Author Topic: Vertical Farming and Other High Tech Agriculture  (Read 6826 times)

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Online Marco

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Re: Vertical Farming and Other High Tech Agriculture
« Reply #25 on: September 19, 2021, 09:47:06 am »
Just need to feed the cows some seaweed...

Plant sea farming has very low yields per area, because the nutrient density is virtually non existent and you can't fertilize either. This makes it uneconomical except for niche uses (sushi, frou frou expensive salad and some dried seaweed used as a herb etc).
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Vertical Farming and Other High Tech Agriculture
« Reply #26 on: September 19, 2021, 10:22:36 am »
The real benefit to vertical farming is surely that we can use large areas currently allocated to crops for more useful things - such as solar panels, wind turbines, carbon-capture equipment, forests, or housing.

Of course we will need to address the meat question.  I seriously hope the 'fake meat' market continues to grow as aggressively, if not more so, than it has in the last decade.  I have tried a number of those products so far and generally been quite impressed.  Beef is horribly inefficient as a food source, and chicken is, while a bit better than beef, not much better.  With continued advances here we might find that the need for arable land to raise animals and their feed reduces considerably and we can begin to use that land for more useful or urgent things, such as stopping the planet boiling to death.
Industrially farmed beef sure, but regeneratively farmed beef is a net carbon sequesterer, Grasslands are incredible carbon sinks, and benefit from grazing.  Industrial farming of ANY type is environmentally horrid and monocrops deplete soil carbon
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That's only useful in countries with large grasslands.

The real benefit to vertical farming is surely that we can use large areas currently allocated to crops for more useful things - such as solar panels, wind turbines, carbon-capture equipment, forests, or housing.

Of course we will need to address the meat question.  I seriously hope the 'fake meat' market continues to grow as aggressively, if not more so, than it has in the last decade.  I have tried a number of those products so far and generally been quite impressed.  Beef is horribly inefficient as a food source, and chicken is, while a bit better than beef, not much better.  With continued advances here we might find that the need for arable land to raise animals and their feed reduces considerably and we can begin to use that land for more useful or urgent things, such as stopping the planet boiling to death.
Have you seen the price of fake meat? It costs the same as premium real meat, which is superior in my opinion. Fake meat is one of those things I buy, on its sell by date, when the price is low.

If would buy decent fake meat burgers, for the same price as the cheapest meat burgers, because the ones I've tried are better than those, but if I'm going to pay more, I'd rather have the real thing.
 

Online Marco

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Re: Vertical Farming and Other High Tech Agriculture
« Reply #27 on: September 19, 2021, 12:31:08 pm »
That's only useful in countries with large grasslands.

He's not talking about range grazing, he's talking about these fake regenerative farms where they feed chickens with fossil fertilizer grown corn, herd cows at low density on the same land for very expensive beef and then pretend they are regenerating the soil out of thin air. Range grazing though also obviously exhausts the soil, the cows extract nutrients, we shit them down the sewer. We're removing nutrients from soils at far greater rates than geological processes can return them.

Whether it be intensive farming, "regenerative" farming or range grazing all unsustainable medium term. Short term we can put fossil fertilizer in fields and range grazing won't immediately exhaust nutrients, but peak fossil fertilizer is at hand and peak range grazing is probably crossed already. Too much human waste is wasted, we have to learn to recycle for technological civilization to survive. Shit luckily is the easiest resource to recycle.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Vertical Farming and Other High Tech Agriculture
« Reply #28 on: September 20, 2021, 07:36:22 am »
That's only useful in countries with large grasslands.

He's not talking about range grazing, he's talking about these fake regenerative farms where they feed chickens with fossil fertilizer grown corn, herd cows at low density on the same land for very expensive beef and then pretend they are regenerating the soil out of thin air. Range grazing though also obviously exhausts the soil, the cows extract nutrients, we shit them down the sewer. We're removing nutrients from soils at far greater rates than geological processes can return them.

Whether it be intensive farming, "regenerative" farming or range grazing all unsustainable medium term. Short term we can put fossil fertilizer in fields and range grazing won't immediately exhaust nutrients, but peak fossil fertilizer is at hand and peak range grazing is probably crossed already. Too much human waste is wasted, we have to learn to recycle for technological civilization to survive. Shit luckily is the easiest resource to recycle.
That sounds very unsustainable. I thought sewage was processed and used as fertiliser, rather than wasted.

Either way, it's far more efficient just to eat corn, rather than feed it to animals and eat them. The problem is fake meats are more expensive, due to market forces. Perhaps the market will eventually sort its self out. I'm not a fan of state intervention.
 

Online Marco

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Re: Vertical Farming and Other High Tech Agriculture
« Reply #29 on: September 20, 2021, 08:55:01 am »
Some sewage sludge is reused, but the mixed use of sewers isn't good for quality and for instance orgamic farming isn't allowed to use it (well not directly any way, obviously organic farms have inputs from non organic farms, or it wouldn't work).
 


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