A growing global meat demand requires a decrease in the environmental impacts of meat production. Cultured meat (CM) can potentially address multiple challenges facing animal agriculture, including those related to animal welfare and environmental impacts, but existing cost analyses suggest it is hard for CM to match the relatively low costs of conventionally produced meat. This study analyzes literature reports to contextualize CM’s protein and calorie use efficiencies, comparing CM to animal meat products’ feed conversion ratios, areal productivities, and nitrogen management. Our analyses show that CM has greater protein and energy areal productivities than conventional meat products, and that waste nitrogen from spent media is critical to CM surpassing the nitrogen use efficiency of meat produced in swine and broiler land-applied manure systems. The CM nutrient management costs, arising from wastewater treatment and land application, are estimated to be more expensive than in conventional meat production. Overall, this study demonstrates that nitrogen management will be a key aspect of sustainability in CM production, as it is in conventional meat systems.

Livestock in the state of Iowa, United States (US) produce over 50 × 10⁶ Mg of wet-basis manure yearly. Biogas production from manure’s anaerobic digestion (AD) can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, control odors, and provide renewable energy. Despite these benefits, AD is rarely deployed at swine farms in Iowa. In this work, we explore the economics of AD systems in Iowa to evaluate reasons for low deployment and explore the production cost impacts of biogas cleaning and injection into the natural gas grid, amending manure with biomass, and centralizing digesters across multiple farms. This work presents a static, spreadsheet-based technoeconomic model that embodies literature-based estimates of key system technical parameters, costs, and transportation fuel incentives and permits the examination of various scenarios. Key findings include that under the model assumptions, distributed, farm-scale digesters are not competitive with average natural gas prices in Iowa. A centralized production scenario can be competitive, provided that programs such as the low-carbon fuel standard (LCFS) and the renewable fuel standard (RFS) have sufficiently high credit values.

The low adoption of annual cover crops in the United States Corn Belt has motivated research into novel cover cropping systems that mitigate the degrading of water quality due to soil and nutrient loss without compromising corn ( Zea mays L.) yield. This 3‐year field study compared a Kentucky bluegrass ( Poa pratensis L.) as a perennial groundcover (PGC), two interseeded annual cover crop systems (standard and wide‐row), and a no‐cover control for their effects on corn yield and subsurface drainage water quality. Each plot was monitored weekly for subsurface drainage flow and nutrient losses using a randomized complete block design with three replicates. The study occurred during a period of below‐average precipitation, which caused strong year‐to‐year and seasonal variations in treatment performance. Treatment effects were most evident in the study's wettest year, when increased rainfall following a dry season caused a summer nitrate flush. During this high‐leaching summer period, all cover crop systems reduced nitrate concentrations compared to the control. When averaged across the entire study, the high‐biomass wide‐row interseeded system reduced flow‐weighted NO ₃ ‐N concentrations by 22% but reduced grain yield 20%. In contrast, the PGC system reduced NO ₃ ‐N by 20% with no associated grain yield loss. These findings highlight a critical yield trade‐off for wide‐row annual cover cropping systems and suggest that perennial systems like Kentucky bluegrass PGC are a promising strategy for mitigating early summer nitrate losses.