101–107 of 107 posts
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The rich countries already send enough food to the poorer countries. The problem is their despotic and corrupt governments don't distribute it to the people who need it.
So called “rich countries” don’t even have food self-sufficiency. The only countries near that goal today are China, Vietnam, Brazil a close second.
> The researchers took PET plastic, discarded corn plant stalks and leaves, and other biomass and put it through a proprietary process called oxidative hydrothermal dissolution. Created by SIU Carbondale Geology Professor Ken Anderson, this method uses water and oxygen at high temperatures and pressures to break down tough material into microbe-accessible pieces. Then, those pieces are fed to the programmed yeasts, w…
Then, those pieces are fed to the programmed yeasts, which transform them into a variety of new food ingredients, including proteins, fats and acids PET consists of repeating C10H8O4 monomers. Glucose is C6H12O6 and starch is a natural polymer containing it. It's not surprising that reactions can turn one into the other, along with other compounds containing hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen.
Long answer: Starch and cellulose are just chains of glucose connected in a slightly different way. But they have very different properties, you can split starch and get energy from it, but you can't split cellulose (unless you are a bacteria or fungus).
As far as I know, no life form can transform starch directly into cellulose, they have to split it and reconnect the glucose later. (And the reverse path is even harder.)
There are a few cases where the cells can transform the monomers inside the chains, in particular to make collagen, but the change is to replace some -H by -OH. Changing the Carbon structure is harder, almost impossible.
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Back to the article: The yeast just split the plastic back into monomers (or probably short chains) and use the chains to build carotene (similar to vitamin A). It's quite similar to splinting starch or cellulose and using later the monomers. There is no polimer to polimer transformation.
Please don’t add the byproduct to my food, put it in the ground to decompose
even if you decompose it, plants uses the same during their growth.
Someone needs to figure out how to convert mineral oil into food. If it could be done, we solve world hunger overnight. Oddly many countries explicitly have a law that such a thing is forbidden. I wonder it it was preemptively protecting farmers?
The Soviet Union ran such a program: https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/10/archives/soviet-plant-to-... https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91T01115R0001000... The term to search for is "single cell protein." There are newer approaches to making single cell protein from carbon dioxide and renewable energy instead of fossil oil, like Solein: https://www.solein.com/ There are a few problems with turning oil into s…
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Using manure and compost as fertilizer is likely as old as agriculture (though i disagree using pesticides is fine). What did you mean?
Plenty of substances bio accumulate, and being less than careful with animal waste as fertilizer causes outbreaks and disease.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of substances bio accumulate, and being less than careful with animal waste as fertilizer causes outbreaks and disease.
Ha yes of course, this is obvious to anyone in the field but always a good idea to repeat. For example, do not use human feces as fertilizer for food you'll eat (at least not directly).