If it can replace the 5% of food that is currently handled terribly and has an enormously oversized footprint then that is great.
I am not horrified by the ramifications of my staple rice coming from Asia on a slow boat which I then consume 100% of. I am horrified by all the tropical fruits that are being air-mailed and then largely discarded.
Once they are done experimenting, they will want to focus on what pays best and whether they mean to or not, they will be replacing terrible with better, while still not competing on very low cost/resource staple food.
I think there's no reason we can't eventually really beat plants on achieving higher density resource usage given seasons, light spectrum conversation, wind, etc, but it is a mistake to focus on how far off that is as a reason not to begin the process.
If it can replace the 5% of food that is currently handled terribly and has an enormously oversized footprint then that is great.
I am not horrified by the ramifications of my staple rice coming from Asia on a slow boat which I then consume 100% of. I am horrified by all the trozical fruits that are being airmailed and then largely discarded.
Once they are done experimenting, they will want to focus on what pays best and whether they mean to or not, they will be replacing terrible with better, while still not competing on very low cost/resource staple food.
I think there's no reason we can't eventually really beat plants on achieving higher density resource usage given seasons, light spectrum conversation, wind, etc, but it is a mistake to focus on how far off that is as a reason not to begin the process.
I don't think it's "greening the Sahara" so much as "trying to keep the last bits of green." This is on the Nile.
If it can replace the 5% of food that is currently handled terribly and has an enormously oversized footprint then that is great.
I am not horrified by the ramifications of my staple rice coming from Asia on a slow boat which I then consume 100% of. I am horrified by all the trozical fruits that are being airmailed and then largely discarded.
Once they are done experimenting, they will want to focus on what pays best and whether they mean to or not, they will be replacing terrible with better, while still not competing on very low cost/resource staple food.
I think there's no reason we can't eventually really beat plants on achieving higher density resource usage given seasons, light spectrum conversation, wind, etc, but it is a mistake to focus on how far off that is as a reason not to begin the process.
2. Given sunlight is ~1 gigawatt per square kilometre, and given the light level plants need, to the extent that this allows winter production of:
(a) staple crops such as wheat, rice, potatoes: this will need implementation of all the improvements to the global power grid that eco-optimists like me call for and which eco-pessimists claim will never be sufficient, and because the energy has to come from elsewhere in winter they will be lacking exactly the same sort of independence they have now with food imports. (I don’t count this as “not independent” because if I did then no city would be, no apartment would be, no non-farmer would be).
(b) high-value non-staple foods such as lettuce, kale, peppers: it doesn’t provide enough calories for food-independence.
While absolutely you could put a small unit the size of a shipping crate in every village and have the local shops stock it’s lettuce output on their shelves, I see this as a fantastic solution to e.g. greening the Sahara [0] and terraforming the Moon/Mars, but mainly only a cash-crop thing in industrialised nations on Earth.
[0] unlike this surprise I found on Google satellite view: https://goo.gl/maps/EjD4CNCkQB3aziR97