I'm hopeful that the new plant based meats can help reduce the negative impacts of factory farming. I'm curious, though, what the overall supply chain costs are, and how they compare to the overall costs of animal protein. I'm pretty sure plant burgers are substantially lower total cost than beef burgers but I'd like numbers to back that up.

(Cost, here, means every metric -- water, ghg emissions, embodied energy of capital equipment, biodiversity impacts, fertilizers that depend on petroleum inputs, animal welfare, workforce health.)

One complicating aspect is how things work at scale. Small ranching operations might be less damaging ways to raise cattle, but that's not where fast food burgers get their beef. An organic medium scale Impossible Burger might have lower fertilizer and biodiversity impacts, but as they scale up to supply Burger King, the Area Under Cultivation for their pea protein becomes a big impact.

Et cetera ...