Too Dear or Too Cheap? On “Fake Meat Drives Out Real Meat”

Foodthink Says

“Fake Meat Drives Out Real Meat” This article has attracted so much attention, I think, because everyone reads something different into it. On a rough outline, there are roughly three threads:

The first thread is that yak prices are too low.

Although rearing yaks on natural pasture involves relatively low feeding costs, it is still difficult to withstand the price shock from imported beef. In recent years, herders have found it hard to sell their yaks at a reasonable price, which has led to livelihood difficulties.

I believe that to clarify this issue, we need to work out: has the price of grass-fed yak actually fallen, or have herders’ production costs risen? Or is it that rising living costs have increased cash outlays, so the income from selling yaks can hardly cover these expenses, making yak prices appear to have fallen relative to them?

Some people argue that to solve herders’ livelihood problems, we need to sell yak meat at a premium price, running advertisements along the lines of “They eat cordyceps, drink mineral water, and excrete Liuwei Dihuang Wan (a traditional Chinese herbal medicine)”, so that herders can increase their income.

If we think through the logic behind this, we realise that the audience who is truly meant to hear this story is not the herders but the market. Conversely, if beef and mutton were really pushed up to high prices, could the local herders still afford them? Quite the opposite – high prices may put them entirely out of reach.

Take an example: twenty or thirty years ago, cordyceps was something you could pick up and chew on the go in the Tibetan plateau region. But as the market price soared to ¥200,000 per jin (500 g), would the herders who collect cordyceps still be willing to eat it themselves?

This leads us to the article’s second thread: with the development of marketisation, the price of local grass-fed beef has risen, making it unaffordable for the herders to buy high-priced grass-fed yak meat.

To tell this story more fully, we need to understand what is driving the high price of grass-fed yak meat – is it a fall in production, a rise in production costs, or market manipulation? Or is it that, relative to the price of yak meat, local residents’ income levels are simply too low?

Another question we must ask is: who can no longer afford grass-fed beef? If herders in towns can’t afford grass-fed beef, who is ultimately consuming it?

The third logic that the two authors describe is the contradiction whereby middlemen manipulate the market, causing yak prices to fall while yak meat prices rise simultaneously.

If readers are to grasp this logic, they need to understand further how the markets for yak meat and grass-fed beef operate, and what the relationship between producers and middlemen really looks like.

We can also read from this story a grand narrative of capitalist monopoly, in which capitalism, wielding its advantages in capital, technology and the market, destroys local indigenous economies and thereby secures a monopolistic economic position.

From a capitalist standpoint, the claim that “herders are naturally meant to eat the meat they produce themselves” makes no sense. In a marketised environment, we typically do not consume what we ourselves produce; instead, we trade our strengths for the strengths of others.

Not consuming one’s own product is precisely the logic of the market, and this does indeed sound cruel. Put another way, if market logic were followed entirely, herders would find themselves unable to afford local pasture-fattened meat.

From a sociological perspective, when beef and mutton shift from a household necessity to a luxury item, ordinary herders who have settled in towns find them unaffordable. This is the process of “disembedding” brought about by marketisation.

But beyond market logic, are there other logics at play?

For millennia, beef and mutton have been to herders not merely a source of protein and calories to sustain life, but also a bearer of taste, culture and many other complex meanings. Therefore, it should not follow market logic alone but return to the logic of rural communities.

Perhaps what we most need to think about is how to “re-embed” beef and mutton into traditional herding society, and how to find a balance between market logic and the logic of rural communities. This is truly a troubling question.

In addition, we can also read into the article the differences between young and elderly herders, and between those who stay on the pasture and those relocated to towns. In short, with a reader’s imagination, one can read many different stories into this article, and there are many more threads and lines of reasoning yet to be pondered.