Saving the planet

[oddoneout]

This article is guardedly optimistic as regards sustainable new alternative means of food production being developed within cities albeit concerned about the costs involved:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-07-07/in-quest-for-food-security-cities-test-limits-of-urban-agriculture?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

There is an enormous range of food producing methods, both ancient and modern, which can enable food production in all sorts of different places, and at different levels of scale of production. The expansive industrial agriculture model will continue to have a place, but it will also have to change to deal with the constraints that are increasingly arising, such as cost(financial and environmental) of inputs, weather, water, soil degradation.
There is a tendency to assume that small growing spaces, such as in urban areas, can't produce enough to be worthwhile, but that isn't the case. A small area which can be intensively managed will produce more for a given area than a farmer's field, and if many such spaces work together to share output they can make a difference at local level and not just in terms of food production. Even if they do not cover all food needs they can make an essential contribution, not least by reducing total demand. There is a dislike of the idea of hydroponically produced crops but they can be much better than conventionally produced crops in terms of inputs, chemical use etc. particularly in a closed (under cover ) system and less demanding of water - or even a way of dealing with rainwater that otherwise has to be expensively and wastefully disposed of. The soil that farmers and many growers raise crops in is no more than a fairly inert medium in many cases- little or no life in it and needing to have virtually all nutrients supplied. One reason why some figures suggest that we only have somewhere in the order of 50 harvests - or years - depending on which calculation and what growing system, left on arable farms; the soil will be unable to support growth.

[Dave2002]

There is an enormous range of food producing methods, both ancient and modern, which can enable food production in all sorts of different places, and at different levels of scale of production. The expansive industrial agriculture model will continue to have a place, but it will also have to change to deal with the constraints that are increasingly arising, such as cost(financial and environmental) of inputs, weather, water, soil degradation.
There is a tendency to assume that small growing spaces, such as in urban areas, can't produce enough to be worthwhile, but that isn't the case. A small area which can be intensively managed will produce more for a given area than a farmer's field, and if many such spaces work together to share output they can make a difference at local level and not just in terms of food production. Even if they do not cover all food needs they can make an essential contribution, not least by reducing total demand. There is a dislike of the idea of hydroponically produced crops but they can be much better than conventionally produced crops in terms of inputs, chemical use etc. particularly in a closed (under cover ) system and less demanding of water - or even a way of dealing with rainwater that otherwise has to be expensively and wastefully disposed of. The soil that farmers and many growers raise crops in is no more than a fairly inert medium in many cases- little or no life in it and needing to have virtually all nutrients supplied. One reason why some figures suggest that we only have somewhere in the order of 50 harvests - or years - depending on which calculation and what growing system, left on arable farms; the soil will be unable to support growth.

Yet did I not see in recent times suggestions that these city "farm factories" are not economically viable - at least under the current capitalist systems. Several such attempts in the USA - for example in the NY area, have folded in the last year or two. Technically some of these ideas seem to work - though they may not be robust enough for long scale sustained supplies, and in our models of society they also "have" to be economically viable as well.