Friedberg admits he was wrong about vegetarian meat alternatives; consumers pay premiums for sustainability.
“I've been fucking shocked by how many people are choosing to pay a premium for vegetarian meat alternatives. I was wrong on this.”
Friedberg argues sustainability comes from technology enabling more consumption, not convincing consumers to consume less.
“I'm a big believer that sustainability in the twenty first century does not arise from convincing consumers to consume less. I think sustainability arises from building technology based solutions that let consumers consume more”
Friedberg argues sustainability comes from technology that enables more consumption at lower environmental impact, not from consuming less.
“I think sustainability arises from building technology based solutions that let consumers consume more and dropping the price and dropping the environmental impact.”
Friedberg argues sustainability should focus on increasing consumption through productivity gains rather than reducing consumption.
“Can we give people 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times more than they have today? And in doing so, it makes us solve the productivity problems. And the productivity problems ultimately resolve the sustainability problems,”
Friedberg argues sustainability should focus on enabling vastly increased consumption through productivity gains, not consumption reduction.
“our objective shouldn't be about in sustainability, shouldn't be about, hey, can we get people to consume less? It should be, can we get people to consume more?”
Friedberg rejects businesses that depend on greenwashing and premium pricing to make consumers feel good about themselves.
“I'm not a huge believer or a huge fan of businesses that depend on kind of greenwashing and charging a premium to people to make themselves feel better about the decisions that they're making.”
Friedberg argues 95% of people will eat what's cheap and tasty, not sustainable premium products.
“They're coming up the economic ladder and they're gonna eat more meat and they're gonna eat what tastes good and they're gonna eat whatever they can afford.”
Friedberg says true potato seed replaces warehouses of chopped potato, reducing cost and environmental impact.
“eventually, a handful of seed replaces warehouses of potato chopped up potato that are being put in the ground. So you can move to an, you know, a low cost, more energy, more environmentally friendly,”
Friedberg argues industrialization of agriculture solved food crises but increased carbon, energy and land footprints.
“So the industrialization of agriculture has largely supported these crises and and resolved these crises for humanity, but the industrialization of agriculture has also driven us into a higher carbon footprint, a higher energy footprint, a higher land footprint.”
Friedberg's system replaces two and a half tons of potato planting material with less than ten grams of seed.
“And with our system, you can put less than 10 grams of little tiny seed to replace that two and a half tons of potato.”