this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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Local production is counter-intuitively worse because you have more people hauling less produce. Even in a clean energy paragdime that's just excess waste. We need to find a way to be sustainable at scale
? If it is produced locally then food wouldn't come across the world. Lots of meat and produce comes from California or China for northeast America. Less people hauling anything the better. Like we can grow in a building in the city way more efficient than long hauling.
Not really, no.
Farming in the city means giving up all the things you could otherwise do in that space. The farmer's field is only good for one thing. The building in the city could be used for thousands.
Adding the transportation cost to the utilitarian value of the farmland, the sum is still a tiny fraction of the value of the building.
Farming locally doesn't mean use a city building, it means use a field thats kinda in the same region, not at the other end of the world. And of course that's more sustainable. The shorter the transport routes are, the better.
There is projects using the outside of buildings, tops of building, and all these empty office buildings. It is probably best to density the suburbs and transport into the city which 5-15 miles is extremely sustainable comparatively to thousands
Can regions support the population with local food growth.
You need good soil, and water and the right climate and space to do it. That is kind of why we went away from local food growth in the first place.
Currently were i live we have 4 seasons significantly. We have farmers markets in the Summer and Fall but all of that goes away in the Winter and spring because they can't grow food year round.
I guess we can now build out physical structures where you can grow inside where we can monitor and control everything. I don't know how that compares to traditional fields.
I just want to be sure this isn't a best intentions but unforseen super bad consequences.
We have also been spoiled with the variety of food we have everywhere. I can almost buy every type of food the world has to offer because of the huge transportation industry we have.
Why I said less availability. We can also grow for 4 seasons indoors like you said and I implied. Especially if we get cheap electricity too. Long future we can super shrink the operation footprint size and all the inefficiency of sustaining a living creature and just grow the meat.
our current civilization is built on the division of labor. everyone could theoretically produce their own food and that would be more efficient but not enough people have the time or expertise so there will always be some form of moving produce to market and that will always be more efficient at scale.
Those wind powered container ships would be pretty good marketing for a green leaning company (hint hint)
In no way was I saying everyone growing their own food. We can grow 15-30 miles out of the city. We can stop outsourcing our manufacturing and growing thousands of miles away from where people are.
Kansas to New York is over a thousands miles that is wildly inefficient. Don't get me started if we could get farms closer to trains that go to the city.