Down on the farm that harvests metal from plants

Re:Down on the farm that harvests metal from plants by odyssey7 on Sunday March 01, 2020 @02:25PM (#22458656)

> Obviously, there's a finite amount of metal one could draw from any given location, and depending how deep root systems grow there's maybe not a lot of long term value in mining the surface this way.

My concern was, if this goes into wide use, then we'll be using these specialized species to extract the non-renewable resources that they depend on from their habitats, leading to the species' demise.

Edit: Considering "hundreds of mines shovel topsoil into smelters," maybe this is already at risk to begin with.

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Re:Down on the farm that harvests metal from plants by bottled_poe on Sunday March 01, 2020 @03:17PM (#22459006)

Sounds a lot like modern agriculture. What’s the difference?

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Re:Down on the farm that harvests metal from plants by odyssey7 on Sunday March 01, 2020 @04:13PM (#22459376)

Interesting. I guess both can make a location uninhabitable for native species. This one is ironic because the plant being both cultivated and harmed by the agriculture could be the native species itself.

Another difference is that with most farming there's an incentive to add things back to the soil and rotate crops, since you want the soil to keep working for you. In this case, there's no incentive to add nickel back to the soil, since extracting that element is the goal. And nature's ability to replenish the nickel is limited.

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