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> Agriculture doesn't use so much land because it needs to; it uses so much land because that's the cheapest way of producing food. And that's precisely why th
by sailingparrot 3y ago
> Agriculture doesn't use so much land because it needs to; it uses so much land because that's the cheapest way of producing food.
And that's precisely why there is an opportunity here that is attracting entrepreneurs: How to get farming techniques using less land to be as economically viable (or more) than traditional farming techniques.
Coal also was the cheapest way of producing electricity, but after 30+ years of investment in wind and solar it's now getting completely phased out. That happens only by having people seeing the long term problem and working on better ways of doing things long before they are actually economically viable.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIt took 50 years of heavy government subsidies to get wind & solar to the scale necessary to be cheaper than coal.
- acdha 3y agoCoal and oil are also heavily subsidized: companies are given tax breaks, land and discovery are often provided below market rates, and cleanup is usually subsidized by taxpayers. In aggregate, those subsidies are greater than what’s been spent on renewables by a significant margin.
- sailingparrot 3y agoAnd I am certainly glad that 50 years ago we made to choice to invest in them at a time where it was clear they wouldn't be viable for a while, if ever.
- RandomLensman 3y agoI don't think that is a good comparison, because plants need basically the same input - coal to solar is changing everything but the end result. Different farming isn't. If AgTech were to directly create sugar from air and water then that would be a real switch.
- pfdietz 3y agoIt's possible to grow bacteria on electrical energy, but I don't know if anyone has tried to commercialize that.
- nradov 3y agoYou're missing the point. In most places we don't have a shortage of land. What's the point of using less?
- sailingparrot 3y agoIt's not about lacking physical space to grow crops, it's about what you have to destroy to claim that land for Ag. In brazil 80%+ of the deforestation of the Amazon is caused by cattle ranching or soybeans cultivation. In Europe most of the land used today for Ag was once forest. But they have all been cut down so long ago that we forget. This has an obvious massive impact on CO2 emission, habitat loss etc.
- namaria 3y ago> In brazil 80%+ of the deforestation of the Amazon is caused by cattle ranching or soybeans cultivation. Common misconception. The actual felling of trees is done by people who profit from selling tropical hardwood logs and then move on. Ranchers and farmers opportunistically move into newly deforested cheap land because it costs less than buying established farmland. Without the (illegal) lumber export, there's very little encroaching because the opportunistic frontier farmers would not have a supply of nearly free land to expand into.
- missedthecue 3y agoI don't really see the business model though. That's like trying to sell Chinese fishing fleets subpar nets that cost more and catch fewer fish because you think overfishing the oceans is a bad thing. It's not going to be a very successful business.
- sailingparrot 3y ago> I don't really see the business model though None in isolation. But if/when countries start enacting carbon taxes & bonuses that account for the externalities, that could significantly change the cost equation, it could become more profitable for farmers to adopt farming techniques that require less land (less carbon tax to pay), and use the now unneeded land for passive income through forestry (get paid by the state to manage a carbon sink).