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Senyu t1_jeb4u6p wrote

Reply to comment by Arrrrrr2D2 in Israeli scientists develop drought-resistant tomatoes by TheLieDetectorBro

I don't see how food facilities in cities wouldn't be better than vast swaths of farmland that must transport its good. Sure, you raise an important point that there are real risks that must be addressed and of course any facility could have issues. But if the majority of the major cities in the world had food facilities then the issues of one become minimal until it's resolved given there is an overall larger net production of food.

The amount of land used by farms must decrease. While farms won't vanish entirely simply for cultural reasons they must not be solely relied on for feeding the planet in the future. Improving the food quality comes tech improvements, but farmland alone is not sufficient for our current population trajectory.

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Arrrrrr2D2 t1_jeb62kf wrote

Prove the nutrition and health of the new technologies before you rush headstrong into it. There are red flags already. Look into the logistics of the new technologies from start to finish also. I do not understand why humanity is wanting to fix nature when it is not broken. Big agriculture is broken. If individuals became stewards of the earth at their own homes, reliance on external food sources would be extremely diminished.

You believe in science and humanity, it is clear.

It is an honor to receive your thoughts in a respectful manner.

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Senyu t1_jeb9tr6 wrote

I agree that proof of nutrition and health must be ensured and verified before rollout. All new technological progress comes with hurdles, I have no disillusion that hydroponics and vitromeat tech has its own obstacles. However, I have faith in humanity's ability to solve those problems. I do not believe we can effectively becomes stewards of the Earth at a food production level without drastic population reduction. Our society & infrastructure is simply not geared to supporting individual made food production to meet the planet's needs. We must further develop and implement hydroponics & vitromeat in order to sustain the bulk of our population's food needs with minimal ecological costs to the planet. It has nothing to do with nature being broken or not, it's merely logistics of having a multi-billion sized population. Big Agra is most definitely broken, but even if that was resolved we still have vast amounts of people to feed and the ecological costs of traditional agriculture cannot be ignored simply because it's the way we've always done it.

We can become more effective stewards of the Earth in a general sense if we can off-load the bulk of our food needs to facilities located in every major city of the world. Traditional agriculture will still exist, most likely in a cultural preservation sense. But swaths of traditional agricultural land could be return to a natural ecological state if we implement hydroponics and vitromeat at scale.

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