There is not enough farm land to provide 7 billion people a western diet including 1500+ calories from beef every day. The only way to get close to that is to replace most farm land with solar panels supplement that with a lot of nuclear and wind energy and then factory farm plant matter using LED lighting in buildings and feed that to cows in another building.

Is it possible, sure but economics just a question of what your willing to sacrifice for what you want. And significant quantities of fake meat is probably a much better option for everyone involved.

You're making the assumption that the laboratory meet will somehow automatically be worse, and that it is whatever "is most conveniently and cheaply produced".

I eat a lot of meat. I could not conceive of giving up meat. Not going to happen. I don't care if I have to slaughter the animals myself to get it.

But if there was a high enough quality "laboratory meat"? I'd try it. I'd even be willing to pay more for it in certain circumstances:

- Consider custom-adapted marbling. - Arbitrary sized cuts. Want a fillet larger than any real animal? - New types of "meat"? Yes please. - Healthier versions? If they can come up with variations that taste as nice while being better for me, sure, I'll pay a premium for that.

While there undoubtably will also be attempts to make cheap replacements, there's no reason to automatically assume that the fact it is "faux-meat" means it can't be just as healthy - or better - than the real thing.