Has anyone read Jeremy Rifkin, the end of capitalism and the 3rd industrial revolution, the collaborative society etc? With cultured food and vertical farming, we can return half the planet to wildlife, and spend our lives not working as slaves to the 2nd capitalist revolution.

Incidentally, NZ hill country farms return so little to the NZ economy, we could give most of it back to the birds and bees now.

Cultured meat and milk are here. The impact of the world’s vast herds of cattle on climate change make it imperative that we move to cultured meat and milk. What future NZ farmers?

I agree we should look at other options however it will be a slow process. To start with we have to stop such intensive farming on land that can’t naturally sustain it. From what I’ve read dairy farming in the South Island (generalisation) is rediculous. I’m happy to have milk & meat just do it sustainably.

Yes, good comment around diversification with seafood. Just to emphasise a point to the doubters about artificial meat; as soon as we have the ability to manufacture food that looks like meat, tastes like meat, has the texture of meat, and is cheaper than meat, then effectively the animal meat industry is going to decline rapidly. Same with milk. That leaves us with tourism as our main economic driver if we don’t diversify. This is not science fiction. It is being worked on now.

You only mention “land” – it should be important to note that mussel farming has many times the efficiency of land-based farming for the same amount of protein, plus it doesn’t compete with animals and humans for habitat, and requires no fertilliser input. In addition, omega 3:6 ratios are much better for seafood than for grains, which may be important for population health.

I suspect that people have been eating real food for so long that there will be a market for it in the future. We should be promoting how our beef and lamb is essentially ‘free range’. That’s a better response. My opinion.