Walking a busy and big trade show, a guy can work up an appetite. During a trip to Las Vegas for CES 2019, I found myself hungry and looking for something to eat when I came across a small food truck with the Impossible Foods name splashed all over it.

This future-food group is not a test-tube meat business; instead it’s working hard to make plant-based burgers that are indistinguishable from your favorite beef patty. The samples were free — and as anyone knows, journalists have a hard time turning down a free sandwich. I lined up for one to try it out. But I had to listen to the sermon first.

You see, Impossible Foods has a sermon. The founders want to end meat production in this country by 2035. They talk about “icky antibiotics” and do their worst to talk about the horrors of the traditional meat industry.

So, waiting for the next tray of sliders to be handed out from the food truck window, visitors had to listen to a young lady say this sandwich had no meat. Then she went on to talk about meat in the worst way, noting the company’s slider didn’t have the antibiotics that your burger does (ignoring the fact that there are no antibiotics in meat when it hits the butcher case). She talked about less environmental impact from plant-based foods versus meat — ignoring the fact that beef cattle spend a lot of time living and eating on land that’s unsuitable for anything else (turning nothing to something).

Did I speak up and say something? No. The challenge is that I learned a long time ago that just barging into someone else’s church with your own sermon is no way to make a difference. But perhaps I should have. You see, that slider was quite tasty, and I have several farmer-readers who raise plant-based food.

I’m not against diversification in food. Nor against new market opportunities, because farmers raise food.

But I am against a product that can’t get traction unless it trounces on the conventional. What’s Impossible Foods’ story? It’s a tasty plant-based burger that, frankly, I would have again — though I won’t because they’re an enemy of beef producers. Even if they help soybean, wheat, beet and other farmers. If the answer is to gut another industry, then is the product worthwhile?

Preparation matters
I need to line up my facts. I need to get ready to tell the story. And I guess I need to get my own sermon ready so when I come across the vegan/vegetarian/test-tube meat clergy, I can have a learned discourse. Though I’m pretty sure in that crowd I would be cast out, and perhaps vilified, in the way that Luther and his followers were back in the day.

You see, today’s modern “foodies” are growing their own spiritual religion of what they think food should be, and some days it’s far removed from what we in agriculture know works.

We have a big challenge ahead. We need high-quality protein that can be efficiently produced on land that can’t raise anything else. And frankly, I want choice. If I want a black bean burger for supper rather than ground sirloin, then that’s what I want. But when it’s time for that steak or chicken or pork, I’ll want that too — not something grown in a dish.

Sermon prep begins now. See you in “church.”