CNBC reported that experts predict that plant-based meat will remain more expensive than real meat for the next 5 to 20 years. It's because plant-based meat makers like $BYND and others require more time to reach economies of scale.

One of the biggest obstacles to creating huge interest in plant-based meat is to make the meat taste the same as real meat. The texture and flavor are hard to come by. The plant-based maker that is the closest to reaching that will dominate the space, and currently, that's Beyond Meat and Impossible Meat.

While they got the taste and texture down, getting there requires higher volumes of production and lower cost of ingredients. Currently, their production isn't high enough and their ingredient costs are very high.

The reason why they can't ramp up production fast enough is that the supply chain issues make it harder for firms to get manufacturing equipment. At the same time, it's taking longer to build new production facilities. As for the ingredients (like peas and other plants), they're hard to come by because they're only produced in a few countries.

The plant-based meat industry has a massive Catch-22 issue where you need the demand to be incentivized to produce more and at the same time, you need to produce more to be able to price them at a lower price and create more demand.

As $TSN $K and other big food manufacturers get into the plant-based meat industry, the immense capital and expertise coming in will play a major force in driving the cost of plant-based meat lower. But from observation, Big Food is struggling to make its plant-based meat products as attractive as Beyond Meat's and Impossible Foods's products mainly because many aren't aware that Big Food manufacturers make plant-based meat products. This makes Big Food manufacturers reluctant to pour more capital into the industry.

It will be interesting to see the price of plant-based meat be at par with the price of real meat in the future. However, it will be a long time before we see that happen.