Vertical farming is more energy intensive because it requires artificial light and vertical water transport. There is also the question of acquiring sufficient fertile soil and nutrients. Fertilizer takes energy to produce. Ultimately this becomes not a question of surface area but of sustainable and large scale energy production. If you have sufficient energy and enough raw materials you can expand farming by many orders of magnitude. Without those things you need to keep clearing more and more land and rely on sunlight which is not as dependable at higher latitudes.
Those are good points. Wouldn’t it not be to hard to use sewage as an input for both for energy and nutrients? Also, if we vastly decrease energy use for shipping food and refrigerating it, it might be more sustainable for local vertical farming in cites.
I think regardless of anything like a perfect solution at this point, the fact that all these things are options that could be considered and worked through is promising. It means that a radical reimagining of farming is possible, which will be needed, whether it’s to make food production for 8bn or 20bn people sustainable.
There’s also the energy saved from reducing car use, increasing public transport, no longer heating the private and hardly ever used indoor swimming pools of the rich, and no longer making so many pointless commodities.
There are also things that individuals (🤢 liberalism, sorry) can do to feed themselves if they had the time and education. Growing mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic, herbs, etc. We’re so alienated from food production and time-poor (and poor-poor) in capitalism, though, that it’s hard to get started. The few things I’ve grown, I’ve not wanted to eat because of the bugs, etc. Ridiculous, I know, but this is the effect of a lifetime of all my food appearing sanitised in supermarkets. (That said, it’s going to take some serious un-alienating for me to eat food growing in my own sewage, never mind others’!)
Agreed, it will take a bit to convince people that it’s fine, but also plenty of people already eat food grown in sewage like the traditional fish ponds in places like Vietnam and India (there’s a great piece in low tech magazine on it, im sure people like the great people working on that will have a large place in dealing with environment and how we live after the revolution)
Vertical farming is more energy intensive because it requires artificial light and vertical water transport. There is also the question of acquiring sufficient fertile soil and nutrients. Fertilizer takes energy to produce. Ultimately this becomes not a question of surface area but of sustainable and large scale energy production. If you have sufficient energy and enough raw materials you can expand farming by many orders of magnitude. Without those things you need to keep clearing more and more land and rely on sunlight which is not as dependable at higher latitudes.
Those are good points. Wouldn’t it not be to hard to use sewage as an input for both for energy and nutrients? Also, if we vastly decrease energy use for shipping food and refrigerating it, it might be more sustainable for local vertical farming in cites.
I think regardless of anything like a perfect solution at this point, the fact that all these things are options that could be considered and worked through is promising. It means that a radical reimagining of farming is possible, which will be needed, whether it’s to make food production for 8bn or 20bn people sustainable.
There’s also the energy saved from reducing car use, increasing public transport, no longer heating the private and hardly ever used indoor swimming pools of the rich, and no longer making so many pointless commodities.
There are also things that individuals (🤢 liberalism, sorry) can do to feed themselves if they had the time and education. Growing mushrooms, tomatoes, garlic, herbs, etc. We’re so alienated from food production and time-poor (and poor-poor) in capitalism, though, that it’s hard to get started. The few things I’ve grown, I’ve not wanted to eat because of the bugs, etc. Ridiculous, I know, but this is the effect of a lifetime of all my food appearing sanitised in supermarkets. (That said, it’s going to take some serious un-alienating for me to eat food growing in my own sewage, never mind others’!)
Agreed, it will take a bit to convince people that it’s fine, but also plenty of people already eat food grown in sewage like the traditional fish ponds in places like Vietnam and India (there’s a great piece in low tech magazine on it, im sure people like the great people working on that will have a large place in dealing with environment and how we live after the revolution)