I noticed that thread, too, and had a good pounding-my-head-against-the-wall session about it.
This reminds me, too, of a thread I had some years ago on Reddit that was also about hydroponic farming. The other guy also had the idea that hydroponics would change everything, and would also shake off all the corporate control of farming. As if large scale hydroponics wouldn’t also become the new large scale corporate farms. Or that Monsanto would see the market shift and go “whoops, guess we’re irrelevant now”.
I bring this up because I’ve noticed a trend of hydroponics advocates. They see the problems with our farming system, which is fair, but drink deep of the hydroponic flavor-aid and don’t understand the other problems of what they’re talking about. This tends to overlap with techno-fetishism. Grow plants in dirt? Like we did when we first learned to make fire? Move over, because I’ve got something that will make it way better without knowing how the current system works.
Sorry to sorta necro this but I had a couple of his numbers floating in my head and I had to do the math.
He suggested that you could feed a city block with only 2 floors of a skyscraper which is already an insane ask but whatever.
But that means for a city like Philadelphia, you would need a total of around 16,000 buildings with 2 floors each dedicated to farming which widespreads your farmers.
Or if you decide to dedicate each building to farming only you still need 322 skyscrapers each 100 floors high to feed the city.
Which means water pumps and infrastructure to support all that water for 322 buildings which is about the current number of high rises and skyscrapers in Philadelphia combined.
You need to convert your entire city to food production just to feed the city that is just existing to feed itself.
My God this really isn’t the win they think it is. Technology will certainly save us but man I don’t see it in the pie in the sky scifi answers but something boring like protein manipulation in yeast cultures.
Not surprised at all. Beyond that, I suspect even two floors is already too many to effectively power the thing with solar on the roof of the same building. Even converting solar to electricity to a narrow spectrum of light at 100% efficiency for the entire thing wouldn’t get you there.
I noticed that thread, too, and had a good pounding-my-head-against-the-wall session about it.
This reminds me, too, of a thread I had some years ago on Reddit that was also about hydroponic farming. The other guy also had the idea that hydroponics would change everything, and would also shake off all the corporate control of farming. As if large scale hydroponics wouldn’t also become the new large scale corporate farms. Or that Monsanto would see the market shift and go “whoops, guess we’re irrelevant now”.
I bring this up because I’ve noticed a trend of hydroponics advocates. They see the problems with our farming system, which is fair, but drink deep of the hydroponic flavor-aid and don’t understand the other problems of what they’re talking about. This tends to overlap with techno-fetishism. Grow plants in dirt? Like we did when we first learned to make fire? Move over, because I’ve got something that will make it way better without knowing how the current system works.
Sorry to sorta necro this but I had a couple of his numbers floating in my head and I had to do the math.
He suggested that you could feed a city block with only 2 floors of a skyscraper which is already an insane ask but whatever.
But that means for a city like Philadelphia, you would need a total of around 16,000 buildings with 2 floors each dedicated to farming which widespreads your farmers. Or if you decide to dedicate each building to farming only you still need 322 skyscrapers each 100 floors high to feed the city.
Which means water pumps and infrastructure to support all that water for 322 buildings which is about the current number of high rises and skyscrapers in Philadelphia combined.
You need to convert your entire city to food production just to feed the city that is just existing to feed itself.
My God this really isn’t the win they think it is. Technology will certainly save us but man I don’t see it in the pie in the sky scifi answers but something boring like protein manipulation in yeast cultures.
Not surprised at all. Beyond that, I suspect even two floors is already too many to effectively power the thing with solar on the roof of the same building. Even converting solar to electricity to a narrow spectrum of light at 100% efficiency for the entire thing wouldn’t get you there.