That wasn't really what I was getting at, though I'd point out that creating incentives for a behavior is steering, that's pretty much the #1 preferred way of steering behavior. I was getting at what you say right below, that the government tends to have a less than impressive track record on such things, though admittedly I don't think its always very ethical for them to try their hand at it either, even if they had a better record.

This is essentially the core of the problem. Humans run on power, specifically about 100 watts, or the energy a given foot or two of land receives from the sun, essentially parallel to your own cross-section as a biped. To fuel that, hunter-gather style, required around a square mile, around ten million times as much sunlight power as derived human power.We've gotten much better. That 4.8 value is presumably the Feed Conversion Ratio, or FCR, the amount of calories we need to cram into something to get a calorie out. 4.8 isn't an impressive figure, chickens are typically listed as a 2, pigs 3-ish, fish anywhere form mid-1 up to 3. Numbers are often highly variable and debatable, for instance I've seen beef listed as low as 4 and as high as 16. Problem is a FCR can often be confusing because the 3000 calories fed to a pig, for instance, to get 1000 calories, aren't necessarily 3000 calories you or I could eat, or would wish to eat. We feed a lot of edible, or partially edible, food to animals because these days its easier for us to grow a crop and harvest it to feed to them then let them graze it, especially since most livestock only harvest about half the available food in a pasture while trampling, pulverizing, and shitting on the rest. Ideally, when 'ideal' is maximum calories per acre rather than maximum calories per dollar, you grow crops that have a human edible component and an inedible component and feed that inedible component to a creature which can get the best (lowest) FCR off it. Currently we use very little of our land for crops though, especially in efficient western countries, and that means often that its just cheaper (more efficient) to let them graze on their own or to crow crops and feed them the entire things, human edible included, rather than remove the edible and feed animals the inedible in a lot rather than a pasture.

On meat versus plants though it is a no brainer, and the same would apply to insects, animals are middle-men, they jack up the price of food a great deal. But if the plant being grown has components that are otherwise useless to us then FCR represents a false dichotomy.

"Bugs, its what's for dinner"?? Well I don't object to researching multiple paths at once, that's generally my preference. I never put it past businesses to make even the most idiotic of things seem a good idea, hence the existence of the pink flamingo yard ornament, but I also never put it past people to freak out over perfectly safe stuff, like nuclear power and vaccination.

I wouldn't know why, there's no 'yuck factor' on algae I'm familiar with, certainly not on a creepy-crawly level. They certainly don't care if you use it as animal feed. Kelp isn't a huge part of the western diet but its certainly available and I've never seen any react with disgust at the concept of eating it. As to lab grown meat, that's very wait and see, its too new and too R&D phase to deal with. I doubt most people would object to finding out their steak was grown in sterile, clean, meat-growth facility. It's all image and marketing though, one could make them appear as shops of horror contrasted to scenes of prisitne pasture and happy cows grazing, alternatively one could contrast screaming animals being slaughtered in filthy conditions to sterile white labs with no pain and suffering and loss of cute mammal life attached. But algae? No, people don't care, its already in the accepted direct human diet and nobody cares of their cow was eating kelp rather than corn, unless it effected the taste.

"Proven track record of success", maybe?

Well, I am comforted that more people die every year, on account of there being so many more people living. The average lifespan, even in the under-developed nations, continues to rise, as does the standard of living even during this economic rough patch, even as the population continues to grow, though it would be nice if more of that growth occurred in the west rather than the poorer nations. People tend to forget, partially because we don't mention it much, that most of these 'starving nations' actually have a smaller percentage of people starving then they used to while having twice as many people. Their suffering though comes entirely from their unstable environment making development and investment hard. Any nation able to convince investors that they are likely to be stable for a while can get a flood of investment capital. The issue is that a bank would love to loan someone $10,000 for a tractor in Krapistan if its stable, because they know it will pay huge dividends an the loan can be repaid at a nice interest rate. Their problem though is 1) There's a very real chance that guys neighbors will kill him, burn his farm, and steal or destroy his tractor and 2) A bank doesn't want to fly someone out to Krapistan, ride a mule wagon to a village, and make a $10,000 loan, and they don't trust the local gov't and 'banks' to take that money and not imbezzle the hell out of it, if they loan them a a hundred million to make 10,000 such $10,000 loans. Its not a profit issue, they know they make huge profits on such basic investments, if they can actually get the money to the person and they can operate without lots of chaos.

Personally? I enjoy and consume meat, but prefer less of it then most Americans as a percentage of my diet, my older sister and I were raised as 'mostly' vegetarians, but it didn't stick very well on me and barely at all on her. In terms of ethics, I don't think higher meat consumption is much to be worried about. Vegetarian for ethical reasons of killing a thinking creature, or consuming less meat for health or economic reasons, or simply not liking meat, those are all fine by me. Encouraging others not to though starts getting into the territory of what I normal dub 'Malthusian Cultists', who are people I generally feel are guilty of technophobia, especially if they advocate we actually decrease the human population, in which case I consider them guilty of inciting mass murder.

More broadly though, the meat vs plant argument will inevitably lead to maximizing resource efficiency in general, and that has a very dark zone when explored, even without getting very sci-fi-ey. Its also where a lot these so-called rational sorts prove they're more cult then scientist. Consider strawberries, you here complaints about beef and meat in general, but never strawberries. 10,000 pounds per acre is a very good yield for them. However, not only do they require absurd amounts of labor compared to meat or cereals - labor which burns many calories - but a strawberry only has about 150 calories a pound. So that's an annual yield of about 1.5 million calories an acre, very low by modern agricultural standards. And that without even factoring in all those calories burned picking the stuff, which is huge compared to something like corn or beef. A 10,000 pound/acre strawberry harvest generates about 2 man-years of food, a 160 bushel/acre corn harvest produces 20 man-years and does so with an entire order of magnitude less labor, and indeed you'll get more meat calories then strawberry and still with less labor. Yet no one complains of them, and strawberries aren't even a bad crop as these things go.It like people who encourage others to ride a bike or walk to work, not realizing that the person will burn up more fossil fuels in terms of the food they ate then just driving a car. Riding a bike to work for the exercise and fun is a different story, much like eating healthier foods you also enjoy.