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Technically this is very cool. But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft. The future will be something like

by z9znz 4y ago

Technically this is very cool. But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft. The future will be something like, or at least based on, vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) automated farms. The best hope we have for solving food needs AND climate problems is to let as much earth as possible go wild, and reduce and optimize our footprint. Actually that's not correct - the best hope we have is to allow human population growth to go negative and also do smarter things.

krzat 4y ago
Plants need energy to grow, and the easiest way of providing that energy is direct sunlight. Which means that vertical won't work too well. I suppose if you wanted be really space efficient, you could use nuclear energy to cultivate yeast.
- z9znz 4y ago
  In much of the developed world, solar energy doesn't come from directly above, it comes from a much lower angle. Trapezoidal shaped buildings can collect a great deal of direct sunlight. And further, with reflectors it's possible to direct and concentrate this where it is most needed.
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
Unless you can recreate the astonishing diversity of of a regular ecosystem in a box, I don't want this spacecraft. Fruits and vegetable taste is already steadily decreasing and I have more and more trouble sourcing something decent despite having way more budget. I also assume that, like everything with complex systems, we are missing the forest for the tree and we will discover tons of health issues related to this in the future.
klabb3 4y ago
> But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft. First, you're underselling it. 95% less pesticides is huge. If that's economically viable we're a LOT better off. I have my doubts since it's clearly a PR video, but still. Secondly, the analogy falls short. The goal of horses and cars is transportation of goods and people, which is easy to measure and cost. Agriculture is about utilizing immensely complicated biological systems to deliver nutrition to people. We don't know everything about nutrition, let alone everything that contributes to making nutritious food. That's why we always look for minimal modifications to biological systems in order to tweak it to our liking. The same is true for say medicine; we don't design an artificial organ if we can avoid it, we usually aim for something like a simple chemical compound that triggers an existing response that helps the organ function normally, as defined by our existing biology. We may be quite advanced species, but biology is not exactly something we master. > vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) Well, sounds more convenient for humans, that's true. But if you take nutrition out of the system you have to replace it with something, which I don't think we've figured out.
- z9znz 4y ago
  Reducing pesticide use is a big deal. But that is a small issue compared to the bigger problem, which as you point out is nutrition. Crop densities have been increasing dramatically over the last few decades, well beyond what natural soil systems can handle. Consequently, fertilizer use has increased dramatically. Our soils are just nearly dead as the factory monoculture farming has sucked everything out that it can (and killed a lot of important things it needed). This current advancement (TFA) is just a bandaid, or paving a crack in the road. Perhaps a better analogy is that this is paving a crack in the road when we should be designing a whole new transportation system to meet our current and future needs. Most of this agriculture is owned by a few huge companies. They are not interested in large systemic changes as those cost capital. They would much rather optimize what they have, even if the cliff is visible in the distance. Beyond one earnings quarter or perhaps a CEO's tenure, they don't care. As long as they are not standing on the cliff today, you cannot expect real (beneficial) changes. As for replacing nutrition, this needs more research. But there are aquaponic systems which seem promising and enable a much more closed loop with vastly less waste. Oh speaking of waste, I didn't even mention water yet. Current farming systems use water like it will never go away (and is free), but we know it's a problem now and presents its own absolute cliff in the near future.
tim333 4y ago
I'm not convinced vertical systems will every be very economic. It's much cheaper to just stick some seeds in a field than build some high tech building. Re letting the earth go wild, replacing regular meat with artificial would go a long way - a lot of the land is used to feed animals we eat.
- z9znz 4y ago
  You can't just stick seeds in a field if you lack water or your soil is already dead from overfarming. These are issues we face already, and they are only getting worse. The water shortages are going to be our first impasse, because there's no remedy. Current farming uses vast amounts of water, much of which leaves the area due to evaporation. This leads to rapid desertification of regions, and then traditional farming becomes absolutely impossible (without lengthy restoration beforehand). Reducing meat consumption definitely makes the problems less immediate, but so far it doesn't seem like we will be able to reduce that consumption. So I wouldn't count this as any near term solution.
  - tim333 4y ago
    Well, traditional farming's gone on for thousands of years. The water goes to the sea, comes back as rain and things go on. I'm not convinced there's much of a crisis overall.
KaiserPro 4y ago
> The future will be something like, or at least based on, vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) automated farms. nope. because vertical farms require a fucktonne of power and infrastructure. Moreover they are only really useful for certain types of crops (ie salad) Your stables (rice, cereals and root crops) don't work well in vertical farms. What you're actually trying to make is a greenhouse, and the dutch have solved that pretty much already (apart from the massive monoculture bit) I suspect the future is actually in dense mixed crop fields. If tilling, cropping and tending can be automated then making sure a plant grows in it's allotted space become simple and cheap. It reduces the risk of total crop wipeout, can keep a field productive all year, and if done properly can improve soil quality.
- z9znz 4y ago
  If we want to talk about ideal, then the "food forest" concept is about as ideal as it gets. Once built, assuming your local climate doesn't shift radically (difficult assumption now), you can get a lot of edible material out of a relatively small space with remarkably little human intervention. Ideally we would work to develop food forests everywhere in and around our population centers. However, that's much harder for a multinational company to make money doing, so it's not going to happen. Likewise, with city land becoming increasingly expensive, reverting blocks or spaces to be used to develop food forests is not likely. Maybe our best bet is to learn how to eat money.

by z9znz 4y ago

krzat 4y ago

Plants need energy to grow, and the easiest way of providing that energy is direct sunlight. Which means that vertical won't work too well. I suppose if you wanted be really space efficient, you could use nuclear energy to cultivate yeast.

z9znz 4y ago
In much of the developed world, solar energy doesn't come from directly above, it comes from a much lower angle. Trapezoidal shaped buildings can collect a great deal of direct sunlight. And further, with reflectors it's possible to direct and concentrate this where it is most needed.

BiteCode_dev 4y ago

Unless you can recreate the astonishing diversity of of a regular ecosystem in a box, I don't want this spacecraft. Fruits and vegetable taste is already steadily decreasing and I have more and more trouble sourcing something decent despite having way more budget. I also assume that, like everything with complex systems, we are missing the forest for the tree and we will discover tons of health issues related to this in the future.

klabb3 4y ago

> But it is ultimately trying to improve a horse and buggy rather than developing a spacecraft. First, you're underselling it. 95% less pesticides is huge. If that's economically viable we're a LOT better off. I have my doubts since it's clearly a PR video, but still. Secondly, the analogy falls short. The goal of horses and cars is transportation of goods and people, which is easy to measure and cost. Agriculture is about utilizing immensely complicated biological systems to deliver nutrition to people. We don't know everything about nutrition, let alone everything that contributes to making nutritious food. That's why we always look for minimal modifications to biological systems in order to tweak it to our liking. The same is true for say medicine; we don't design an artificial organ if we can avoid it, we usually aim for something like a simple chemical compound that triggers an existing response that helps the organ function normally, as defined by our existing biology. We may be quite advanced species, but biology is not exactly something we master. > vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) Well, sounds more convenient for humans, that's true. But if you take nutrition out of the system you have to replace it with something, which I don't think we've figured out.

z9znz 4y ago
Reducing pesticide use is a big deal. But that is a small issue compared to the bigger problem, which as you point out is nutrition. Crop densities have been increasing dramatically over the last few decades, well beyond what natural soil systems can handle. Consequently, fertilizer use has increased dramatically. Our soils are just nearly dead as the factory monoculture farming has sucked everything out that it can (and killed a lot of important things it needed). This current advancement (TFA) is just a bandaid, or paving a crack in the road. Perhaps a better analogy is that this is paving a crack in the road when we should be designing a whole new transportation system to meet our current and future needs. Most of this agriculture is owned by a few huge companies. They are not interested in large systemic changes as those cost capital. They would much rather optimize what they have, even if the cliff is visible in the distance. Beyond one earnings quarter or perhaps a CEO's tenure, they don't care. As long as they are not standing on the cliff today, you cannot expect real (beneficial) changes. As for replacing nutrition, this needs more research. But there are aquaponic systems which seem promising and enable a much more closed loop with vastly less waste. Oh speaking of waste, I didn't even mention water yet. Current farming systems use water like it will never go away (and is free), but we know it's a problem now and presents its own absolute cliff in the near future.

tim333 4y ago

I'm not convinced vertical systems will every be very economic. It's much cheaper to just stick some seeds in a field than build some high tech building. Re letting the earth go wild, replacing regular meat with artificial would go a long way - a lot of the land is used to feed animals we eat.

z9znz 4y ago
You can't just stick seeds in a field if you lack water or your soil is already dead from overfarming. These are issues we face already, and they are only getting worse. The water shortages are going to be our first impasse, because there's no remedy. Current farming uses vast amounts of water, much of which leaves the area due to evaporation. This leads to rapid desertification of regions, and then traditional farming becomes absolutely impossible (without lengthy restoration beforehand). Reducing meat consumption definitely makes the problems less immediate, but so far it doesn't seem like we will be able to reduce that consumption. So I wouldn't count this as any near term solution.
- tim333 4y ago
  Well, traditional farming's gone on for thousands of years. The water goes to the sea, comes back as rain and things go on. I'm not convinced there's much of a crisis overall.

KaiserPro 4y ago

> The future will be something like, or at least based on, vertical self-contained (almost completely closed systems) automated farms. nope. because vertical farms require a fucktonne of power and infrastructure. Moreover they are only really useful for certain types of crops (ie salad) Your stables (rice, cereals and root crops) don't work well in vertical farms. What you're actually trying to make is a greenhouse, and the dutch have solved that pretty much already (apart from the massive monoculture bit) I suspect the future is actually in dense mixed crop fields. If tilling, cropping and tending can be automated then making sure a plant grows in it's allotted space become simple and cheap. It reduces the risk of total crop wipeout, can keep a field productive all year, and if done properly can improve soil quality.

z9znz 4y ago
If we want to talk about ideal, then the "food forest" concept is about as ideal as it gets. Once built, assuming your local climate doesn't shift radically (difficult assumption now), you can get a lot of edible material out of a relatively small space with remarkably little human intervention. Ideally we would work to develop food forests everywhere in and around our population centers. However, that's much harder for a multinational company to make money doing, so it's not going to happen. Likewise, with city land becoming increasingly expensive, reverting blocks or spaces to be used to develop food forests is not likely. Maybe our best bet is to learn how to eat money.