Agreed. I’d love to see even more of all of these sorts of things, but the low margin nature of the industry makes this somewhat difficult to attack directly, so there isn’t anywhere near as much money being invested in that direction as I would like.
I believe NASA has gotten crop yields high enough that a single person can be fed off of only ~25 m^2 of land, (figure may be off, or may be m^3 or something, but that’s what I vaguely recall.) but that would have been with fancy hydroponic/aquaponic/aeroponic setups or something, and extremely high crop density. It would be awesome to see fully automated vertical greenhouses pumping out GMO produce for almost 0 cost.
I recently saw someone joke about engineering GMO wheat as an invasive species to out-compete grass. If we wanted to, I suppose we could also replace all the planet’s trees with fruit trees, and build ourselves a garden of Eden, with an absurd surplus of food, available for free. That’s probably a little extreme, considering that some people are rather attached to nature as it is, but maybe we’ll terraform other planets like that?
Just some musings and paradise engineering. It’s interesting to consider various post-scarcity economies where things we work hard for are as common as air.
Fancy hydroponic setups aren’t almost 0 cost. Vertical farming is not cost competitive with the farming that we have.
There are companies like http://rowbot.com/ who develop farm robots to more effectively use fertiliser.
There are plenty of devices for growing food at home on kickstarter.
I suppose we could also replace all the planet’s trees with fruit trees, and build ourselves a garden of Eden, with an absurd surplus of food, available for free.
Having fruit trees isn’t free. Having fruit trees in cities costs the cities enough to prefer other kind of trees.
It’s worthy to be suspicious of free. Most of the time there’s some work involved. It’s worth understanding the hidden costs.
Agreed. I’d love to see even more of all of these sorts of things, but the low margin nature of the industry makes this somewhat difficult to attack directly, so there isn’t anywhere near as much money being invested in that direction as I would like.
I believe NASA has gotten crop yields high enough that a single person can be fed off of only ~25 m^2 of land, (figure may be off, or may be m^3 or something, but that’s what I vaguely recall.) but that would have been with fancy hydroponic/aquaponic/aeroponic setups or something, and extremely high crop density. It would be awesome to see fully automated vertical greenhouses pumping out GMO produce for almost 0 cost.
I recently saw someone joke about engineering GMO wheat as an invasive species to out-compete grass. If we wanted to, I suppose we could also replace all the planet’s trees with fruit trees, and build ourselves a garden of Eden, with an absurd surplus of food, available for free. That’s probably a little extreme, considering that some people are rather attached to nature as it is, but maybe we’ll terraform other planets like that?
Just some musings and paradise engineering. It’s interesting to consider various post-scarcity economies where things we work hard for are as common as air.
Fancy hydroponic setups aren’t almost 0 cost. Vertical farming is not cost competitive with the farming that we have.
There are companies like http://rowbot.com/ who develop farm robots to more effectively use fertiliser.
There are plenty of devices for growing food at home on kickstarter.
Having fruit trees isn’t free. Having fruit trees in cities costs the cities enough to prefer other kind of trees.
It’s worthy to be suspicious of free. Most of the time there’s some work involved. It’s worth understanding the hidden costs.