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Have you ever tasted wild herbs? There's just no way this will ever replicate wild herbs. I recently ate an out of season "heirloom tomato" grown in Mexico an

Have you ever tasted wild herbs? There's just no way this will ever replicate wild herbs. I recently ate an out of season "heirloom tomato" grown in Mexico and shipped to my local coop in Minnesota. It was "organic", and it looked like an heirloom tomato. But it had no taste. It was clearly grown in depleted soil. I've grown heirloom tomatoes, as well as beefsteak and other more conventional varieties. Food grown in a garden tastes better. There are more nutrients available to them. Plants are chemical-mineral-sun beings. They grow abundantly in diverse ecosystems and offer their fruits with no violence. Why is this artificial shit necessary? It's not. People don't appreciate the profound and beautiful foundations of "old" technologies. Paper. Knots. Gardening. Cooking. Woodworking. Compost. Herbal medicine. Music. Many of these artforms (sciences, really) are miles ahead of the fancy capitalist stuff in terms of their nuance, their simplicity, their integration with human wellbeing. And they're free.

terravion 9y ago
Actually, they aren't free. That's the point, that's what's cool about indoor farming. It is the ultimate in agricultural intensification, even if marketed as some sort of sustainability. The land required to support a human goes way down as agricultural intensity goes up. It is actually weird, but a hunter gatherer "living in harmony with nature" actually does orders of magnitude more ecological damage per human than industrialized society. Having a 1 acre garden as a hobby, is huge ecological violence since industrialized agriculture requires far less than half an acre per person and the loss of habitat is the same.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  >a hunter gatherer "living in harmony with nature" actually does orders of magnitude more ecological damage per human than industrialized society. I'm not sure how this is true. Perhaps you can persuade me? A one acre garden is not a "hobby" in my opinion. The amount of work involved in cultivating an entire acre is immense. As well, a personal garden is unlikely to be a monoculture which is even worse ecologically in my opinion than a loss of efficiency. Plus there's all that Round-up...
  - freeflight 9y ago
    >I'm not sure how this is true. Perhaps you can persuade me? This could actually apply to the hunter&gatherer because those didn't care much about sustainability. When a region was picked/hunted empty they simply moved to a new region, few enough of us around back then so this actually worked and regions had time to recover. Now imagine nearly 7 billion humans living the same way: Gathering/hunting everything in their closest region until most of it is gone just to move on to a new region, no permaculture at all. It wouldn't take long before there wouldn't be anything left to hunt or gather. >A one acre garden is not a "hobby" in my opinion. The amount of work involved in cultivating an entire acre is immense. Not every one-acre garden is actually cultivated, that's how some people are able to have them as a hobby ;)
- m_coder 9y ago
  >>Having a 1 acre garden as a hobby, is huge ecological violence Can you explain how this hobby is so violent? I don't think I am following the line of thought. The typical one acre hobby garden is farmed with far fewer chemicals than the typical commercial farm. There is far more diversity and a better balance of minerals. Compost is often used and waste is effectively recycled.
  - hs44 9y ago
    >>Having a 1 acre garden as a hobby, is huge ecological violence ..context dropping..compared to the lawn or parking lot that might be there?
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I think the parent meant that people having 1 acre hobby gardens are wasting space that could be more efficiently used by industrialized agriculture, and thus if you'd replace modern farming with family gardens, you'd destroy many more animal habitats.
    - m_coder 9y ago
      The space isn't what is used efficiently by industrialized agriculture (for the most part). The efficiency comes from saving time by having large machines. Space is used most efficiently when you have people actively involved on small plots.
      - randomdata 9y ago
        > Space is used most efficiently when you have people actively involved on small plots. Wouldn't the area needed for the active involvement of people require more space than commercial agriculture, where large machines can do a lot on a small footprint? A sprayer with 12 inch tires and a 120 foot boom can effectively 'weed' 118 feet of growing area with just two feet required for the tires. I'm not so sure a person with a hoe can beat that.
        9y ago
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  Indoor farming can only be more intense than outdoor if you power it with nuclear or fossil fuels... Humanity is currently migrating into solar power. There's no way you will gain any area by adding conversions on the way through the plants. You get better reliability, easier pest controls (without additives), and lots of other things, but you can never gain in area use.
sloppycee 9y ago
I'm pretty sure the reason your fruits and veggies don't taste right is because they have to be shipped unripened to prevent spoilage. It's why fruit from the farmers market tastes better, it was grown until ripe and shipped locally. Technologies, like the ones mentioned in this article, change the entire supply chain; fruits and vegetables become "in-season" all year round. They will no longer have to be shipped unripened, and should have a better flavour.
- arcaster 9y ago
  I really enjoy keeping a number of honey bee colonies in the summer on my rooftop in Boston. However, you lost me at "herbal medicine".
  - Rmilb 9y ago
    Just because something is natural does not mean it is healthy, safe or effective, but dismissing all types of herbal medicine that some people have been using for thousands of years seems too dismissive. I hate to be that guy, but the science is starting to pile up for the medicinal pot group.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - seunosewa 9y ago
      There is a word for any herbal medicine that actually works: medicine. It gets studied and the active ingredient is extracted and synthesized by pharmaceutical companies.
      - macawfish 9y ago
        That's the thing, there aren't "active" and "inactive" ingredients. There are webs of phytochemicals that have dynamic interactions with one another and with the human body. Reductive medicine is missing that point over and over again. It's not possible to extract single ingredients that have the same effects as the qualitative mixtures phytochemicals in plants. Not only that, interacting with the plants on a human, physical level is nurturing in and of itself. There are so many pathways for information to get into the body. I want to drink lavender tea when I'm feeling a particular kind of anxiety. The smell alone calms me. The color is soothing. The way the tea feels when I drink it is warm. I enjoy the way it tastes. The taste and smell remind me of memories and moods. It works very well. It doesn't cover "general anxiety" for me. I wouldn't offer it as a prescription to someone who tells me they have "anxiety". It works better in cases of "spiritual crisis", to help maintain a bigger picture after a death or tragedy, than it does for acute frantic, nervous feelings. In those cases, I prefer valerian, chamomile or holy basil. You're bullshitting me if you think I'm gonna prefer to take a pill with "holy basil extract" over a delicious cup of holy basil tea. Absolutely not. And tell me how to "extract" rooibos? What parts are you going to put into pills? Can you extract the taste? Can you extract the nutrients? Would you make one pill for the antioxidants and another for the vitamin C? It used to be thought that THC was "the active ingredient" in cannabis. Well, it turns out that THC and CBD, along with numerous other varieties of cannabinoids, interact dynamically in the body, modulating one anothers' effects. Studies have shown that CBD quells the psychosis inducing effects of THC very well. But CBD on its own isn't necessarily a strong antipsychotic. It'd need to be taken in large doses to have that effect. The idea that "germs cause disease" is a similar misconception. Bacterial infections are symptoms of larger ecological imbalances in the body's microbiome. Sometimes infections are really caused by antibiotics (if you wanna point fingers), as is the case with C. Difficile infections that take hold in guts whose flora have been nuked by antibiotics.
newhere420 9y ago
> There's just no way this will ever replicate wild herbs. Why not? What environment or characteristic of plants grown in the wild is impossible to recreate in a controlled environment? Arguably, plants can be grown "in-season" all year round with technology like this, and be sold fresh the same day it is picked. > Why is this artificial shit necessary? It's not. Maybe growing food within the cities will help us to feed a dense local population, while at the same time minimising the impact on the countryside. Thus leaving the countryside natural for those who want to appreciate it. Living in Britain, I despair at the eradication of the countryside. Natural environment has been almost exclusively replaced by farm land to grow food for our ever growing population, and we are still quite a long way from being self-sufficient. Also, work like this will help if we want to colonise space. > People don't appreciate the profound and beautiful foundations of "old" technologies Are you the arbiter on what everyone else should be appreciating? Although you are free to appreciate and enjoy anything you like, other people such as myself derive deep pleasure from observing the constant onward march of technology and industry.
szoops 9y ago
Have you actually tasted it? Many of the modern varieties of mass-produced produce have been bred to overcome pests and harsh conditions. not flavor. By moving the plants indoors we overcome both issues and can grow in optimal conditions where we can focus on taste and texture. Plus by growing close to the point of consumption the food is fresher and tastier and can be harvested when ripe and not a week before so as is currently the case. Additionally the nutrient levels in CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture) crops is usually above a field grown crop (https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/are-hydroponic-vegetables-as-nutritious-as-those-grown-in-soil/ https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/are-hydroponic-veg...)

terravion 9y ago

Actually, they aren't free. That's the point, that's what's cool about indoor farming. It is the ultimate in agricultural intensification, even if marketed as some sort of sustainability. The land required to support a human goes way down as agricultural intensity goes up. It is actually weird, but a hunter gatherer "living in harmony with nature" actually does orders of magnitude more ecological damage per human than industrialized society. Having a 1 acre garden as a hobby, is huge ecological violence since industrialized agriculture requires far less than half an acre per person and the loss of habitat is the same.

wavefunction 9y ago
>a hunter gatherer "living in harmony with nature" actually does orders of magnitude more ecological damage per human than industrialized society. I'm not sure how this is true. Perhaps you can persuade me? A one acre garden is not a "hobby" in my opinion. The amount of work involved in cultivating an entire acre is immense. As well, a personal garden is unlikely to be a monoculture which is even worse ecologically in my opinion than a loss of efficiency. Plus there's all that Round-up...
- freeflight 9y ago
  >I'm not sure how this is true. Perhaps you can persuade me? This could actually apply to the hunter&gatherer because those didn't care much about sustainability. When a region was picked/hunted empty they simply moved to a new region, few enough of us around back then so this actually worked and regions had time to recover. Now imagine nearly 7 billion humans living the same way: Gathering/hunting everything in their closest region until most of it is gone just to move on to a new region, no permaculture at all. It wouldn't take long before there wouldn't be anything left to hunt or gather. >A one acre garden is not a "hobby" in my opinion. The amount of work involved in cultivating an entire acre is immense. Not every one-acre garden is actually cultivated, that's how some people are able to have them as a hobby ;)
m_coder 9y ago
>>Having a 1 acre garden as a hobby, is huge ecological violence Can you explain how this hobby is so violent? I don't think I am following the line of thought. The typical one acre hobby garden is farmed with far fewer chemicals than the typical commercial farm. There is far more diversity and a better balance of minerals. Compost is often used and waste is effectively recycled.
- hs44 9y ago
  >>Having a 1 acre garden as a hobby, is huge ecological violence ..context dropping..compared to the lawn or parking lot that might be there?
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I think the parent meant that people having 1 acre hobby gardens are wasting space that could be more efficiently used by industrialized agriculture, and thus if you'd replace modern farming with family gardens, you'd destroy many more animal habitats.
  - m_coder 9y ago
    The space isn't what is used efficiently by industrialized agriculture (for the most part). The efficiency comes from saving time by having large machines. Space is used most efficiently when you have people actively involved on small plots.
    - randomdata 9y ago
      > Space is used most efficiently when you have people actively involved on small plots. Wouldn't the area needed for the active involvement of people require more space than commercial agriculture, where large machines can do a lot on a small footprint? A sprayer with 12 inch tires and a 120 foot boom can effectively 'weed' 118 feet of growing area with just two feet required for the tires. I'm not so sure a person with a hoe can beat that.
      - 9y ago
marcosdumay 9y ago
Indoor farming can only be more intense than outdoor if you power it with nuclear or fossil fuels... Humanity is currently migrating into solar power. There's no way you will gain any area by adding conversions on the way through the plants. You get better reliability, easier pest controls (without additives), and lots of other things, but you can never gain in area use.

sloppycee 9y ago

I'm pretty sure the reason your fruits and veggies don't taste right is because they have to be shipped unripened to prevent spoilage. It's why fruit from the farmers market tastes better, it was grown until ripe and shipped locally. Technologies, like the ones mentioned in this article, change the entire supply chain; fruits and vegetables become "in-season" all year round. They will no longer have to be shipped unripened, and should have a better flavour.

arcaster 9y ago
I really enjoy keeping a number of honey bee colonies in the summer on my rooftop in Boston. However, you lost me at "herbal medicine".
- Rmilb 9y ago
  Just because something is natural does not mean it is healthy, safe or effective, but dismissing all types of herbal medicine that some people have been using for thousands of years seems too dismissive. I hate to be that guy, but the science is starting to pile up for the medicinal pot group.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - seunosewa 9y ago
    There is a word for any herbal medicine that actually works: medicine. It gets studied and the active ingredient is extracted and synthesized by pharmaceutical companies.
    - macawfish 9y ago
      That's the thing, there aren't "active" and "inactive" ingredients. There are webs of phytochemicals that have dynamic interactions with one another and with the human body. Reductive medicine is missing that point over and over again. It's not possible to extract single ingredients that have the same effects as the qualitative mixtures phytochemicals in plants. Not only that, interacting with the plants on a human, physical level is nurturing in and of itself. There are so many pathways for information to get into the body. I want to drink lavender tea when I'm feeling a particular kind of anxiety. The smell alone calms me. The color is soothing. The way the tea feels when I drink it is warm. I enjoy the way it tastes. The taste and smell remind me of memories and moods. It works very well. It doesn't cover "general anxiety" for me. I wouldn't offer it as a prescription to someone who tells me they have "anxiety". It works better in cases of "spiritual crisis", to help maintain a bigger picture after a death or tragedy, than it does for acute frantic, nervous feelings. In those cases, I prefer valerian, chamomile or holy basil. You're bullshitting me if you think I'm gonna prefer to take a pill with "holy basil extract" over a delicious cup of holy basil tea. Absolutely not. And tell me how to "extract" rooibos? What parts are you going to put into pills? Can you extract the taste? Can you extract the nutrients? Would you make one pill for the antioxidants and another for the vitamin C? It used to be thought that THC was "the active ingredient" in cannabis. Well, it turns out that THC and CBD, along with numerous other varieties of cannabinoids, interact dynamically in the body, modulating one anothers' effects. Studies have shown that CBD quells the psychosis inducing effects of THC very well. But CBD on its own isn't necessarily a strong antipsychotic. It'd need to be taken in large doses to have that effect. The idea that "germs cause disease" is a similar misconception. Bacterial infections are symptoms of larger ecological imbalances in the body's microbiome. Sometimes infections are really caused by antibiotics (if you wanna point fingers), as is the case with C. Difficile infections that take hold in guts whose flora have been nuked by antibiotics.

newhere420 9y ago

> There's just no way this will ever replicate wild herbs. Why not? What environment or characteristic of plants grown in the wild is impossible to recreate in a controlled environment? Arguably, plants can be grown "in-season" all year round with technology like this, and be sold fresh the same day it is picked. > Why is this artificial shit necessary? It's not. Maybe growing food within the cities will help us to feed a dense local population, while at the same time minimising the impact on the countryside. Thus leaving the countryside natural for those who want to appreciate it. Living in Britain, I despair at the eradication of the countryside. Natural environment has been almost exclusively replaced by farm land to grow food for our ever growing population, and we are still quite a long way from being self-sufficient. Also, work like this will help if we want to colonise space. > People don't appreciate the profound and beautiful foundations of "old" technologies Are you the arbiter on what everyone else should be appreciating? Although you are free to appreciate and enjoy anything you like, other people such as myself derive deep pleasure from observing the constant onward march of technology and industry.

szoops 9y ago

Have you actually tasted it? Many of the modern varieties of mass-produced produce have been bred to overcome pests and harsh conditions. not flavor. By moving the plants indoors we overcome both issues and can grow in optimal conditions where we can focus on taste and texture. Plus by growing close to the point of consumption the food is fresher and tastier and can be harvested when ripe and not a week before so as is currently the case. Additionally the nutrient levels in CEA (Controlled Environment Agriculture) crops is usually above a field grown crop (https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/are-hydroponic-vegetables-as-nutritious-as-those-grown-in-soil/ https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/are-hydroponic-veg...)