Not strictly relevant to the article, but I'm not excited by the efficiencies as much by the idea that it might offer a space-efficient option for me to have my food grown locally.
Food production at the moment is very much out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I don't have a feel for what monoculture are developing in the food industry, I don't have a feel for what the supply chain risks are. If food ever stopped flowing in from wherever it comes from to my city, I'd be in trouble.
It isn't totally rational, but I dream of being able to invest in food grown a few blocks away from me. If it only cost double existing prices that'd be a solid win.
I'm not sure how prevalent this is around the world, but in my city we can register for produce baskets. In spring, I register on a website and I choose and pay in advance of the whole season a local farmer (less than 50 km away), who comes once every week to distribute his baskets a few streets away. The produced is freshly picked the same morning, it varies from week to week, it's a small family farm and I know it doesn't contain any pesticide or artificial fertilizer.
Uh, for you. Some of us live near farms -- it's neither out of sight nor out of smell (heh).
The US is the most agriculturally productive nation in the world by a fair margin. Food and fuel are two of the things that the US is unlikely to run out of even under conditions of global nuclear war.
Food production at the moment is very much out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I don't have a feel for what monoculture are developing in the food industry, I don't have a feel for what the supply chain risks are. If food ever stopped flowing in from wherever it comes from to my city, I'd be in trouble.
It isn't totally rational, but I dream of being able to invest in food grown a few blocks away from me. If it only cost double existing prices that'd be a solid win.