This isn't practical because it requires so much effort from the consumer. It's a lot of time and coordination and it's relatively expensive. Farmers markets are one opportunity but high quality organic ranchers are breaking their backs processing meat and driving it to all the farmers markets, and are barely turning a profit off $16/lb meat.
I'm working in this space for a tiny company that delivers high quality, low antibiotic use, low environmental impact, pasture raised single-source meat products in California. We're going to run farm education "meet the rancher" events to get people out to where the meat is actually produced, but we have to be realistic: that's more for the instagram photo ops to convince people that we're legitimate instead of to truly change consumer behavior.
The ugly truth is Americans eat too much meat, and we expect it to be dirt cheap. Meat has been heavily subsidized, and all the externalities from industrial meat production have been ignored, for the past 60 years at least. Turning back the clock on those consumer expectations is going to be very painful.
I'm also extremely worried about the rise of industrial meat production in the developing world, but it seems elitist of wealthy Americans to complain about Chinese agriculture standards when we can't even fix it in our own backyard.
I'm working in this space for a tiny company that delivers high quality, low antibiotic use, low environmental impact, pasture raised single-source meat products in California. We're going to run farm education "meet the rancher" events to get people out to where the meat is actually produced, but we have to be realistic: that's more for the instagram photo ops to convince people that we're legitimate instead of to truly change consumer behavior.
The ugly truth is Americans eat too much meat, and we expect it to be dirt cheap. Meat has been heavily subsidized, and all the externalities from industrial meat production have been ignored, for the past 60 years at least. Turning back the clock on those consumer expectations is going to be very painful.
I'm also extremely worried about the rise of industrial meat production in the developing world, but it seems elitist of wealthy Americans to complain about Chinese agriculture standards when we can't even fix it in our own backyard.