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Showing results for tags 'hydroponics'.
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Food Security & Sustainability, Land vs Hydroponics etc
Ocram's Razr posted a topic in Current Events
A major crisis with little publicity is food scarcity & security. Another major crisis is energy scarcity & security. Though nuclear fission and eventually fusion could theoretically solve our energy crisis and the earth can sustain twice its population if everyone went vegan and no one consumed more than a middle-class European, both solutions are unpractical today. Another crisis in the USA is the epidemic (for lack of a better word) of food deserts, where many people have virtually no access to adequate nutrition. However, easy access to healthy plant-based food can be made possible through algaculture, hydroponics, aeroponics, and aquaponics. According to the laws of Supply & Demand, economies of scale, and the substitution effect, the likeliest outcome from increased food production from indoor farming and algae processing will be an improved diet on average, with great strides made at reducing the prevalence of food deserts. However, starchy staples will continue to be grown (at least for consumption, not necesarily for breeding) in the soil under sunlight because the sun provides more energy for photosynthesis than the amount of energy it takes to desalinate the water typically wasted with break-even points with leafy greens in sunny & arid regions. Video proving that starch staples need sunlight (according to physics) I conducted some research on a closed loop aquaculture/algaculture system though inexperience led to inconclusive results (not enough algae to measure biomass and too many water changes and resource investments to be a useful setup. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4483736/#!po=0.666667 Here is an article about yield and resource consumption for lettuce production in Arizona for conventional agriculture vs hydroponics. The increased energy consumption will be slightly mitigated by future innovation. Hydroponics for lettuce will likely be more efficient than conventional agriculture with irrigation from desalinated seawater within a generation, at which point sunny desert regions could eliminate imports of green vegetables and tomatoes. A video about the sustainability and potential of algaculture Gasolene and Diesel synthesized from algae grown on raceways adjacent to natural gas power plants in the tropics are more energy efficient than corn-based ethanol. In fact, they are the first energy positive (more electricity produced from burning than consumed from producing) biofuel. A video about the economics of horizontal plane hydroponics vs vertical plane Please contribute to this discussion with opinions, expertise, sources, critiques, or commentary. -
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