It's not often that I'm optimistic about the future, but this video honestly made me think that sustainable, ethically-viable (with the arguable exception of eating fish) food production is a lot closer than we might think. Some of the "Urban Agriculture" bits are especially interesting. If you want to skip to that, it starts at 10 minutes 16 seconds.
As well as being exciting for a real world future, it also gave me a lot of ideas for some stories I'm planning. Being a post-apoc lover, a lot of my stories or ideas focus on small communities without much access to farms and crops and so on, and in fact one of my ideas involves a community in a boarded up schoolhouse, entirely cut off from the outside world. In these scenarios, food production was always a worry, but taking some of these ideas on board I think it's actually possible they could produce enough food for themselves. Also, some of those futuristic Urban Agriculture designs are pretty damn sweet, aren't they?
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i don't think the future is urban, but i would like to see accelerated development of cloned meat production. so we could have everything most of us like about meat, without having to actually kill anything.
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its not what stands or falls, but what its replaced by or evolves into, that we actually have to live with.
i don't think the future is urban, but i would like to see accelerated development of cloned meat production. so we could have everything most of us like about meat, without having to actually kill anything.
By that I assume you mean vat-grown meat? From stem-cells and so forth? If so I completely agree, as a vegetarian I would be happy to eat that sort of meat (well, I can't pretend I don't find it a little disturbing, but for no reason other than gut reaction. When I think about it it's much less disgusting than killing an animal for meat (and by that I do mean disgusting as in cleanliness, smell, horrific visuals and so on. I'm not talking about ethics))
However, can I ask how you don't see the future as urban? I would like to think it's not, because I'm not a fan of cities (although I do love my suburbia) but with rising population levels and the economy working in the way that it does, I can only imagine cities expanding.
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Director Scififur.net
XAP Co-ordinator - In particular Uplink Lambda
We already have something pretty similar to what has so far been discussed. Soybean.
Soybean can be made into virtually any product. It can be given the texture and flavor of any meat, most any other vegetable, and it can even be made into milk products. You can, even now, buy most any soybean product that has been made into any of these products, and you can tell no real difference. Sure, you might get a beef patty instead of a steak, but flavor and texture wise, there is no discernible difference between it and the real thing.
Using soybean, along with the miracle of modern chemistry, we could feed our entire population, and with products that would appeal to the pallet as well as agreeably fill the stomach, because they are so like the things we are already so used to eating.
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Oh, don't get me wrong, Rick. I eat and love a lot of the 'fake' meats, like Quorn and the Linda McCartney range, which are made to taste like real meat and, for the most part, do a fantastic job. But (forgive my horrific lack of knowledge of soy beans here) would soy beans not take up a larger area of land than a lab producing this non-animal meat would? I think, for now at least, they would have to co-exist to even have a hope of an entirely vegetarian population. I know that wasn't the discussion, but it's where this offshoot was heading XD
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Director Scififur.net
XAP Co-ordinator - In particular Uplink Lambda
Oh, don't get me wrong, Rick. I eat and love a lot of the 'fake' meats, like Quorn and the Linda McCartney range, which are made to taste like real meat and, for the most part, do a fantastic job. But (forgive my horrific lack of knowledge of soy beans here) would soy beans not take up a larger area of land than a lab producing this non-animal meat would? I think, for now at least, they would have to co-exist to even have a hope of an entirely vegetarian population. I know that wasn't the discussion, but it's where this offshoot was heading XD
It has been realized that the sheer diversity of soybean usage outweighs the large land areas that growing it in the proposed huge quantities required for the level of demands required by an ever-growing population. Soy is the most flexible and diverse plant product ever produced.
But taking that as a given, sure, when our population grows to the point to where we are squeezing out usable farmland, we are going to need to seek new methods for growing sustainable quantities. The proposal in the video is certainly one possible solution. But in the end, there is no replacement for growable land. You can setup huge arboretums on the outsides of buildings and take over abandoned buildings, but to have something like this work, you'd need room on and in these buildings. And as populations continued to expand, they would need the space taken up by the agriculture going on in these buildings.
Human beings, in other words, can go up. Meaning, we can expand our architecture upwards. But more importantly, we would need to do that in order to leave free land that is required for agriculture. Also, as the population grows, there are going to be increasing numbers of mouths to feed. And I don't think setting up these sci-fi-esque petri dishes are going to be able to meet those kinds of demands. They might be able to augment food supplies, but I don't think they will ever be able to produce enough to replace current food sources.
A real solution, I think, in fact, would be studying ways to harness the world's oceans for agriculture. Vast, agriculture-controlled swathes of edible algie, for example. We can't live on the ocean, but we could possibly grow sustainable food sources on it. Noting the diversity of soy, possibly certain strains of algie could be engineered too, to produce foods with which we are familiar and enjoy.
Some fascinating conjecture, at any rate. I think though, that what is being proposed in the video is something more, perhaps, discussion-worthy, but not something which can be applied as practical solution.
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Vertical farms. Squeeze the growth capacity of a small midwestern farm into a few story hydroponic's building. A sizable percentage of food is already grown without soil. This also means the conditions the food is grown in can be much more controlled and standardized. I read in Popular Science about a proposed system that carries the plants on an extremely slow conveyor belt. The seeds are planted on the top floor and they grow as they descend till they're ripe for harvesting at the bottom floor.
As Rick said, our architecture can grow upwards, so why not use that to make our food source grow as well?
i don't think the future is urban, but i would like to see accelerated development of cloned meat production. so we could have everything most of us like about meat, without having to actually kill anything.
By that I assume you mean vat-grown meat? From stem-cells and so forth? If so I completely agree, as a vegetarian I would be happy to eat that sort of meat (well, I can't pretend I don't find it a little disturbing, but for no reason other than gut reaction. When I think about it it's much less disgusting than killing an animal for meat (and by that I do mean disgusting as in cleanliness, smell, horrific visuals and so on. I'm not talking about ethics))
Soybean can be made into virtually any product. It can be given the texture and flavor of any meat, most any other vegetable, and it can even be made into milk products. You can, even now, buy most any soybean product that has been made into any of these products, and you can tell no real difference. Sure, you might get a beef patty instead of a steak, but flavor and texture wise, there is no discernible difference between it and the real thing.
I'm not sure how many of you guys have actually had fresh meat from the Butcher shop, or have butchered one (Or several dozen) yourself. (I have done both) But it has been my experience that all soy products have been nothing more than poor substitute for the actual thing. And for that matter most large scale factory meat production. (Which I still put above soy products) Now Yes I won't deny our ability to imitate other meats and food products has gotten impressive. It’s still not to a level where I would say there is no discernible difference. As for the possibility of vat grown meat, I stick it in the same category as supermarket meat. Ok, but utterly pales in comparison to fresh meat.
That aside I do have hope for such technologies like Aquaponics and Urban Farming. Sure we might have to live with soy products and fish but it’s better than having unsustainable food production technologies and policies. Sure I don't have to like it, but I can see the viability and the necessity for such systems in the future.
a world that is too crowded for agriculture won't support enough human life for it to be that way, even if food production were solvable in that scenario. because there's a LOT more else involved. little details, like where breathable air itself comes from. and believe it or not, it isn't just there. nature however has a solution, if we're not willing to take it upon ourselves to avoid it. famine and disease, in the natural world, face preditors who have grown in population to outnumber their prey. yes we have medical science. but disease vectors can mutate faster then we can keep up with, and at some point they will. that may not sound like something we can avoid or have much to do with. but it is. while it may not be likely to pin point the exact degree to which human activity is affecting and accelerating global climate change, famine and disease are not overly unlikely results. even in the relatively near term future.
there exist three things we are, togather, as governments and human society together, well and thoroughly capable of doing about it, are to reduce to as near elimination as possible, the use of combustion in any form, to generate electrical energy, and yes we HAVE plenty and sufficient alternatives, if used in combination, to do so, and i'm not refering to nuclear, likewise goes for the use of combustion to propel transportation, which can be done with energy stored onboard that origenates from clean sorces, and/or suplimented by clean sources on board, such as photo-voltics helping to maintain or extend charges on batteries or other storage media, and finaly and not at all least, lowering the human species birth rate by methods that would be without favoritism or bias, in proportion with the unarguably desireable extended life times medical science has given us.
what do i mean by the future will not be urban? the immediate future will of course continue to be, but for how long? the carrying capacity of the biosphere's creating and maintaining conditions that enable the human species to exist is not infinite. i don't believe, when the colapse comes, and remember, it COULD be avoided, it won't wipe out all of earth's human species entirely. just enough more then half of it. so that the odds for any particular person at the time it does, will thus be less then 50/50. nor will the first survivors necessarily be that much better off then those who don't.
to me, this is a much more interesting scenario then all the wars that may or may not also take place, and again to me, one that is much more believable, even almost inevitable.
a couple of generations AFTER the last of the plagues and famines have done their job, this world will once again be a wonderful place. one with a lot of old and possibly still dangerous ruins to explore, and a MUCH smaller human population to enjoy doing so. there are other reasons why an urban future is neither a smart nor likely one. nor one that the continued development of technology is in any way dependent upon.
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its not what stands or falls, but what its replaced by or evolves into, that we actually have to live with.
a world that is too crowded for agriculture won't support enough human life for it to be that way, even if food production were solvable in that scenario. because there's a LOT more else involved. little details, like where breathable air itself comes from. and believe it or not, it isn't just there. nature however has a solution, if we're not willing to take it upon ourselves to avoid it. famine and disease, in the natural world, face preditors who have grown in population to outnumber their prey. yes we have medical science. but disease vectors can mutate faster then we can keep up with, and at some point they will. that may not sound like something we can avoid or have much to do with. but it is. while it may not be likely to pin point the exact degree to which human activity is affecting and accelerating global climate change, famine and disease are not overly unlikely results. even in the relatively near term future.
there exist three things we are, togather, as governments and human society together, well and thoroughly capable of doing about it, are to reduce to as near elimination as possible, the use of combustion in any form, to generate electrical energy, and yes we HAVE plenty and sufficient alternatives, if used in combination, to do so, and i'm not refering to nuclear, likewise goes for the use of combustion to propel transportation, which can be done with energy stored onboard that origenates from clean sorces, and/or suplimented by clean sources on board, such as photo-voltics helping to maintain or extend charges on batteries or other storage media, and finaly and not at all least, lowering the human species birth rate by methods that would be without favoritism or bias, in proportion with the unarguably desireable extended life times medical science has given us.
what do i mean by the future will not be urban? the immediate future will of course continue to be, but for how long? the carrying capacity of the biosphere's creating and maintaining conditions that enable the human species to exist is not infinite. i don't believe, when the colapse comes, and remember, it COULD be avoided, it won't wipe out all of earth's human species entirely. just enough more then half of it. so that the odds for any particular person at the time it does, will thus be less then 50/50. nor will the first survivors necessarily be that much better off then those who don't.
to me, this is a much more interesting scenario then all the wars that may or may not also take place, and again to me, one that is much more believable, even almost inevitable.
a couple of generations AFTER the last of the plagues and famines have done their job, this world will once again be a wonderful place. one with a lot of old and possibly still dangerous ruins to explore, and a MUCH smaller human population to enjoy doing so. there are other reasons why an urban future is neither a smart nor likely one. nor one that the continued development of technology is in any way dependent upon.
One of the big problems I can see with this conjecture, is that any time there has been an imbalance in ecosystems, the animals which tipped the imbalance in favor of their requirements, always died back to more sustainable numbers.
Rabbits, when too many wolves were killed in America, became a huge problem. But as the rabbits ate more of their food source than what could be grown, the rabbits began starving to death and dying back to numbers that the available food source could sustain. Then, once the rabbit population had thinned and their food source was able to recover, the rabbits themselves, also began to recover.
Human beings won't do that, though. In the more modern and scientific empowered societies, there will be solutions found to continue to support an ever expanding population. However, since we are running out of growable land, and will run out of growable land, the laws of nature demand that something, somewhere, is going to have to give. I just worry, with meddling with these laws by trying to come up with innovative ways to support ourselves, where the methods for supporting ourselves are running out...
...I believe it is going to be synonymous with the stretching of a rubber band. You can pull it and pull it and it will stretch. Pull it too far, however, and it will snap.
I think when that happens, we're going to see an event which sees a catastrophic population diminishment of our species. It may not be nature that does it, but it is all too possible. Deep down underneath our facades of civilization, we are animals. And animals will act for self-preservation. And with the weapons technology available to those animals today... a single event sparked by one our world's super powers, could set off a chain reaction which could literally bring about the destruction of the world.
Nature demands it. And like it or not, we are subject to what nature demands. And nature will make it happen - our nature, the nature of what we are, will guarantee it.
The only solution available to us, then, the only real solution, is what is such a popular theme in human-drama science fiction: colonization of the stars. Continuing to live on this planet, as our only home, with our population growing as fast as it is, is going to lead to disaster. So we had best stop focusing on short term solutions like trying to come up with possibly far-fetched food-supply solutions, and start setting our sites on goals which will provide real and final solutions.
We need, literally, to look to the stars.
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it may be easier or more fun or something, for some people to write about, but anyone who thinks a war is the future scenario more likely to do the job then environmental melt down needs to consider this: cities have been sitting ducks ever since the invention of the air plane.
if people haven't figured that out yet, it won't take a whole lot of "war is the future" for them to do so. and war accelerates environmental melt down too. the crops that fail from depleted or polluted soil from ecological disaster, also do so, and often fail to get planted as well, when people are being kept distracted from doing so by being too bussy trying to kill each other.
its not like the magic of medical science is instantaneous or without limits either. it doesn't make large populations invulnerable to the threat of a lot of illness vectors mutating rapidly at the same time. as even the most subtle shifts in long term climate patterns, such as we are seeing, are quite capable of precipitating.
wars there might be, because some people are stupid and egotistical like that, but for the same reason, even aided and abeted by war, famine and disease, however less entertainingly dramatic, are the real population gotcha's.
all three are avoidable with currently well and thoroughly developed and proven technologies, that economic interests are still blindly and stubbornly opposing the adoption of. either that opposition will wise up, or crumble, or we WILL have famine and disease, of extreme proportions, in places that still don't believe it could ever happen there.
i'm all for going to the stars too, but the fantasy that doing so is likely, or even capable, of releaving population pressure, is just that, a fantasy.
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its not what stands or falls, but what its replaced by or evolves into, that we actually have to live with.
i'm all for going to the stars too, but the fantasy that doing so is likely, or even capable, of releaving population pressure, is just that, a fantasy.
Actually, it isn't.
The technology exists now to take us to other worlds in our solar system. The technology exists to begin terraforming Mars.
The technology is there. However... the human resolve to implement it isn't. Events in just this last decade demonstrate our vulnerability to individual greed and corruption and which is directly effecting progressive thinking on the momentous scale it would require to implement said technologies - massive company meltdowns where greedy executives walk away with sums in the hundreds of millions, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, oil companies recording record profits but doing little more than making token efforts with their enormous profits, to develop other sustainable energy solutions, and so on.
What we lack isn't technology. What we lack is a species-focus on finding the solutions in the long term. But, I put forward, that when famine and catastrophic overcrowding start affecting our world's larger nations, our eyes will turn to real, long term solutions like further development of those "fantasy" technologies.
Humans right now are in their comfort zones. It won't "happen to them". When it comes to a point where humans are forced out of their comfort zones, is when change begins - even the currently thought of as fantastic ones.
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The problem I see is the difference between colonizing space and relieving population pressure on Earth. Yes, we have the technology to do the form, but the latter would require lifting humans off of Earth as quickly as or more quickly than Earth's population replenishes itself.
The problem I see is the difference between colonizing space and relieving population pressure on Earth. Yes, we have the technology to do the form, but the latter would require lifting humans off of Earth as quickly as or more quickly than Earth's population replenishes itself.
It would be much easier if we got an early start. But there are ways to mitigate population growth. No I'm not talking dystopian methods like population controls and man made disasters. The secret is education and standard of living. Japan and Europe have near 0% ratios in births vs deaths. Most of the population growth is from migration.
Education is a proven factor in reducing child birth rates, many women and even men put off having kids to focus on careers.
On the note of the future of humanity, a new recycling technology has been invented that can convert plastic back into usable oil that can be then used to make new plastic, gasoline, diesel, or motor oil.
I think people going to the stars is not only a possibility, but an inevitability.
When our sources of fossil fuels run out, when the land becomes unable to sustain growth in meaningful quantities, when the air we breathe requires filtration on massive scales...
In short, when our planet gets to the point to where it is no longer able to support our civilizations, or our lives, the human race is going to be left with no choice but to explore an alternative as radical as migrating to other worlds.
Human self-preservation demands it. Animal self-preservation demands it.
It isn't going to happen though, until humans are left with no other choice. Either figure out how to reach distant stars or go extinct as a species. And with the rate at which our population is growing, and the rate at which we are consuming our planet's resources, it is going to come to a point where that is going to be the only alternative.
It may not happen in our life times, but it will happen. The human survival instinct demands it.
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The Future of Food - Urban farming
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Originally Posted by Rys
