5 ms·
> contrary to other things, like fusion, this is possible. Of course it's possible, I'm just saying it's not (and can never be) free. "Free for consumers" simp
by veddox 3y ago
> contrary to other things, like fusion, this is possible.
Of course it's possible, I'm just saying it's not (and can never be) free. "Free for consumers" simply means somebody else paid for the costs - or more likely, the consumer paid the costs through taxes rather than at the store. You will always have input costs to produce an output, and these will not be negligible.
Just a few points on what you said, and these are not "accounting details": (1) Solar energy is not free - you need to build, install, and maintain panels and a power grid. (2) Of course you can reduce fertiliser, organic farming does so and takes ~20% yield decrease (depending on the crop). But then you have higher labour and machine costs to control weeds, and an overall higher per-hectare price. (3) Food processing matters because you probably don't want to spend most of your day milling your grain ration to make flour that you can then bake into bread. Ditto for other types of staple foods (you want to make your own sausages?). (On a historical side-note, here's a write-up of how ancient food systems worked: https://acoup.blog/2020/08/06/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-actually-farming/ https://acoup.blog/2020/08/06/collections-bread-how-did-they...).
Bottom line: Food systems are incredibly complex!