Indian Farming Faces Collapse.

[Einzige]

Assuming America's population remains stagnant at exactly three-hundred and fifty million persons, and generously assigning each tomato a weight of one pound, you'd need over two thousand such facilities simply to match present tomato intake.

The funny thing is greenhouse grown tomatos as an industry is experiencing solid steady growth -- because guess what, the economics on producing the stuff in greenhouses makes it insanely competitive, allowing it to be grown economically and at a profit in states other than florida.

Christ Jesus, you're an irrational fucktard. "HURF DURF, IT WORKS ON A SMALL SCALE, ERGO IT WILL WORK EVERYWHEEERE!" That sort of mindless cock-beating is what got us into this mess.

Let me put it to you this way, since you seem incapable of actually looking at the figures and arriving at a conclusion that even approximates reality yourself: by the time you've managed to build your green-house Wonderland large enough to feed the presently existing population, that population will have grown and you will need to continue building more and bigger greenhouses to feed a larger and greater population. Your proposal is an uneconomical wankfest and nothing more.

[Guardsman Bass]

You'd also need some sort of filtration pond near the greenhouse, since even with much reduced pesticide and fertilizer needs (since you have a year round growing season, you don't need to fertilize the fuck out of the place); over a 365 day growing season, you'd get plenty of contaminants which would need to be filtered out.

Einzige managed to pin the tail on the donkey with the logistical problems of doing this. To say nothing of the costs, and cost inflation to farmers due to proprietary "wetware". You forget the scaling. Sure. That works to produce tomatoes on a small scale. Good for them. However for the US's tomato consumption alone you need 2000 of them, assuming the same population which is a false assumption. What about wheat, corn, cabage, lettuce, rice? Do I need to go on you myopic sociopathic sack of shit? Hell, where are you going to get the nuclear plants required exactly? It would be great if the political will existed to do this. However it does not. By the time it does, it will be too late because we only have a few decades.

Shep suggested nuclear plants because that would be ideal. You could just as easily use electricity from coal-fired plants, or hydroelectric plants, or wind power, or whatever power source you have.

As for the "We'd need 2000 of them!", so what? That thing doesn't take up that much space (and certainly nothing compared to the space currently used on crops), and 2000 * $25 million (assuming they all cost as much as the pilot program to build) = $50 billion. Which sounds like a lot, except that you're not building all of them in a single year - spread that out over a couple of years, and it isn't that expensive.

[Einzige]

As for the "We'd need 2000 of them!", so what? That thing doesn't take up that much space (and certainly nothing compared to the space currently used on crops), and 2000 * $25 million (assuming they all cost as much as the pilot program to build) = $50 billion. Which sounds like a lot, except that you're not building all of them in a single year - spread that out over a couple of years, and it isn't that expensive.

Because there is no will to build such things. I'm not arguing that, if people were rational, it would be a terrible idea in itself (though certainly wasteful). What I'm saying is that such a proposal is intentionally ignorant of political conditions as they actually exist: in economic times like these - and these times will continue into the foreseeable future - absolutely nobody who could fund such a large-scale project is going to be willing to do it, even if it were the most rational thing in the world.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Shep suggested nuclear plants because that would be ideal. You could just as easily use electricity from coal-fired plants, or hydroelectric plants, or wind power, or whatever power source you have.

Not with our currently overtaxed energy infrastructure, the environmental problems of coal extraction and use, peak oil, the fact that we have already dammed most useable rivers, and that wind power is not viable outside of a few constrained geographic regions.

As for the "We'd need 2000 of them!", so what? That thing doesn't take up that much space (and certainly nothing compared to the space currently used on crops), and 2000 * $25 million (assuming they all cost as much as the pilot program to build) = $50 billion.

Just for the tomatoes, which are a small percentage of our diet and per km^2 produce a good amount of food, and also just for the construction costs. The costs of running the thing would be astronomical. And there is no political or economic will to build them on a large scale. And there will not be until watersheds start collapsing.

Which sounds like a lot, except that you're not building all of them in a single year - spread that out over a couple of years, and it isn't that expensive.

Good luck getting someone to do that on a large scale.

[Phantasee]

Who gives a fuck about the tomatoes? What are we supposed to do about the wheat? It's not a tomato basket, it's a bread basket.

[Guardsman Bass]

Shep suggested nuclear plants because that would be ideal. You could just as easily use electricity from coal-fired plants, or hydroelectric plants, or wind power, or whatever power source you have.

Not with our currently overtaxed energy infrastructure, the environmental problems of coal extraction and use, peak oil, the fact that we have already dammed most useable rivers, and that wind power is not viable outside of a few constrained geographic regions.

The infrastructure can be repaired, particularly since we're talking about a time scale of decades. The environmental problems of coal are there, but that's not exactly stopping people, now is it (and less so if you need that electricity for food production and can't make it to nuclear)? Peak oil's not really relevant to this (the greenhouse farming), since we don't get a lot of our electricity production from oil. Wind was just a suggestion.

As for the "We'd need 2000 of them!", so what? That thing doesn't take up that much space (and certainly nothing compared to the space currently used on crops), and 2000 * $25 million (assuming they all cost as much as the pilot program to build) = $50 billion.

Just for the tomatoes, which are a small percentage of our diet and per km^2 produce a good amount of food, and also just for the construction costs. The costs of running the thing would be astronomical. And there is no political or economic will to build them on a large scale. And there will not be until watersheds start collapsing.

We're talking about a time-span of decades. That's enough time for the economic incentives to push for a vast expansion in the usage of these things, particularly with pesticide resistance, groundwater depletion, and the like building up over time.

Which sounds like a lot, except that you're not building all of them in a single year - spread that out over a couple of years, and it isn't that expensive.

Good luck getting someone to do that on a large scale.

They're already testing them out, and because of the factors I listed above, there's going to be a strong economic incentive to build a lot more of them. It's not as if all the problems are going to happen tomorrow - we've got time to build them, time to engineer the crops (or try to do so), and to build the necessary infrastructure if/when conventional farming becomes much less viable.

Who gives a fuck about the tomatoes? What are we supposed to do about the wheat? It's not a tomato basket, it's a bread basket.

The tomatoes are just an example.

[Phantasee]

Can you please demonstrate the feasibility of growing wheat in greenhouses? Instead of pointing to irrelevant examples?

PS Fertilizer is affected by Peak Oil.

[Guardsman Bass]

Can you please demonstrate the feasibility of growing wheat in greenhouses? Instead of pointing to irrelevant examples?

PS Fertilizer is affected by Peak Oil.

You don't use oil to produce synthetic fertilizer - you use natural gas.

[Uraniun235]

And what happens when we hit Peak Natural Gas?

[Phantasee]

Was that my main point?

PS thanks, learned something new.

[mr friendly guy]

And what happens when we hit Peak Natural Gas?

I am going to hazard a guess someone would jump in and say use the coal we are no longer using (since we gone nuclear) and convert that into oil.

[Alyrium Denryle]

We're talking about a time-span of decades. That's enough time for the economic incentives to push for a vast expansion in the usage of these things, particularly with pesticide resistance, groundwater depletion, and the like building up over time.

Something to bank on? No. Particularly to replace the food production capacity of most of the World. 40% of the earths terrestrial surface would need to be covered by these things to match current production rates with extant methods. Engineering for increased salinity tolerance will cause more energy expenditure for the plants. Getting rid of the excess salt is not free. This means that growth rates will be slower. As the population grows even larger, more land needs to be cleared, and modern agricultural techniques will not be able to be used in a giant greenhouse. So whether or not the increased growing season will actually result in decreased land use is a wash. So say, between 15 and 40% of the earths surface. Good fucking luck. You do not seem to be understanding the scale at which farms would need to be replaced by these. There will be a serious lag time between the time those with money realize that there is demand for these (and that it will be cheaper and more profitable than existing methods) and when they get built. Our population is already well over its natural carrying capacity of 4 billion. If farming collapses significantly before the old people start to die massive famine will ensue.

Do you realistically think that this will occur on time? Is your desperation to deny the inevitable that strong?

The infrastructure can be repaired, particularly since we're talking about a time scale of decades.

Been needing it for a while now. Has not gotten it yet. I wont hold my breath.

. The environmental problems of coal are there, but that's not exactly stopping people, now is it (and less so if you need that electricity for food production and can't make it to nuclear)?

Indeed. And it makes me hate humanity that much more.

Peak oil's not really relevant to this (the greenhouse farming), since we don't get a lot of our electricity production from oil.

Yeah. It is. Transport of materials, goods, people, manufacturing. Everything is dependent on petroleum products.

[Broomstick]

You know, I am not comfortable with using the code phrase "brown people" for "people in the third world". The real distinction between survival and death in the worst-case scenarios being thrown about is not skin color but location - the brown people in North America, Europe, Australia, and some parts of Asia will likely survive at the same rate as Caucasians in those locations

Yes, but countries that are predominantly brown will get hit harder and will garner less sympathy in the developed world than white folks in the third world will. Maybe I am just being cynical.

My point is that if you keep framing this as a "brown" vs. "non-brown" you're more likely to wind up with those very two sides entrenched into survival mode. You are FAR more likely to get the wealthy aiding the poor (which is really one of the things that needs to happen) if you emphasize the SIMILARITIES and not the differences between the two camps. It is all too easy to reduce to "other" to less significance than your own and write them off. By continually making this brown vs. non-brown you are making it easier for that too happen.

The other problem is that you can't continually frame it was wealthy vs. non-wealthy because, for one thing, you risk there being two entrenched camps again but also be cause it's not JUST about wealth it's also about geography - some people are fortunate to live in regions with more water and more fertile soil than other people regardless of whether they are materially wealthy or not.

Clearly, yes, more "brown" people are going to be hurt in a crisis of this nature, but we really need to see them as human beings and not "browns" (or whatever). It's also foolish to think that the third world starving to death someone isn't going to affect the first and second worlds... because it will. It definitely will. The first world won't starve but life could still become quite wretched, particularly for the poor in the first world.

[Tritonic]

Bullshit. That requires massive government investing which we cannot now afford and you well fucking know it.

Considering that the above thing was put together for uh....$25 million with private venture funding. Ha yeah, you can go fuck yourself.

That plant produces fifty-two million tomatoes a year. The typical American consumes "about 80 pounds of tomatoes per year." Assuming America's population remains stagnant at exactly three-hundred and fifty million persons, and generously assigning each tomato a weight of one pound, you'd need over two thousand such facilities simply to match present tomato intake.

If constructed over a decade, otherwise under your own figures, 200 times $25 million annually = $5 billion annually in a multi-trillion economy = $14 per person annually. There are many crops other than tomatoes alone, but a need to provide 100% of American consumption via those facilities alone is a strawman anyway, since other agriculture is not dropping to zero production, rather:



The competitiveness of conventional methods has been the main retarding factor in investment.

The region of northwest India in the article illustrates the pitfalls of of relying on groundwater built up in the past (as opposed to present rainfall), extracted at a rate greater than replenishment, a problem shared in some U.S. states, although we're better situated to afford desalination if necessary ($650 / acre-foot now, compared to $200 / acre-foot for typical ordinary water sources, where average American water usage for agricultural irrigation is about a half acre-foot per person a year).

[Guardsman Bass]

Was that my main point?

What exactly are you looking for? Proof that wheat can be grown en masse in greenhouses, like the case with the tomato plant greenhouse Shep brought up? I'd hardly call the tomato greenhouse example irrelevant, since wheat actually can be grown in greenhouses. It's not actually being grown en masse right now for the same reason tomatoes still aren't, Shep's pilot project aside (it's still cheaper to grow them outdoors).

And what happens when we hit Peak Natural Gas?

We use coal gasification to get the hydrogen.

Something to bank on? No. Particularly to replace the food production capacity of most of the World. 40% of the earths terrestrial surface would need to be covered by these things to match current production rates with extant methods.

Who said anything about replacing the entire food production capacity of the world with greenhouses? It's not as if every outdoors farm is suffering from these problems, at least to the level where they'll be unusable in decades.

Engineering for increased salinity tolerance will cause more energy expenditure for the plants. Getting rid of the excess salt is not free. This means that growth rates will be slower. As the population grows even larger, more land needs to be cleared, and modern agricultural techniques will not be able to be used in a giant greenhouse.

Why, exactly, are modern agricultural techniques not usable in the giant greenhouse? Obviously, it's not going to be grown exactly the same as in an open field.

You do not seem to be understanding the scale at which farms would need to be replaced by these. There will be a serious lag time between the time those with money realize that there is demand for these (and that it will be cheaper and more profitable than existing methods) and when they get built. Our population is already well over its natural carrying capacity of 4 billion. If farming collapses significantly before the old people start to die massive famine will ensue.

That's why they're testing the pilot projects now. I can't give you a 100% guarantee that it will work properly, but it is an idea.

Do you realistically think that this will occur on time? Is your desperation to deny the inevitable that strong?

It depends really on whether or not salt-tolerant crops with decent yields can be engineered, and how quickly problems with water depletion, pesticide resistance, and the like come up. Unlike you, I'm not going to just write off the possibility that we might actually find these things, particularly when (as Shep and Stas's examples showed) there are actual examples of possible methods to stave off declines in conventional farming in testing.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Why, exactly, are modern agricultural techniques not usable in the giant greenhouse? Obviously, it's not going to be grown exactly the same as in an open field.

Nutrient cycling would be different, as there would be no natural input of many of the chemicals involved in plant growth. A large part of the rest depends on growth medium and size of the individual greenhouse. A more correct statement would be that options would be restricted. There is a reason my estimate had such wide latitude.

It's not as if every outdoors farm is suffering from these problems, at least to the level where they'll be unusable in decades.

Most of them are or will be however.

I can't give you a 100% guarantee that it will work properly, but it is an idea.

It is an idea. And if you can get people to actually do it, it may work. I however have far less faith in humanity than you.

[MKSheppard]

Einzige managed to pin the tail on the donkey with the logistical problems of doing this....

What about wheat, corn, cabage, lettuce, rice?

ERIS

The Entire US in 2005 produced about 2,104.7 million bushels of rice
The entire US in 2009 produced 219,850 x cwt of rice
The Entire US in 2007 produced 447,970 x CWT of potatoes.
The entire US in 2006 produced 36,844 x cwt of Tomatoes.
The entire US in 2007 produced about 5.81 billion pounds of lettuce

-------------------------------

Corporations:

Monsanto made $2 billion in profit during 2009.
Walmart made $13.4 billion in profit during 2009.
Royal Ahold made €894 million ($1.18 billion) in profit during 2009. (They own Giant Food in the DC area.)

If we assume all of these corporations set aside a mere 0.5% of their profits during the next 20 years to move into this market; that comes out to about $33.160 billion.

We know that these greenhouses cost about $25 million to make.

We'll be generous and assume each new seawater based plant factory costs about $30 million to make; due to the extra costs of shipping the seawater in, building the pipe, etc.

This is for a greenhouse with about 23~ acres of growing space; or about $1.3 million dollars an acre.

I'm confident that as we build more of them to a standardized plan, we can reduce the costs to about $1 million an acre due to efficiencies in mass production.

With the aforementioned $33 billion, that translates into 33,000~ acres of growing space under glass and hydroponically farmed (yes, that greenhouse company uses hydroponic farming).



Rough calculations for all of this 33,000 acres under glass:

100% Wheat: 264 million pounds (4.4 million bushels)
100% Rice: 396 million pounds (3,960 x 1,000 CWT)
100% Potatoes: 5.15 billion pounds (51,480 x 1,000 cwt)
100% Tomatoes: 13.2 billion pounds (132,000 x 1,000 CWT)
100% Lettuce: 693 million pounds (6,930 x 1000 cwt)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

But there's an alternative.

Link

There are about 35,600 supermarkets in the US with more than $2 million in sales. Their average store size is 46,700 square feet.

Doing the numbers, that adds up to about 38,000 acres of roof space we could convert to hydroponic growing.

Hell, Wal-Mart alone has 1,050 supercenters with an average roof size of about 3.2 acres, that's 3,360 acres alone -- enough to produce 10% of the US's total tomato production from a single company.

To say nothing of the costs, and cost inflation to farmers due to proprietary "wetware".

Except farmers already pay each year for new seeds in the United States.

Do I need to go on you myopic sociopathic sack of shit?

You know, I love this line. I suggest ways to solve our problems; ways which don't involve a lot of people dying or suffering, and you have the gall to call me a sociopath?

As for the fertilizer. No shep. We do not fertilize crops because of a limited growing season, or to compensate for a lack of light. We fertilize them because there is not enough nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil to meet the growth rates we squeeze out of the plants.

Um, you just basically said the same thing I did, except in a really long and winded form. We want a fast growth rate because we either want huge yields or turnover before the growing season ends.

Hell, where are you going to get the nuclear plants required exactly? It would be great if the political will existed to do this. However it does not. By the time it does, it will be too late because we only have a few decades.

I only suggested nuclear as the ideal option. There are other methods, such as increasing coal powered plants; and building gas turbine plants for quick-on site power.

[MKSheppard]

PS Fertilizer is affected by Peak Oil.

Cept that the raw feedstock that it's made from -- Nitrogen and Ammonia can be synthesized from...air itself given application of energy (read, nuclear).

The Army looked at that in the sixties as a way to get nuclear power into the field to support an army's logistics, by using semi portable nuclear plants to run an atmospheric fractionating and distillation plant to produce liquid ammonia which could then be burned in piston engines with minor changes.

It's just cheaper right now to make it using natural gas/oil to provide that raw feedstock.

[MKSheppard]

Something to bank on? No. Particularly to replace the food production capacity of most of the World. 40% of the earths terrestrial surface would need to be covered by these things to match current production rates with extant methods.

That's kind of funny, considering that in 1993; the world surface land use was broken down roughly as:

9.8% Arable land being used to grow crops
1.5% land being used for urban areas.

So Basically, natural soil based farming methods need only about 10% of the world's surface area; but, hydroponic greenhouse farming:



which is:

1.4x efficient (Wheat)
1.6x efficient (Oats)
16x Efficient (Rice)
5x Efficient (Cananbis!)
2.5x Efficient (Soya Beans)
8.6x Efficient (Potatoes)
2.1x Efficient (Beetroot)
5.6x efficient (Peas)
26.6x efficient (Tomatoes)
2.3x efficient (lettuce)

is going to somehow require 40% of the land's surface?

Does not Compute.

Hell, you don't even need to replace 100% of the world's crop supply with hydroponics -- if you just shifted half of the world's rice production to hydroponics, it would make a massive difference; particularly in Asia.

[Phantasee]

I appreciate you showing answers relevant to the thread. How many nukes would need to be built to power the greenhouses for half the worlds rice production?

[Tritonic]

The Army looked at that in the sixties as a way to get nuclear power into the field to support an army's logistics, by using semi portable nuclear plants to run an atmospheric fractionating and distillation plant to produce liquid ammonia which could then be burned in piston engines with minor changes

I can see how that would drastically reduce resupply needs. (And it makes sense, given that I've heard of later ammonia engine adoptions, such as a John Deere tractor diesel engine, a flex-fuel gasoline / ammonia car, and the general potential). Do you recall where such was published? I might want to read more on it someday if you do.

[Kuroji]

I appreciate you showing answers relevant to the thread. How many nukes would need to be built to power the greenhouses for half the worlds rice production?

It's not so much a question of how many nuke plants are needed, but where the greenhouses are and how much power they require in terms of gigawatts (or terawatts). If you stick them all in one place in a politically stable place, then you could presumably build one very large nuclear power plant with an extremely high overall power output, simply with multiple containment vessels for the sake of redundancy and a little extra safety.

Give me a while, I'll see if I can find anywhere that estimates the input in electricity that a greenhouse dedicated to rice needs and its output, and get you a concrete answer.

[Kuroji]

Oh nice, I can't edit a post I made 45 minutes ago now? Anyhow, it appears the majority of the power consumed would be for the purposes of heating the greenhouses to keep growing year-round. Unfortunately... nobody's saying just how much power that requires, so it's probably a case-by-case basis due to local environmental conditions. Whatever power plant ends up being installed to support the nearby greenhouses will certainly need surplus power capacity, but it's impossible for me to make any meaningful estimate here. Sorry.

[MKSheppard]

Oh nice, I can't edit a post I made 45 minutes ago now? Anyhow, it appears the majority of the power consumed would be for the purposes of heating the greenhouses to keep growing year-round. Unfortunately... nobody's saying just how much power that requires, so it's probably a case-by-case basis due to local environmental conditions. Whatever power plant ends up being installed to support the nearby greenhouses will certainly need surplus power capacity, but it's impossible for me to make any meaningful estimate here. Sorry.

There's always using surplus heat from a powerplant to heat the greenhouses, instead of putting it into cooling towers.

[MKSheppard]

Do you recall where such was published? I might want to read more on it someday if you do.

My Fuhrer! I scanned in that entire document!

Link