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Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#121

Post by TaylorAlexander »

jlawson wrote: post #108
ghthor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this idea, its something I've thought a lot about. Our large scale farming strategies seem fundamentally ignorant. Nature it full of complex systems of independence that we should be using directly in our farming strategies. I'm particularly interested in fungi to support the nutrient and immune systems of my farms. See the work of Paul Staments using fungi to treat bee colony collapse.

Big farm machines are dumb. If we could instead build swarms of self-maintaining intelligent human-scale robots, perhaps working with genetically engineered work animals (monkeys?), they could hand-plant, hand-till, and hand-harvest crops at a far greater efficiency with far less disruption to the ecosystem. Picture ten thousand dog-sized robots going individually planting and caring for and harvesting millions of pl…

Well I’m developing a dog sized robot platform that’s totally open source! It’s CC0.

https://youtu.be/cU_0M1_TvD0

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#122

Post by weberc2 »

naravara wrote: post #87
weberc2 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We save tons on transportation costs, but lose many orders of magnitude more on redundant labor and economies of scale (one tractor working in a big field is a lot more economical than 1200 humans working in 1200 gardens). Maybe technological advancements will change all of that--perhaps we could have fully robotic farms, but even then I would expect one big factory farm with a handful of big, expensive robots to out…

>(one tractor working in a big field is a lot more economical than 1200 humans working in 1200 gardens). Sure. But 1200 humans working in 1200 gardens is also a lot more economical than 1200 humans sitting at home playing Fortnite all day because there are no jobs. The idea of employment guarantees as welfare policy has been getting traction, and programs like this where raw output isn't the main goal would be good c…

Sorry, I’m not following. Why the gardens v fortnite dichotomy? How did you get there?

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#123

Post by ghthor »

flavor8 wrote: post #99
ghthor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this idea, its something I've thought a lot about. Our large scale farming strategies seem fundamentally ignorant. Nature it full of complex systems of independence that we should be using directly in our farming strategies. I'm particularly interested in fungi to support the nutrient and immune systems of my farms. See the work of Paul Staments using fungi to treat bee colony collapse.

> Our large scale farming strategies seem fundamentally ignorant. For a great example of this, check out: http://nautil.us/issue/66/clockwork/herbicide-is-whats-for-d...

Wow, that is such an anti earth practice. How can we change this type of insanity? How can we protect our own guts?

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#124

Post by daenz »

NickM wrote: post #120

Let's try to break this problem down to first principles: - Humans need food to live because it provides energy and nutrients. - From a fundamental standpoint of physics and available materials, nutrients are relatively easy to get; as far as I know, most vitamins and minerals are pretty cheap to either come by naturally or manufacture, and you don't need that much of any of them to keep a person healthy, so let's as…

I have no expertise in this area, but everything you said seems to make sense. If you're an expert (or if anyone else reading this is), can you shed some light on why using artificial processes to create "food" would be difficult?

It would be so cool if we had some mainstream open source software that could simulate chemical processes in a macro-level way, for example, to explore new ways of creating complex carbohydrates faster than in nature.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#125

Post by ip26 »

hinkley wrote: post #107
tareqak wrote: post #6

There is also the problem of food distribution. Ignoring future population growth, the world does produce enough food to people everyone [0] (obtained from the first sentence of [1]). If we are collectively unwilling to solve the distribution problem today, then it there is a good chance that we won't do much about the shortage tomorrow. In addition, unconsumed food waste is also problem, and probably does have some…

We are missing a bit of humility. Just because an apple can be gotten in February doesn't mean you should. It stretches, complicates, and reduces the efficiency of the supply chain immensely. I heard some advice years ago that one of the better things you can do as an environmentalist is teach your kids about the seasonality of foods. Make a big deal about it being orange or pear or cherry season, cut back on buying…

Apples are actually one of the most unseasonable fruits. They keep really well, albiet with some modern wizardry to help. Oranges too.

Pears, berries, melons, leafy greens, stone fruit, etc are a different story!

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#126

Post by firethief »

alacombe wrote: post #45
kieranmaine wrote: post #4

What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.

Perhaps because you can survive on beef alone (including organs meat), but can't survive on lettuce without some sort of supplementation ?

That's an important consideration for people who don't want to eat more than one thing

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#127

Post by undersuit »

dghughes wrote: post #73

It's slightly terrifying to see the data about the loss of nutrients in plants around the world due to climate change. On YouTube there was an interesting Veritasim story about plants and their mineral levels. It seems plants have fewer minerals now compared to 100 years ago. Farmers have fertilizer and the plants grow but they don't have the same levels of nutrition even with all that help. Samples of weeds from the…

I don't know how much the analogy holds, but when you're growing Peyote for consumption you want to let it grow a long time so it can produce as many of the alkaloids your looking to hallucinate on.

Grafting Peyote onto most cacti allow it to grow faster, but by reports doesn't increase the mescaline content since those chemical pathways are just as effective as they always are.

Reminds me of Peter Norvig's Whiskey Story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9371086

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#128

Post by ip26 »

dilap wrote: post #30
kieranmaine wrote: post #4

What would make people eat less beef? Since taxes seem a hard sell, would subsidizing chicken + non-meat protein help? As a vegetarian I'm trying to get my head around what would help change the behaviour of the meat eating HN members.

I have a mirror-image question: What will it take to convince vegetarians that a meat-based diet is actually the healthiest way to eat, and that meat can be raised in humane, environmentally-friendly ways? :-) Edit: This a serious question. Down voting is hardly a productive form of dialog.

Disprove the studies that show red meat increases cancer risk. Figure out how to get a cow's feed conversion efficiency below 2. Make the meat industry default humane instead of default The Jungle. Reverse global deforestation for grazing cattle, and switch to bison where appropriate in North America.

If I have to spend weeks of effort to identify a quality supplier, pay ten times market rate, and do all my own butchering it's just not worth it.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#129

Post by 08-15 »

dghughes wrote: post #73

It's slightly terrifying to see the data about the loss of nutrients in plants around the world due to climate change. On YouTube there was an interesting Veritasim story about plants and their mineral levels. It seems plants have fewer minerals now compared to 100 years ago. Farmers have fertilizer and the plants grow but they don't have the same levels of nutrition even with all that help. Samples of weeds from the…

Minerals (aka dirt) are not nutrients. Carbohydrates, fat and proteins are basic nutrients.

Re: Can We Grow More Food on Less Land?

#130

Post by 08-15 »

beat wrote: post #86
saalweachter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, grains are never the problem. Essentially none of the problems you hear about in agriculture apply to grains. We can produce just staggering amounts of grain on a per-acre basis, and we can ship them without refrigeration and store them for long periods of time without any significant loss of nutritional value. The carbon, energy and monetary cost of shipping huge quantities of grain from the center of the US to…

Isn't that exactly what we're doing, though? The essence of cheap junk calories is grain (flour), soybean oil (another plant with similar growing needs), sugar (largely from grain in the US - high fructose corn syrup - but sugarcane is also easy to grow at scale), and meat from grain-fed chickens and cows. All this stuff is shipped to factories, where it is broken down into refined materials for other factories, that…

> junk food - burgers, sliced bread, candy bars

Sliced bread?!

What isn't junk food in your estimation?

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