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You post is great until the last sentence: Permaculture is really cool, but you are never going to get anywhere near as many calories per unit of land. Permac
by tehchromic 11y ago
You post is great until the last sentence:
Permaculture is really cool, but you are never going to get anywhere near as many calories per unit of land.
Permaculture means living such that we don't go extinct. Having a great portion of our workforce return to bucolic agrarian pursuits is one way to get there! As they say: it beats flipping burgers.
The point of a food forest is that it has been carefully cultivated to maximize your human edibles, without needing energy expensive, oil based, or otherwise negatively impactful external inputs. When you subtract the non renewable energy expenditure, you certainly will get as many calories per unit of land!
- Houshalter 11y agoIf you are optimizing towards energy use, we could theoretically make robots or tractors that are solar powered. But this isn't an issue at all. Farm equipment does not consume that much fuel, and fuel isn't that expensive.
- Retric 11y agoThe energy costs of fertilizer and pesticides are the problem not the cost of robots/tractors. All fossil fuels are going to be gone within 5k years. Humans are several times that old and presumably humans will want to survive that. Sure, we can kick the can on this one, but it is a long term problem.
- Houshalter 11y agoIn 5-20 years we will be able to grow food 30x cheaper in highly efficient bacteria and algae tanks: https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future_of_food_and_why_cities_wont_need_much/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/31zo1r/a_future... Who knows what we will be able to do in 5,000 years. I wouldn't worry about it.