No, in ground-up form you can ship much more bug protein than meat because you are transporting a lot of water (and refridgeration tech) with that meat. Not to even speak of transporting animals, especially live ones, which is a suffering desaster in and of itself.
If water weight is the case, you can dehydrate the meat already? Beyond / impossible burger is shipped wet, and most unprocessed raw plant food is shipped wet too.
> The thing is, this stuff is more expensive than normal meat
That's only because we are "subsidising" meat production cost through immense animal suffering. Once you have regulations that make the animals we keep in captivity have a somewhat good life, then meat price goes through the roof and those alternatives are the only reasonable option for the non-rich.
> And if they replace meat consumption then it puts even more stress on the agricultural land that can actually grow vegetable crops, which is only about a quarter of all farm land.
And where do you think the animal food is grown? Instead of feeding it to animals, make veggy dishes out of it.
It's true that some land can't be reasonably used for growing and harvesting crops, and keeping animals there which turn this into high quality protein is the best option, but that's only for certain regions on the planet.
I buy ethically raised %100 pasture raised ground beef at ~$6/lbs from whole foods, and a 1 lb packet of "beyond burger" is even more expensive than that at $11/lbs (!) at the same shop. There is barely any profit margin in beef, while beyond burger does have relatively healthy one at that price looking at the ingredient list and price. I can also buy a quarter cow for $8/lbs locally raised similarly. %100 pasture raised is how you think it is, eating grass in some field for %100 of it's life, protected from predators, which is pretty much the type of life it would have in the wild with less stress. Not to mention it's better nutritionally than the standard %75 pasture raised / %25 grain finished beef you buy at a costco.
