It pisses me off that because cities grew up where agriculture worked best that cities are on the best farmland in their areas. But the amount of land it takes to efficiently grow crops is many, many times what the cities have available even being ridiculously utopian about what can become available with schemes like “get rid of vehicles”.
On top of all that, the energy it takes to use grow lights for millions of acres of hydroponics would make AI datacenters look like power misers, and then you have to find people that would actually want to work in them. Farmers today can’t even charge enough to give people a living wage picking strawberries when there’s no added costs like that, and cry when their undocumented quasi-slave labor gets shipped back to Mexico. How’s all that going to work?
The key is to genetically modify people to have chlorophyll skin; it would be more likely to come true.
The video creator does not assume hydroponics with grow lights, but open-air traditional growing techniques. Only in the case of extremely dense cities with little room, is aquaponics or chinampas considered.
But the amount of land it takes to efficiently grow crops is many, many times what the cities have available
David R. Montegomery’s book, Dirt referenced some interesting studies which seemed to indicate that urban farming can potentially out-produce industrial agriculture by 10 to 100 times, depending on the size (the smaller the farm, the more potential productive capacity).
Screenshot of the book referenced in another video (unfortunately also youtube):
That second video also referenced this interesting experiment by someone trying to sustain themselves off a small garden with limited time and effort put into it:
It pisses me off that because cities grew up where agriculture worked best that cities are on the best farmland in their areas. But the amount of land it takes to efficiently grow crops is many, many times what the cities have available even being ridiculously utopian about what can become available with schemes like “get rid of vehicles”.
On top of all that, the energy it takes to use grow lights for millions of acres of hydroponics would make AI datacenters look like power misers, and then you have to find people that would actually want to work in them. Farmers today can’t even charge enough to give people a living wage picking strawberries when there’s no added costs like that, and cry when their undocumented quasi-slave labor gets shipped back to Mexico. How’s all that going to work?
The key is to genetically modify people to have chlorophyll skin; it would be more likely to come true.
The video creator does not assume hydroponics with grow lights, but open-air traditional growing techniques. Only in the case of extremely dense cities with little room, is aquaponics or chinampas considered.
David R. Montegomery’s book, Dirt referenced some interesting studies which seemed to indicate that urban farming can potentially out-produce industrial agriculture by 10 to 100 times, depending on the size (the smaller the farm, the more potential productive capacity).
Screenshot of the book referenced in another video (unfortunately also youtube):
That second video also referenced this interesting experiment by someone trying to sustain themselves off a small garden with limited time and effort put into it:
https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/home-gardens-vs-farms-efficiency/