems. Right, so we simply take that land and create functioning, healthy ecosystems. We start addressing all the things that we talked about, and we're finishing more animals on grass. Right. Half a billion acres in the United States is private land or conservation program land UM with with little occupancy of ruminants. Right, we know that we've seen declined in native ruminant species UM, and we know that a lot of private lands don't have animals on them. With without forcing anybody to do anything UM, just with the promise of saying, hey we can we can regenerate your land and prove it in preview diversity and with management make the land healthier, and we can also produce food on that land. Even utilizing a small portion of that land, UM can generate a massive opportunity UM to again scale regenerative agriculture and finish ruminants on on grass. There's another half a billion acres of land and our monoculture crops system, where again, if we're adopting regenerative practices. We should be incorporating animals into those lands and allowing them to you know, at a at a national scale, feed on the residues the byproduct of human food production, and create the fertilizer and create the moisture and you know, provide the nourishment for the rizal sphere of the life beneath the soil, and do all of the things, um, that we need to do to again improve the ecosystem while finishing more animals on grass and regenerative systems. Um. I mean, just as a silly example, right, there's eighty million acres of of of corn crops in the US and about that strictly made um raised for for the production of ethanol, which is a biofuel. So here we are taking something with a with an adverse carbon footprint to create an allegedly green product. Right. Um, that's that's an upside down logic, right, what if we just put cattle on that? So not only do we have enough land, we have more than enough land. We have enough land to grow the number of room minutes and finish animals on on grass. Yeah, I think this is something I you know, you and I for fairness, You and I have talked about this before, um, in terms of impossible approach, in terms of the plant based meat approach. UM. I think it's it's you've kind of already touched on it there. But I asked Nick, you know, where do all if we're going to eliminate animal agriculture, where did the hundreds of millions of animals go that we currently are housing as a country. Um? What happens to the land, the farmers, the community. I asked Nick about his vision for America. What does rural Iowa look like? If there there's no cows walking around them, it's all plant based agriculture. I would ask you this similar question. You know, what's your vision for you know, decades down the roads as we as we would in this case accelerate regenerative agriculture. What's America look like? What's what's your vision for everything? Yeah? I mean, I think I think that we take a more balanced approach to the way that we practice agriculture, right, and we expand the footprint over generative agriculture. Again, we need to in order to continue to produce food, UM, we need to to create healthier food. UM. The this this dichotomy of it's either A or B. It's black or white, it's plants or its animals. Um, it's part of the problem. Right, Where in nature do you see thriving ecosystems without animals? Where in nature do you see monocultures? Right? These are not natural things? Um. It means that we're there's lost potential there. UM. So for me, that the future looks like farming and ranching um in in in rural and regional areas where we're creating more products than corn and soybeans and wheat that we're exporting all over the planet. Instead, we're returning to creating an abundance of different crops um, or I should say a multitude excuse me, of different crop foods that we can that we as humans can eat, right, and that we're incorporating animals in a way um that promotes the production of that diversity of crops and that creates um, you know, a sort of hedging additional revenue streams for farmers um and ranchers UM. That creates an opportunity to to bring in animals where you know, let's just say that the forty of food waste that we have in this country. You know, we can be using that to feed some of the monogastrics like chicken, um and pork, right um. And I think that opportunities to I'd identify, you know, space that's not currently being managed um and and and and add animals to it into a system that is being managed thoughtfully will help to rebuild native ecosystems, right. Um. Creating the balance playing the role of keystone species in nature that we've since removed or that we've since prohibited from playing their role in an ecosystem due to infrastructure like fenses and things like that. Right, we don't have herds of of sixty million plus buys and roaming across the entire continent pushed by wolves. Right. We don't have all of these key elements in place to simply just rewild it. Um. We need to be involved in that, in that recovery and that healing process. And there's a way to produce more than enough food to feed ourselves, um and to and to do it in a lasting manner, and to do it in a way that improves our health. And it does not require intensive chemical inputs, and it does not require ultra process food with synthetics. Add a tives and oil stabilizers and you know all of this garbage that's leading to the health declient across the globe. Yeah, do you you know there's a lot of and I think many and many of these arguments, well arguments, not an argument, and many of these issues. I think you you know, with Nick and impossible with you enforce nation from each and many of the companies that are driving to to find solutions to these issues. UM. I want to make sure, as as people have probably heard me say in the past, that we're not essentially talking past each other. We're not talking about complete different issues. And one of the good things that's come out of listening to Nick speak and listening to you Robbie speak is that there's a lot of similar language. Biodiversity comes up a lot, healthy ecosystem comes up a lot, I think a a mutual disdain for factory farming UM seems to be seems to be there at least factory animal agriculture as it is, And so there are there are a lot of common threads UM happening here. Do you do you feel like, from from where you sit, there's a way for these things to coexist? If if if it seems like to me, UM, impossible would need to come a little bit closer to your end because they're saying no, no animal products in our food system at all. UM. But is there a way do you think that this can it can come together and both of these solution oriented approaches could could work together in a way. I mean, I don't understand how they're approach is a solution to anything. Their approaches is based on an ideology of eliminating animals, and they're leveraging um, a population of people that that strongly adheres and is convicted towards promoting that same agenda, UM, in order to promote their own agenda of patenting you know, technology and turning that into profits. UM. I fail to see anywhere where they're actually proposing solutions to the merit of challenges UM that we've been discussing, right, and many of which they even they even make claims themselves to be you know, solutions oriented, as you noted towards right. So I'd love to know specifically from them to be able to answer that question, what are they doing to improve soil health? What are they actually tactically doing to restore habitat in a way that is legitimate and achievable. How are they combating erosion? How are they combating the intensive use of toxins in our agriculture system that finds its way into our food and into our water. Then it's and breast milk. Okay, you know, what are they doing to address dead zones and oceans? What are they doing to address you know, pollinator collapse one of the greatest issues facing our our our global society, and flooding and drought tolerance and so on. Right, I mean, they are literally doubling down on the very system that I am trying to fight to change. So I don't see a lot of middle ground, right. I appreciate their conviction towards what they say, right trying to create a better meat. I appreciate that they're trying to eliminate the use of animals, but I see nothing and they're follow through that's going to actually generate or yield those results. And I actually see disingenuous methods used to cast stones at an industry that is actually providing solutions. And I'd love to talk specifically to some of the things about carbon emissions and water use because those are some of the most frustrating tactics that they use, and if I can share just how profound the reality is compared to what they say, I think a lot of the listeners would would appreciate that as well. Go for it. You know, I think I don't want to preach forever about carbon because again I think there's there's so much more. I think when it comes to impossible specifically and in their stance not only on animal agriculture, but specifically regenerative agriculture. UM, you gotta look at it in in two ways. What's the what is the true power and the true result of regenerative agriculture when it comes to carbon, And then what's the truth about carbon and agriculture generally relative to their claims? First one, in the power of regenerative actually participated in in in an organization that was able to, you know, have a life cycle assessment, a cradle to grave so to speak, scientific evaluation of everything from an animal being born, to any inputs that are brought into the system, to the transportation of animals, every single factor that can that can exist that can create a carbon foot print in a life of a of an animal. UM that was conducted by Quantis labs at a at a ranch and bluffed in Georgia called White of Pastures Okay. Quantis Labs is the exact same organization that performed the exact same scientific study four Impossible Foods. That's Impossible Foods also engaged with to perform their l c A. The results of those exact two studies under that exact same science from that exact same organization wide Oak Pastures. For every pound of beef, they produce sequesters three and a half pounds of carbon equivalence out of the atmosphere and into the soil. Okay. So it's not emitting carbon like everybody's talking about. It's pulling it out of the atmosphere and putting into the ground where it needs to be to promote healthy ecosystems, to store water, to do all the things that we've talked about in the last episode in this one, So what are the possible as l c A say, For every pound of this hyper ultra processed food that Impossible creates, they are emitting three and a half pounds of carbon equivalents into the atmosphere. That's a delta of seven pounds difference in carbon equivalence being emitted in the atmosphere between a regenerative system per pound of product and impossible. And yet they're patting themselves on the back for being this great solution as they're continuing to pump carbon and the atmosphere. So it's absurd that that would ever make a claim that regenerative isn't isn't a solution. Right. The other thing they do is continue to bring up antiquated data that has been admittedly challenged um and reproduce so they reference this. You know, animal production contributes to more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation, right, and you're like, oh my gosh, I think of all the planes and all the cars and all the trains and all the boats and all the all the things that we do for transportation. That's a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. I can't believe how terrible these animals are. Right, it's not the case. That study was conducted back in like two thousand three or two thousand six or something, and when they realized that they made an error, they corrected the study. And then the same body that did that, it was actually the Food and Agriculture of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization reissued the study and says that direct the direct impact of animal agriculture and cargon carbon emissions is actually less than the third of what transportation is. But that doesn't stop organizations like Impossible from choosing to be an illectually dishonest and promote a talking point that has been since adjusted and corrected, which I think is just completely appalling. And then on the water issue, it's it's the exact same thing. So on the water issue, you've got to understand that there's there's again without getting to science and complicated when you look at water use in these sorts, in these sorts of ways, you look at green water and blue water and gray water, and gray water won't get into because it's complicated and it's not really relevant for for what I'm about to share. But green waters rain, and blue water is water, you know, pumped from lakes or rivers or aquifers, right, And it's that blue water where you think of filling a bath tub or running an irrigation system or pulling water out of the sink that everybody is most um is most thoughtful of, and most of the UM quotes that you hear on water use and animal agriculture is speaking about green water. It's it's and a grass finished animal of the water use of that animal is from rain. And when I say rain, I mean rain falling from the sky infiltrating the soil, causing plants to grow, filling aquifers, filling lakes. Whatever the animal may drink, urinate, defecate back on the land, some of that water will evaporate. It's just natural water raining from the sky and a functioning ecosystem like we all you know, imagine the elk that you hunt or the deer that we hunt, or et cetera. Right, um, In the most conventional systems of the water use of of beef is attributed to rain. So it's it's completely dishonest, right only and only something like five, you know, less than five of water use and and beef per duction is coming from water being pumped out of the ground and spread somewhere or brought somewhere or what exactly. Everybody thinks when they think of oh, no intensive water, right, they don't realize that raising cattle is less intensive or less exhaustive on water resources as say raising almonds in California or raising rice anywhere in the world. I think, in response to what you just laid out there. I was reading a letter from Impossible CEO and founder Pat Brown. I mean, he's one of the one he's one of the most outspoken critics of animal agriculture, and he is the voice and face of Impossible. Even though we were able to talk to Nick, I'm glad we are to have talked to Nick because it's very interesting and I thought, you know, reasonable at least approaches to the conversation. But something that Pat said that I think I'd be interested to hear you you talk through a little bit. He wrote in a letter. UM and a memo are divisive. Advantage of the incumbent industry is our ability to continue improving our products, processes and supply eye chain in every way that matters to consumers and the environment, week by week, year by year, far into the future. Cows aren't getting any better at making meat. We are, I felt. I thought that was when I read that, I chuckled a bit and I thought, of you, so, so go ahead, and cows aren't getting better at making me. We are. UM, you've kind of touched already on on the way you feel about this, But what's your reaction to that that particular statement. Yeah, I guess, I guess when you look at um, how much ground you have to cover before you get even close to the vision to being able to realize the vision that you're casting as an opportunity than Yeah, you have a tremendous advantage because you've got a long way to go. Um when and and and and talking about and thinking about um, you know, cow's not getting more efficient at creating me. I mean, I don't. I don't even know how to respond to that. It's just such an absurd statement. There's nothing. I'm sorry, I'm laughing, You're you're You're right when I when I said that, I I just it's it's dumbfounding that one. That There's a lot of this that I'm trying to be objective about, but boy, that one is just out there bit so so so. So here's the deal, I mean, here's let's talk about what what what? What have? How you create meat? Why? Meats? You know valuable? We'll save nutrition for another conversation. I'm sure you can have some guests on I can speak to to that a lot better than I can write. But but what cows do? Another room, and it's in particular do is they take in addition to being houstone species and fucking functioning healthy ecosystems like we've talked about, they take food stuffs and environments, UM, food products that that humans can't eat, or plant products that humans can't eat, excuse me, and environments where we cannot grow plant products that humans can eat, and they more efficient than anything that ever has existed or will existed convert that into human edible food in the form of meat. Right. And so when you look at um the agriculture land and in the world, um, a third of the surface of the earth is suitable for agriculture, right. Two thirds of that amount are not suitable for crops. Those are the land where we put animals. Those are the lands where there is no potential to produce human food that is plant based. There's only a potential to produce human food and to improve ecosystems in the form of animals that we manage. Right. And again, of that third of the surface that is arable or suitable for agriculture, the I think it's the f a O one, one of the large regulatory bodies, says that only three percent of that is considered prime. Right. So there's there's certain you know, quote unquote Arab land that can only grow olives or can only grow cassava. I mean you're not You're not talking about land that we could grow soybeans, let alone avocados or almonds or things like that. Right, And so it's not this this simple, you know, distill everything down into a reductionist series of rudimentary equations and and and reinvent the wheel. Right, It's extremely complex. It's much more complex than they want to cast it, you know, than they want to present it to be. The reality is, in addition to the fact that nothing will be more efficient at producing meat than animals in areas where there's no food production alternative, nothing creates healthier food that is more nutrient dense from a caloric standpoint, and offers a better a meto acid profile and more minerals than animal meat. So I can't speak to that statement any more than that without blow a gasket. Yeah, yeah, I I like I I told Nick and in our conversation, I mean, he I'm a potential customer of theirs um if I would much rather eat an impossible burger than a piece of chicken from Purdue. This is how I feel. Um. So that's that's a big part of how I am trying to approach this, like, but I run into with Impossible, specifically run into all of these illogical barriers where you know, That's why I wanted to talk to Nick, and that's why I wanted to pick up the conversation with you, so so I could get really from my own edification a little bit more of a rounded picture of of what's happening here, the options and kind of the ideology specifically of Impossible and companies like Beyond Meat and other things like that. Because um, as I've written for our website, these companies are being funded, they are um their industry is growing leaps and bounds. I talked to Nick, he was in Hong Kong working on their international side of their business. So this is not a a a shrinking enterprise. There's or others like them. So um, it's something to know. And when you when you I know you and I have talked about this, but when you read things like that from Pat Brown and you think about how quickly their industries are growing and the scale and impact that they're already having. I mean to be in Burger King and Kodoba and all these other places. What do you think? I mean it just as as somebody who cares about soil and healthy ecosystems and thinks about it all the time. Where do where does that make you take your mind? Are you scared of the power that there that they're UM putting together here? Do you do you feel like eventually people will come around UM to other ways of thinking? Or are or is this? Is this going to continue to grow UM as their as their funding and technology grows. I mean money and media goes a long way, right, I mean, as I understand that they've they're valued it's somewhere over four billion dollars and they've raised something like one and a half billion dollars. I mean, I would imagine there budget for toilet paper exceeds my entire budget for the year. UM. You know, I think that they're gonna and and there's a lot of money to be made. I mean there's you know, the money, there's not a lot of money to be made UM. And you know traditional agriculture, there's a hell of a lot of money to be made in technology UM. And so you know, I don't doubt that they're going to continue to do UM what they've done and continue to see some progress in in in that vein UM. And again what they've done is UM, you know, employed a strategy that is listened to what I say, don't watch what I do, right, and then going into something like a Burger King, Right, I mean it's fast food, it's ultra processed food. It's part of the problem UM as far as health is concerned. Right, And it's rather appropriate that now the most processed food in the history of our UM species is joining you know, in in in that UM in that industry. Yeah, yeah, you said it right. When I've when I've looked at like lab grown meats and some of the technology based industries that are popping up around the solution to this issue UM that they're in. They're investing in the technology, not necessarily the nutrition of the product or um or the what it will do for our ecosystem. So, as I said, as I told Nick, and I know you know this because you're a hunter as well. You know, as a hunter, I am very very interested in land use. I'm very interested in our overall ecosystem health. And that's why this matters to me. UM. There are other reasons that matters to me, certainly, there's a lot of cattle grazing on BLM lands that wouldn't be there, um if if impossible meats gets their way into So there's just a lot of elements of it to me. But as I as a hunter and somebody who really cares about these landscapes, this is this is ultimately interesting to me for those reasons. So, UM, I really appreciate your coming on and thinking about these things with us. I know, um, as I've said, I know that you know it's not it's not apples to apples in terms of your company and what you do and and the scale and size of Impossible and what they do. But I think your perspective is valuable and juxtaposed to their perspective. And I hope, I hope everybody. I hope you got something out of it, and I hope everybody does as well. Yeah, thanks a lot. Man. Again, I really appreciate you you having me on and and and giving us an opportunity to again have a have a have a fuller um you know, a conversation. And I hope, as you noted, people are are taking away from something um that if this isn't plant versus animals, right, this is this is about a system and um if if if, what we're trying to do is predicated on change, and let's let's let's focus on the kind of change that's actually tangible, um and not and not simply lip service. UM. So yeah, that you know, using the word tangible is important to me because as I told you before, and I'll tell the audience, I felt that coming down the Room Ranch. I haven't been to any production facility and manufacturing facility for impossible, so I can't speak to that. But coming down to Room Ranch and be in with you and the team down there and seeing that, it felt like there's a real tangible thing happening here, something I can get my hand hands on and my head around and I can touch and feel and see the improvements to the landscapes, and that that to me means a lot. So Um, maybe one day I'll go see how they make a plant based burger and fine and find maybe I'll find some some some some real satisfaction seeing that. But I just don't know. So that's something we'll continue talk about this in the future. I know you had a lot of good contacts for us to to further these conversations with people in different ways. So we'll continue to do that here on the show, and and we'll keep in touch with you, Rabbie. I really appreciate it. Man. Hey, thanks a lot, Ben. And for anybody that is interested in learning any more about this stuff, there's exciting new documentary coming out called called Sacred Cow. I'd encourage folks to look at a book associated with that, a Kiss the Ground documentary. Either's the biggest little farm documentary. You can learn anything about Force of Nature and all of our transparency to our supply chain and what we do at Force of Nature meats dot com. Again, this isn't just about me, you know, David and the David and Goliath conversation. Um, there's a major global movement and and you know there's there's no food revolution without the consumers. We need everybody to to get involved and start supporting better food. Yeah, I mean, you know, we talked to talk to vegans here, We talked to a lot of animal rights activists and people that think differently than we do. Um, but what is is great for me is that everybody's uh think very conscious about what they're eating and words produced and where it comes from even more so at the time of COVID. So, UM, I take that away as a positive. So thanks for ROBBYO. We'll talk to you soon, bro. So yeah, that's it. That's all another episode in the books. Thank you to Nick and Robbie for having those conversations with us, specifically thanks to Nick for coming to us from Hong Kong. Hopefully, UM, you guys were able to hear both of those gentlemen at answer similar questions and talk about their solutions to what they both believe. He's a big problem with our food systems. Again, as I said in the show already to both of those gentlemen, I feel like it's a proximity situation. My solution for this on a personal levels to get closer to my food, shorten the supply chains, and know where it comes from. That's That's what I'm gonna do personally. Um. On a larger level, the point I'd like to make is is our ability to feed billions of people going forward is always going to be messy. It's always going to be imperfect, it's always gonna have major flaws. So any solution presented is going to have major flaws, whether it's the nutrition or the scalability, whatever it is, it's always gonna have cracks chinks in the armor. I think plant based meat is flawed, is flawed itself, but a reasonable alternative, and it kind of makes sense as a counterpoint to meet We know, we know meat itself isn't the problem. Killing animals for their flesh isn't necessarily problem done responsibly, as Robbie points out, as a positive and long laughing impact on how we live. So, you know, but looking down the road, who knows part of this is? We don't know. That's what makes it interest. So we're gonna keep talking about it. We're gonna keep exploring it. Got a lot of good leads from both Robbie and Nick about who to talk to next and how to continues to explore this conversation. So we're gonna keep doing it here on the Hunting Collective, Phil, you have a parting shot there from today's episode. Do you think we pulled off some some real something really was achieved here? I mean, just introducing people to the perspectives and points of view and giving them something they haven't heard before. Uh, you know, we're not going to find a solution right now, but it gets people thinking, and that's the most important thing, right you're it's you're like my inner voice, that's what my inner voice tells me. I'm just here to prop you up, man. Even if you're dead wrong, at least you tried basically the least you're doing something. Um. Yeah, that's a good way to sum it up. So we'll keep Uh, we'll revisit this conversation again. I know it's not hunting. I know it's not core. We're not telling hunting stories or not talking about how to kill turkeys or bears or whatever. But I think it's still very important and so we're gonna keep you covered on the show. Certainly always right into t HC at the Mediator dot com, which I know you will do. Tell us your opinion, tell us where you might where we might take this conversation next. Um and so Phil, A little bit of housekeeping, A little bit of housekeeping. Our buddy Trey Peku. We never did get his like, how to pronounce his name Tray Pacao, Tray Pico. Uh. Well, I did reach out to him, Trey, you're gonna receive I still haven't sent it because it's been a little busy in quarantine and COVID. But you're gonna receive my old podcasting kit. Me and Phil are gonna call you up and bother you about this new podcast that you're going to start around the science of hunting. So doctor Trey pH d. Hopefully we get him on the airwaves here pretty soon. So following up on that, you might hear Trey on the show soon. We got to talk to him see if he wants to come on. Similarly, are New Zealand Hunt or New Zealand Contest giveaway with First Light? That Hunt is going to be postponed until next year. Obviously we're supposed to be lifting off just about Nowville supposed to be taken off in a couple of days to go to New Zealand. Oh man, I know, but we're not. We're gonna do it next year. So it gives me job security for a whole another year. You can't get rid of me. I feel good. I feel good. But maybe they can, maybe this that take this as a challenge. Oh yeah, they I mean they definitely can. I don't mean to kill your buzz here, but what about the New Zealand Hunt. That's when when they get rid of me I'll say, what about the New Zealand Hunt, and then maybe they'll reconsider you see, like you really played this through in your head. Yeah, haven't you my firing I have no idea anyway, moving on. Those are just a couple of housekeeping things. The third housekeeping thing the TC book Club. I'm working on this baby hard for right now. There's gonna be some things by by reading this, buying this book and reading it. You gotta buy it yourself. I had a couple of people right in, but like, do we get a coupon? Are you gonna pay for the book? I don't know. I'm not paying for the book. You get the book, you get to keep the book, You get to read the book, sell it on eBay after you're done. Don't really care. Uh. The North American Model Conservation Wildlife Conservation by Dr Hilarious Geist and Shane Mahoney is what we should all be reading right now. I'm about three quarters of the way through it. Phil. We gonna get you a copy? Do you have one yet? I don't know. No coupons. You gotta go buy it. What like the rest of us, You're not special. I guess you're right. So we all gotta be, but you all gotta go out and buy that book. I know you know it's tough times. I understand. Um, I think this is an essential reading. I think everything we'll have in the book club is an essential reading. I think it's important that we all have it and read it added to our collections. So I understand that's a it's can be a tough ask. I do respect that. Hopefully many of you can jump in and read that book. Trust me that there will be a reward at the end for the TC book Club. And I'm working on maybe even an email or you can subscribe and we can update you on things and we can talk through each book. So that's that's the TC book Club. Many of you've asked about that, many of you are excited about that. The thing you can do right now is go buy that book and start reading, and pretty soon we will have the next steps for you to discuss it. So that's it, Philip. Next week we're gonna talk to In fact, tomorrow, I think talked to Georgia Pellegrini. I've known Georgia for quite a long time. She's been around about as long as Stephen Roanella. Talking about Wild foods, talking about how to eat better, um, talking about how to kill things and why you are too. And so Georgia is a veteran of the game. She's got a television show on public TV. She's trying to crowdfund, so I wanted to let her come on, speak your yeast. Hopefully you hasn't here. Have you got a little extra dollar to throw her away so she can produce her television show. Um, her her funding got pulled because of the pandemic, so I want to talk to her anyway. This is another reason to have her on, let her speak her mind and say what she wants to say, and hopefully convince everyone that her TV show is worthy of being put on the air. So we will see you next time episode. Say bye Phil, goodbye? You know, because I can't go a week without doing Run without d

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