Asklemmy

Diversity of food sources.

This reads like a Rimworld post.

I don't think there's a Rimworld community on Lemmy and I'm not going on Reddit anymore so I'll just throw this comment into the void and hope some fans are out there. 👋

Also in Rimworld terms the answer is corn (if monoculture) and send everyone to harvest at the first sign of blight.

But in both Rimworld and real life, a monoculture strategy isn't sustainable. Diversifying via multiple food sources reduces your risk of disaster leading to starvation.

Diversity is the most stable plan. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Get food from multiple sources.

Likely Algae. Good luck intentionally getting less

Aeroponics, under a controlled greenhouse environment, is technically the most stable food production method, assuming you have the ability to maintain the systems supporting it, and of course a good knowledge of a particular plant's requirements and growth habits.

Pros:

1. Water Efficiency: Uses up to 98% less water compared to traditional farming.
2. Space Efficiency: Can be used in vertical farming setups, making it ideal for urban areas.
3. Growth Speed: Crops can grow faster due to higher oxygen levels and nutrient delivery.
4. Reduced Pesticide Need: Since plants aren't grown in soil, there's a lower risk of soil-borne diseases.

Aeroponics, when done correctly, can yield impressive results in terms of growth speed and resource efficiency compared to traditional farming.

I think the answer is potatoes. Other root vegetables might be equally reliable.

Cockroaches. They can survive nuclear events and will eat almost anything. They multiply faster than plants too.

Intercropping, preservation of biodiversity, rotation of crops... There is no magic bean, but in the long run basic conservation combined with advancement of plant genetics is the only realistic path forward, in my professional opinion

Probably not the answer you're looking for: Afaik if you store grain properly it can last over 30 years. So as long as you're growing too much to keep your silos full and save, and you store enough, it should be incredibly reliable.

One possibility is breadfruit. We, realistically, can't depend on one though. Even the most robust staple food will still have some sort of vulnerability so it will always be of benefits to have several.

Crops, but not unbelievably large monocrop farms. Diverse, rotated soil in reasonably sized fields, widely distributed. A variety of different crops mitigates blights, and they’re the most efficient food source, in terms for how much food produced based on the inputs (amount of land, water, energy, etc.) and other considerations (land used, greenhouse gas emissions!

Anything living can get diseases. I'd still go for crops grown in a controlled, indoor environment.

There's a way to grow bacteria on natural gas if you don't have grow lights, and they used it to make fish feed for at least a while, as well as some lab work on electricity-eating bacteria. If you don't care about your liver I guess this drink is also technically a source of calories with no biological production needed.

I would sort of expect it to be the stuff we struggle to get rid of, like fungi and weeds. So maybe mushrooms and dandelions? This is just a wild guess, and obviously you couldn't live off them forever.

Probably soon it will be some form of single cell protein like methanogen. Being able to grow with less sunlight is pretty valuable.

Seize people's grass lawns and tear out 2/3 of roadways and convert the land into community gardens and ponds, grow food where the people are. Probably some form of population control.

Pie in the sky though. We'll probably just start eating bugs by the container ship load and then go extinct instead

Stuff like mealworms or soldierfly larvae can be grown easily, using almost anything. Don’t know how big of a problem diseases can get though.

The things that cause famines are lack of diversity.

Cells in agar in an incubator. Anything above that scale is bound to have losses and fails. How much depend on how controlled your environment is.