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Seated across a table from me at a rented loft near Wall Street in late July, Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown is digging into a bowl of Beyond Ground, his companys latest product, which debuts July 29, goes on sale via the company’s website in August, and promises more protein per serving than beef. But this isnt just any product demo; its a company overhaul. With this launch, Beyond Meat is becoming merely Beyond and turning its focus away from mimicking animal proteins to letting plant-based proteins speak for themselves. The radical move is cultural, agricultural, and financial, and Brown wasnt shy in discussing how Beyond now lets the company compete across the grocery store, teasing what products hes developing, explaining how Silicon Valley money helped shape the public’s ambivalence toward alt meat, and sharing how studying Roman gladiators has influenced Beyonds new direction. Brown, who started the company in 2009 and took it public in a celebrated 2019 IPO, is so committed to Beyonds rebrand and its new product that he has been consuming Beyond Grounds main ingredientfava beansas his primary source of daily calories. I gotta let my body be my argument, he says, riffing on a famous quote by physician-philosopher Albert Schweitzer that greets Beyond employees who open the company manual. In an era when protein is suddenly being stuffed into everythingfrom chips to waffles to sodasBrown says he began to wonder: If youre the best in the world at making plant proteins, why confine yourself to the center of the plate? Without pressure to mimic the exact flavors and textures of beef, chicken, or pork, and without being limited to the center of the plate, or to the dinner table at all, he realized Beyond could get fanatical about the plant proteins themselves. And that will be why people reach for the Beyond brand, he predicts. Not for a facsimile, but something authentically us. The company won’t be sunsetting its existing products anytime soon. And last summer it debuted a line of Sun Sausages that was already a step in the veggie-forward direction. But now, for the first time in Beyonds history, it is offering a product that is stripped down to four clean ingredients: the fava beans, potato starch, water, and psyllium huskfiber from a desert herb prized for its ability to help control cholesterol, blood sugar, and, most crucially, protein absorption. A 1/4-pound serving of Beyond Ground contains 140 calories, 4 grams of fiber, 1.5 grams of fat, zero cholesterol and saturated fat, and no added oils. It has 27 grams of protein, more than a serving of beef. From Beyond Meat to ‘Beyond’ Beyond Meat launched a new industry in 2009 in order to leverage the magic of science to serve plant proteins that would not only taste like burgers and chicken nuggets, but actually surpass them in health and sustainability. Two years later, Impossible Burger surfaced and became its chief rival, initiating a race to offer vegans and everyone else hoping to eat less meat the most satisfying alternative at cookouts across the country. Their burgers bled, whereas companies before them (Quorn, Gardein, MorningStar Farms) sold vegetable patties that had corn kernels poking out or looked like Spam. For a decade, the burgers, chicken, ground beef, meatballs, and sausages from these two companies filled grocery meat aisles and restaurant chain menusfirst in America, then slowly overseas. But lately sales have fallen, causing a different new period for the category generally and Beyond in particular, as the sole publicly traded player. Worth almost $12 billion following its 2019 IPO, Beyonds valuation has hovered at or below $500 million since 2023. Impossible Burger has raised close to $2 billion to date; CEO Peter McGuiness told the Wall Street Journal last month that the company is not yet profitable. Several factors have contributed to the broader sectors declineproduct fatigue, taste expectations going unmet, questions about processed ingredients. Impossible Foodss McGuinness, whos taken flak from vegans since warning a month ago that, to drum up more business, I may do a hybrid burger thats 50% beef, believes that the alt-meat industry has done a lousy job with outreach, describing their messagings premise as equating to If you ate meat, you were a Neanderthal and adding: We were insulting meat eaters. But one theory he shares with Brown, and one I previously wrote extensively about for Fast Company, is that two of Americas most powerful industriesmeatpackers and the pharmaceutical giantsfelt so threatened by the categorys quick rise that they stoked fears about plant-based burgers posing health risks, and it kind of worked. (Big Pharmas interests boil down to the fact that farm animals receive well over half of all human antibiotics produced.) Attack ads blasting vegan meat products as ultra-processed imitations, asking if they differed from dog food, and arguing they contained chemicals that doubled as laxatives went viral as Instagram and TikTok memes. But Brown also points one finger backwards, partway at least. After grabbing Silicon Valleys attention, he says the plant-based meat category morphed into “something that was different from its origins. He says hes grateful, because we received a lot of funding, but Beyonds raison dtre quickly evolved into more of a lab thing and a technology thing. To develop Beyond Meats inaugural productdubbed Chicken-Free StripsBrown worked closely with the leading agriculture departments at the University of Missouri and the University of Maryland, two big land-grant universities. He also built rapports with farmers in the Midwest and Saskatchewan. But once the fake chicken started fooling Mark Bittman, investors from Bill Gates to Ev Williams and Biz Stone started doling out money to scale the disruptive technology. Ultimately, Brown says, it diverted consumers focus from [the realization that Beyonds plant-based meat] is closer to the field than the factory-farmed ingredients they’re used to eating. The irony is that, despite so much doubt being cast on alt-meat ingredients, the way people eat toay is, if anything, more prepackaged and tech-addled than ever. And thats why Brown believes this moment is just right for Beyonds redemption arc. He says his epiphany ranks among the most profound discoveries hes made in life, driving him to invoke Albert Schweitzer yet again, this time the passage Schweitzer wrote in Africa following a freak hippopotamus encounter that led to an “iron door” of understanding opening that showed him the path forward. The younger crowd might just call it a surge of galaxy-brain clarity. I thought, What were great at is making protein, he tells me. So, instead of thinking about a simple replacement for animal protein, what if you just thought about your daily protein consumption, and I started to try to replace as much of that as I can with plant protein, any form that I could? Enter the gladiators Fava beans, Brown says, are just the start. If you want something thats a ground product, here you have it, Brown says. (Beyond says three flavors will join the original variety in August: chipotle pineapple, Korean barbecue, and Tuscan tomato. The main product by itself is very neutral, reports Chris Petrellese, who runs Sweet Simple Vegan with his wife, Jasmine Briones and tested an early sample; he made it the star of a casserole and could imagine it being dehydrated into jerky or even blended it into smoothies.) Going forward, Brown says, the company can serve an occasion versus trying to mimic an animal. Youll see us come out with things like, maybe, lentil sausage. Or chickpea hot dogs. Brown hints at a specific new product that hes labored to develop for a while now but wont reveal: a packaged good totally unlike Beyonds previous offerings, destined for grocery store center aisles instead of the meat case. It boasts 30 grams of protein per serving and no fat, and Brown devours the product constantly (calling it cr-r-r-razy good). Beyond is all but certain to pursue a post-workout product, something Brown seems to tease as we worked through our Beyond Ground tasting. He stresses how much reading hes done lately on Roman gladiators. And then, while rattling off the agronomic virtues of fava beanshow theyre good nitrogen fixers, dont require fertilizer, and regenerative by defaulthe lets slide that they also have this amazing and romantic [link to] gladiators! It turns out that bone analysis has revealed that Romes elite athletes ate a mostly vegetarian dietof fava beans, red lentils, and barley. That a decadent, ill-fated society cheered as these powerful warriors fell in the amphitheater surely widens their underdog appeal. As Brown requests an extra bowl of Beyond Ground to consume by itself during the tasting, I note that he himself fits the part as someone whos 6-foot-5 and fit. He once told Mens Health he enjoys bench press because theres an element of not being sure you can do it. The rise in recent years of fitness culture, wellness marketing, and protein-forward products has propelled a pivot from three square meals a day toward what are often called intentional eating occasionspost-workout recovery snacks, meal-replacement shakes, even intentionally not eating (for 18:6, the Warrior Diet, etc.). A whole generation is learning to pick foods based on their function and ratio of macros, meaning the strategic tally of fat to carbs to seemingly exponentially more protein, playing to what the New York Times recently called retails protein arms race. For Brown, this represents an opportunity to claim new territory. He argues that the crowd craving red meat, collagen keto snacks, and extra-protein milkmaybe with a side of tradwifeis chasing a false nostalgia for a natural America that has been undone by industrial agriculture. In his view, it was a Big Meat/Big Pharma industrial complex that killed the same agrarian ideal people believe they’re tapping into when they purchase a bag of bison liver chips. Theres a longing for animal protein because we associate it with simpler times, Brown says. But how its being delivered to us is not [simple]. He is positioning Beyond as far as possible from an agricultural system that has shown itself willing to decimate the land, reengineer the livestock, and market the outcome as something pure and authentic. Magic beans As Beyond repositions itself to be an anytime protein source, its poised to compete directly against a new generation of recovery snack brands. Market research firm Mintel has said from 2013 to 2024, the number of food and beverage products carrying a high protein label quadrupled. A new survey released by Bain, titled Peak Protein? Not Even Close, found that 44% of Americans want to increase their protein intake even furthera 10-point jump from 2024. Recently valued at $725 million, Davidco-created by RXBars founder and relentlessly plugged by podcaster Andrew Hubermanhas released a new product that is nothing but raw, frozen cod, sold in $50 four-packs, perhaps as a dramatic way of proving how well its popular bars stack up in terms of protein content. The presumed stunt shows how companies are scrambling for consumer attention. Brown is unfazed. Right now, the protein industry largely consists of one product category created for the clean-eating protein purists who reject fake food and carefully scour labels, and a second category for the protein-maxxers who, in a single day, might devour Kodiak Frozen Power Waffles (12 grams of protein), Wilde chicken-breast chips (13 grams), a Bucked Up protein soda (25 grams), and a Fairlife Core Power shake (26 grams). The fewest number of ingredients that any of these products contains is 10and thats the soda. The highest number is 28. Among them are gums, gels, and substances such as bovine collagen hydrolysate and acesulfame potassium. Yet a third group is emerging that wants clean, thoughtful high-protein ingredients of the sort Beyond just relaunched to focus on. The companys fava beans actually come from one family farm in Munich, North Dakota. Five generations of Zimmers have worked this land. Just last week, Brown stood with them amid their fava rows. He called up a photo for me to see. That field used to have cattle, he says, gesturing to the tableau of green now sprouting up in all directions. Then he segues into the wolves, bison, and elk that were wiped from these plains, casualties of an extractive farming style farming that in turn helped trigger the Dust Bowl. Later, Brown puts it more directly in an email. We can restore nature, he writes. But first we have to give it a chance to live again.
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Pronatalismthe belief that low birth rates are a problem that must be reversedis having a moment in the U.S. As birth rates decline in the U.S. and throughout the world, voices from Silicon Valley to the White House are raising concerns about what they say could be the calamitous effects of steep population decline on the economy. The Trump administration has said it is seeking ideas on how to encourage Americans to have more children as the U.S. experiences its lowest total fertility rate in history, down about 25% since 2007. As demographers who study fertility, family behaviors, and childbearing intentions, we can say with certainty that population decline is not imminent, inevitable or necessarily catastrophic. The population collapse narrative hinges on three key misunderstandings. First, it misrepresents what standard fertility measures tell us about childbearing and makes unrealistic assumptions that fertility rates will follow predictable patterns far into the future. Second, it overstates the impact of low birth rates on future population growth and size. Third, it ignores the role of economic policies and labor market shifts in assessing the impacts of low birth rates. Fertility fluctuations Demographers generally gauge births in a population with a measure called the total fertility rate. The total fertility rate for a given year is an estimate of the average number of children that women would have in their lifetime if they experienced current birth rates throughout their childbearing years. Fertility rates are not fixedin fact, they have changed considerably over the past century. In the U.S., the total fertility rate rose from about 2 births per woman in the 1930s to a high of 3.7 births per woman around 1960. The rate then dipped below 2 births per woman in the late 1970s and 1980s before returning to 2 births in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since the Great Recession that lasted from late 2007 until mid-2009, the U.S. total fertility rate has declined almost every year, with the exception of very small post-COVID-19 pandemic increases in 2021 and 2022. In 2024, it hit a record low, falling to 1.6. This drop is primarily driven by declines in births to people in their teens and early 20sbirths that are often unintended. But while the total fertility rate offers a snapshot of the fertility landscape, it is not a perfect indicator of how many children a woman will eventually have if fertility patterns are in fluxfor example, if people are delaying having children. Picture a 20-year-old woman today, in 2025. The total fertility rate assumes she will have the same birth rate as todays 40-year-olds when she reaches 40. Thats not likely to be the case, because birth rates 20 years from now for 40-year-olds will almost certainly be higher than they are today, as more births occur at older ages and more people are able to overcome infertility through medically assisted reproduction. A more nuanced picture of childbearing These problems with the total fertility rate are why demographers also measure how many total births women have had by the end of their reproductive years. In contrast to the total fertility rate, the average number of children ever born to women ages 40 to 44 has remained fairly stable over time, hovering around two. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Americans continue to express favorable views toward childbearing. Ideal family size remains at two or more children, and 9 in 10 adults either have, or would like to have, children. However, many Americans are unable to reach their childbearing goals. This seems to be related to the high cost of raising children and growing uncertainty about the future. In other words, it doesnt seem to be the case that birth rates are low because people are uninterested in having children; rather, its because they dont feel its feasible for them to become parents or to have as many children as they would like. The challenge of predicting future population size Standard demographic projections do not support the idea that population size is set to shrink dramatically. One billion people lived on Earth 250 years ago. Today there are over 8 billion, and by 2100 the United Nations predicts there will be over 10 billion. Thats 2 billion more, not fewer, people in the foreseeable future. Admittedly, that projection is plus or minus 4 billion. But this range highlight another key point: Population projections get more uncertain the further into the future they extend. Predicting the population level five years from now is far more reliable than 50 years from nowand beyond 100 years, forget about it. Most population scientists avoid making such long-term projections, for the simple reason that they are usually wrong. Thats because fertility and mortality rates change over time in unpredictable ways. The U.S. population size is also not declining. Currently, despite fertility below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, there are still more births than deaths. The U.S. population is expected to grow by 22.6 million by 2050 and by 27.5 million by 2100, with immigration playing an important role. Will low fertility cause an economic crisis? A common rationale for concern about low fertility is that it leads to a host of economic and labor market problems. Specifically, pronatalists argue that there will be too few workers to sustain the economy and too many older people for those workers to support. However, that is not necessarily trueand even if it were, increasing birth rates wouldnt fix the problem. As fertility rates fall, the age structure of the population shifts. But a higher proportion of older adults does not necessarily mean the proportion of workers to nonworkers falls. For one thing, the proportion of children under age 18 in the population also declines, so the number of working-age adultsusually defined as ages 18 to 64often changes relatively little. And as older adults stay healthier and more active, a growing number of them are contributing to the economy. Labor force participation among Americans ages 65 to 74 increased from 21.4% in 2003 to 26.9% in 2023 and is expected to increase to 30.4% by 2033. Modest changes in the average age of retirement or in how Social Security is funded would further reduce strains on support programs for older adults. Whats more, pronatalists core argument that a higher birth rate would increase the size of the labor force overlooks some short-term consequences. More babies means more dependents, at least until those children become old enough to enter the labor force. Children not only require expensive services such as education, but also reduce labor force participation, particularly for women. As fertility rates have fallen, womens labor force participation rates have risen dramaticallyfrom 34% in 1950 to 58% in 2024. Pronatalist policies that discourage womens employment are at odds with concerns about a diminishing number of workers. Research shows that economic policies and labor market conditions, not demographic age structures, play the most important role in determining economic growth in advanced economies. And with rapidly changing technologies like automation and artificial intelligence, it is unclear what demand there will be for workers in the future. Moreover, immigration is a powerfuland immediatetool for addressing labor market needs and concerns over the proportion of workers. Overall, theres no evidence for Elon Musks assertion that humanity is dying. While the changes in population structure that accompany low birth rates are real, in our view the impact of these changes has been dramatically overstated. Strong investments in education and sensible economic policies can help countries successfully adapt to a new demographic reality. Leslie Root is an assistant professor of research at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. Karen Benjamin Guzzo is a professor of sociology and director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Shelley Clark is a professor of sociology at McGill University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Spain’s black olive exporters, subject to harsh tariffs since U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, are warning it will be difficult to survive an extra 15% they now face under the European Union’s latest trade deal with the United States. EU goods now face import tariffs of 15% half of Trump’s threatened rate, but much more than Europeans had hoped for after striking a trade deal with Trump on Sunday. Spain, the world’s top table olive exporter, has seen its share of the U.S. black olive market plummet from 49% in 2017 to 19% in 2024 after Trump imposed tariffs of more than 30% at the request of Californian olive growers. The measures only affected black olives and don’t apply to green olives, olive oil or semi-processed olives. Spanish farmers have taken steps to increase green olive sales and to diversify their markets since the tariffs were first imposed, but warn the additional increase will be hard to swallow. “It would be unviable (for black table olives),” said Eduardo Martin, secretary of Asaja, a Spanish local farmers’ association in southern Seville province, a region that produces the most olives. The initial trade measures coincided with a severe drought that forced Spanish producers to cut around 400,000 work shifts for pickers out of a total of 2.5 million, according to industry estimates. Sales of Spanish black olives to the U.S. dropped by 70% in the first year. “The worst was the first year,” said Gabriel Cabello, president of Andalusia’s Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives in Seville province. “In the second year, we learned that this was here to stay and that we had to do things differently.” To mitigate losses, Spanish exporters shifted focus to Europe and the Middle East, regions with a tradition of consuming table olives. They also ventured into Asian markets, while switching to shipping more green olives to the U.S. because they are subject to lower tariffs. Tariffs also spurred innovation, with some Spanish exporters selling black olives stuffed with salmon or cheese for the first time, which helped boost sales in Europe and Asia, Cabello said. Still, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture estimates it has lost 239.6 million euros ($278.51 million) in black olive sales since the tariffs were introduced, nearly a third of the 707 million-euro total export value from the last harvest. WEATHERED THE STORM Among the 25 Spanish exporters active before the tariffs, only four major players remain, according to Asemesa, Spains Association of Table Olive Exporters. Agro Sevilla, one of the larger players with the financial resources to lobby the U.S. for lower rates, expanded green olive exports and managed to reduce black olive tariffs to 10% from 31%. The company successfully demonstrated that they received fewer European subsidies than the U.S. had estimated. Its U.S. sales have been gradually growing since 2023. “We cannot give up on the world’s largest consumer market for black olives,” said Agro Sevilla CEO Julio Roda. In a twist, Aceitunas Guadalquivir, another major Spanish olive producer, acquired Bell-Carter Foods, one of the two leading U.S. companies that had advocated for the tariffs, according to a statement issued in 2022. The company is among several Californian companies that have imported raw olives from Spain, which are exempt from the tariffs, according to Asemesa. Aceitunas Guadalquivir did not reply to a Reuters request for comment about such exports. “When California has low production, they import raw olives to finish processing them in the United States, mostly from Spain,” said Asemesas Secretary General Antonio de Mora. Spain exported 6,300 tonnes of semi-processed olives in 2024 alongside 36,000 tonnes of green olives and 9,800 tonnes of black olives. The U.S. measures failed to bolster domestic growers. Imports of table olives surged by 40% in the first eight months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2017, trade data shows, with Egypt, Portugal, and Turkey increasing exports the most. Spanish exports of green olives to the U.S. grew by 18% during the same period, partially offsetting a decline in black olive exports. However, Spanish producers remain concerned about the new tariffs. “It’s like adding rain to wet ground,” Asaja’s Martin said. ($1 = 0.8603 euros) Additional reporting by Miguel Gutierrez Corina Pons, Reuters
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